Hendersonville, TN

"I know two things. First, you're an excellent young man, and life has kicked you pretty hard. You've had a hard disappointment. I don't know, and I don't need to know everything about it to say that for sure. Secondly, you've got a family around you that loves you and they hope for the best for you." My uncle Don sits across the table from me, his plate untouched. His stare is intense. "Listen, I haven't been through what you've been through, Robby. I haven't. But I still know a little of what you're feeling, and I've gotta let you know: if you need anything, anything at all, we're here for you."
I hadn't seen my uncle in more than a year, and he was now trying to remind me why that didn't matter. His left hand is calm, still and quiet, on the table top, and his right circles in the air, emphasizing his point. It's strange, looking at him. He looks like my father, more grizzled but no less gray, beardless and tall. His eyes bore into me. I look away, I can't stand it. I know he's telling the truth, but we've never been close.
"Robby, that room you're in can be yours if you need. I know you're off across the country and all, but if you find yourself back in this area, you can stay in the room while you get your feet. I can get you a job—it won't pay well, but I can get you a construction job tomorrow. You don't have to say anything now, and you don't have to decide now, but I want you to know you've got options."
I nod. I'm not choked up but I feel like it. I turn back to face him. "If there's one thing I've learned in this trip," I begin, voice a little rusty, "It's that I've got people everywhere."
"That's true. Listen, i just need you to know: if you need a place to get your feet under you, just let us know. We're here for you. Maybe I'm preaching too much, man. Just let me know if I need to stop talking."
We continue in this vein for five minutes before aunt Lovell cracks open the bedroom door. It's half ten; I had assumed she was already asleep. Uncle Don jumps up and walks over to her, and I'm left contemplating all he said. It's terribly kind of him to offer, even though we both feel I probably won't need it. He returns and thumps down into the seat again. "Your aunt says I gotta stop preaching. Just remember what I said." He finishes his meal and we talk a bit about a show he's enthralled with called The Last Alaskans. When he goes to bed, he leaves me with a head full of thoughts. Tomorrow, my uncle Dan, who lives thirty minutes up the road, is coming to give me a lift to Grandma's nursing home. Don has already warned me that she's not conversant. I assumed she wouldn't recognize me, but he disabuses me of that thought quickly. "Oh, she'll know you. But she won't have much to say."

The next morning, I sleep in and make a few sandwiches for breakfast while the tiny dogs of the household watch. Tanner is skeletal and prancing, and is forced to wear a sanitary pad under an elbow wrap for his bladder control issues. Sadie Mae is the same breed, but pleasantly fat. She likes to sit on laps like a cat, and she was Grandma's favorite when she lived at Don's for a year or two. By the time afternoon has rolled around, I'm wearing my collared shirt and a clean pair of pants. I don't think Grandma will remember it, but I will. Dan rolls up and smiles at the door. Tanner and Sadie Mae go nuts. Dan is the most soft-spoken of my uncles by far, but even he manages a "Cut it out! It's me, you knuckleheads!"
In the car on the way to Grandma's, he repeats the warning that she's not very talkative. "She can't verbalize what she's trying to say, really, unless it's negative, if she's complaining about how she can't talk. So don't expect a two-way conversation." I'm not.
When we arrive, uncle Dan opens the door and she's already up, trying to get out of bed, which she's not supposed to do on account of her hip. He rushes over and calls the nurse. I stand outside awkwardly as the nurse makes my grandma presentable. When I finally get into the room, she's smiling away and stammering out half-formed sentences. I get the feeling that she knows what she wants to say, but she's like an aphasic. There's no connection from her thoughts to her words unless she's saying something familiar, something she's said a hundred thousand times before, the one phrase she won't lose until the end, I think.
"He's he's he's—a w- w- wonderfu-l boy." She says this as Dan comes in the room and sits near her. She says this when he turns off the t.v. She says this when he's outside the window, filling the bird feeder with sunflower seeds, and she says this when he returns. He's a wonderful boy, isn't he? I remember a year ago, when she still had language, though it was slipping from her like fog burns away in the sun. I remember she would say this whenever she came back from a reverie and saw dad or Dan sitting near her. It's a refrain, a reminder, an apology, a thanks. Now, it's near enough all she says. Once, as she points vaguely at something on the wall or the other side of the room, she stumbles halfway though a sentence, utterly loses the thread of it, and gives up. As she turns away, she says "I can't say it," just as clear as you like. I think it's an old, rutted memory, an automatic response. I'm not sure it's language anymore.
But she smiles.
This is a change from a year ago, when she cried to see us go, though we knew she wouldn't remember why she was sad in the space of an hour, if she was sad at all. My family has always seemed to have a deep pessimistic tendency, and grandma harbored it deepest. As she got older, she complained more and smiled less. This blissful senility, therefore, is a bit of a shock, but I'm not afraid of what it means. I take her hand and look her in the eye when she speaks like I know every word. I talk to her about setting a bear in the Shenandoah National Park, about swimming in the Ocoee, about working at camp. But when my uncle leaves to fill the bird feeder, I turn to a different subject.
"Grandma, I have some news about me. Maybe you remember Delight? She's my wife; you came to our wedding. Anyway, she's in Oregon right now. I don't think she knows where I am." I pause to collect my thoughts, but huge bombs are planted in most of what I intend to say, so I walk past it all. "I don't know what's going to happen to us. We're not very close."
"He's a a a w- wonderful b- boy." She's now looking at my uncle, who smiles and waves as he tips the seeds into the yellow plastic feeder. I let the topic die, and i hold her hand in silence as she stops taking and falls asleep.
I never would give up or trade my uncles, though they're staunch in their views and they tend to talk over each other. I wouldn't give away my family, though I don't see them nearly often enough and I don't really know their lives. It's enough that I have them, somewhere, and they're happy to see me when I do drop in. I have piercing regrets from time to time that perhaps I never built the connections I should. But with or without meaning to, my family has become a nation-wide support network. I have people everywhere, and they're all wonderful boys.