If She Has to Go

My grandmother says she is sorry to be leaving us, but if she has to go, she has to go. She twists the hem of her hospital gown between two arthritic fingers, her knuckles at jagged angles, her legs uncharacteristically exposed. Her dementia is a shroud with dancing opacity. The doctor is pleased with her progress, is sending her home. But she tells me to be sure of her burial plot. She is tired. She is sorry to be leaving us. She has accomplished everything, everything, a refrain that emerges even as she swats at her nurses. She is oriented only to a sense of contentment. We tell her she is getting better, will go home, but she declines. She is ready to go. Why does it have to be such a good life, she asks, her shroud thinning, and then only suffering at the end?