How Ramona Quimby Made Me Brave
1.
We didn’t know he was dead when we entered the room, but it didn’t take long to confirm it.
November 6, 1991.
I was a curly-headed kindergartner who figured his grandfather would live forever. I figured wrong.
Standing in the doorway of my grandparents’ bedroom that day, I watched as the paramedic’s hands hovered above my grandfather’s chest like a bee afraid to land. At last, he found his mark: smashing his hands into my grandfather’s heart in an act that looked more deadly than lifesaving.
Until that moment, death had seemed a hypothetical—something that happen, but that to happen. As long as you ate your veggies and buckled your seatbelt, you’d be blessed with eternal life.
