Bedtime Stories

Friday nights my siblings and I would stay at our Grandmothers. Sometimes until one or two in the morning when my mom and step-dad would return from their night on the town. My brother and sister were always in bed by nine but by virtual of being the oldest I was allowed to stay up until eleven or eleven thirty.

I can still smell the sheets of the bed I would sleep in. Nana had a washing machine but she never would use her dryer. Her sheets were always hung on the clothesline to dry. The scents they absorbed were nothing like the artificial scents of today. Oranges, lemons, tangerines, fresh cut grass all of natures ingredients would mix into wonderful new perfumes that became with the linens I slept on.

Nana was a nurse and always worked the graveyard shift. On Friday nights she would tuck me and listen to my prayers while she was fixing her hair and preparing to leave for work. If I close my eyes I can still see her wearing one of those starchy all white uniforms of old and a matching nurses hat clipped to her hair with several bobby pins.

Once my prayers were finished she would sit on the end of my bed and share a few stories with me. Most children my age would be tucked into bed with tales of knights and dragons, princesses and rogues while all the while my grandmother was sharing with me the latest news and gossip from the ward she worked on. Nana worked at the City of Hope and she spent most of her career there on what she called "the terminal ward". In the late sixties and early seventies most cancer treatments were not very successful so her job was primarily to reduce the suffering of and provide comfort to those in the final stages of their battle. So her "stories" primarily consisted of which patients might not make it through the night, what families were handling things well and which ones weren't.

So as my peers floated off to dreamland on white feathery clouds, riding mighty steeds and saving the fair damsel in distress. While my dreams were dominated by the angel of death and visions of souls taken to soon wandering the wards unable to accept the fact that their time on earth was through.

Now that I think about it I would not have had it any other way.