Loose Change

Loose Change

When I was ten years old I went on a trip to the mall with my mom, sister and great grandmother. As a treat, when my mother went off alone to look at some clothes for herself, my great grandmother took my sister and I took a kiosk in the middle of the mall to buy some pogs. This is when pogs were what all the cool kids collected and I had a growing assortment of them myself. They sold them for ten for a dollar and my great grandmother gave us each a bill and told us to go crazy. We did, selecting ones that were cow spotted or with pictures of cats, a few with zodiac symbols and a spiral design or two. My sister and I compared our findings as we walked along the crowded mall to meet up with our mother.
“Oh, hold on, girls,” my great grandmother said, slowing her already slow walk in the middle of the mall. “One of you bend down and pick up that penny on the ground for me.”
I bent down and picked up the copper coin that lay facedown on the tile. “Here you go,” I handed it to her.
“This is a lucky penny,” she told me, holding the coin in her soft, wrinkled fingers.
“How do you know?” I asked her.
“Any penny you find on the ground is a lucky penny,” she told me. “You should always pick them up.”
Even though I was only ten, I was already cynical about such things. I knew there was no such thing as a lucky penny. I was not even sure there was such as thing as luck. I kept my mouth shut, though.
I didn’t think about that incident again for about six more years. My family had just had the horrible experience of taking my great grandmother, the old matriarch of the family, to a nursing home. A few months earlier my mother had found her stuck in her bathtub, where she had been for the past fourteen hours, paralyzed from the waist down. For my great grandmother it wasn’t the fact that her legs were swollen with hives or that she was freezing in cold water that bothered her. It was when her privacy was invaded by a group of male paramedics who had to find her 92-year old naked body in that tub. Since that night she had been in a steady decline, reaching the point where she no longer smiled or even said hi when we went to visit.
Since my great grandmother was never going home to her little elderly community apartment, it was the job of my mother, sister and I to clean it out. That was how I found the pennies. In her pantry, behind cans of chicken broth and a stockpile of tissue boxes were old glass fruit cocktail jars and coffee cans filled with coins. I stood there, wondering if this was loose change that was too much for her small, black change purse or containers of my great grandmother’s luck stored away under some shelves.
I had been walking around the apartment with a black trash bag that I was constantly adding more things to. We were allowed to take whatever we wanted, claim whatever memories we chose to keep. Everything else would be given to my grandparent’s housekeeper or donated to the Salvation Army. The thought of other people resting their heads on my great grandmother’s pillow cases, sewing with her selected threads and needles, wearing her fake pearls as costume jewelry, when she had worn them as though they were better than the real thing, was all unbearable for me. Because of that, my trash bag was full of the things I didn’t need, but couldn’t leave behind. I began to add the coins to my collection of great grandmother memorabilia.
“Hey! You can’t have all that money!” My sister had found me loading up my loot. “You have to share!”
“No I don’t, I found it,” I replied, heaping the jars on top of the throw pillows and soft, cotton blankets I had taken because of the way they smelled.
“You have to share it,” she said. “It’s money.”
“Yeah, but its mine, I found it.”
“Come on! That’s not fair. You have to share it!”
I noticed that my sister didn’t have a huge trash bag like I did. Apparently she didn’t feel the need to hoard as much of our great grandmother as I did. I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t want these coins for their monetary value and that they meant a lot more to me that than, so I just pushed over a few coffee cans and didn’t look at her as tears welled up in my eyes.
A month or so later my house received one of those horrible, early morning phone calls that can only mean something bad happened. My great grandmother had died and arrangements would be made accordingly. Her wake was on Memorial Day in a cold cement building with an inside that was humid, stuffy and smelled like lilies, a smell which I have since associated with dead bodies. My family, consisting of my mother, sister and I, plus my aunt and grandparents, gathered early at the funeral home to say our good byes.
Walking into that room was a horrible experience for me. Though I was sixteen years old, I had never seen a dead body before, especially not the dead body of someone I loved. The shock of seeing her face so cold and placid, with lips not the right color pink and cheeks that were rosy in all the wrong places, made me gasp, and then cry. She just looked so completely different, and so completely dead.
I cried for almost the whole three hours of the wake. My streaming tears caused the rest of my family to avoid me, and it wasn’t until some of my closer companions showed up that I felt a little better.
Joanna, my best friend at the time, arrived first. She tried to comfort me by saying, “Its okay. At least you got to know her. I never knew any of my great grandmothers.”
I nodded, and blew my nose on a tissue from one of the many boxes spread around the room.
“Besides, at least you still have all your grandparents.”
Again, I nodded, and felt a twinge of guilt, when I thought how Joanna had in the past year lost both of her mother’s parents.
“I mean, at least it’s only your great-grandmother,” she continued.
I opened my mouth, maybe to say that she wasn’t only a great grandmother, maybe to insist that she was more than that, that she was a great person. However, I shut my mouth and didn’t say anything.
Joanna didn’t stay long, and soon my cousin Liz showed up. She was my first cousin on my dad’s side and I was only three months older than her. We had grown up together and attended school side by side since seventh grade.
“Let’s walk around,” she suggested. The wake was half over and the room was crammed with old people, mainly old colleagues and golfing buddies of my grandparents. They were continuously coming up to me and talking, and asking about school and what I hoped for college, as if I knew who they were. I was glad to get out.
Near the door was a container that held prayer cards, each depicting one of four pictures of Jesus on one side, and “An Irish Blessing” on the other. Liz stuck her hand into the container and pulled out some of the cards. “I collect these,” she said, flipping through them. She took one of every Jesus picture.
The room next door also had a wake going on, and there was a downpour outside. I was annoyed, for I felt that rain was too cliché for the death of my great grandmother, and I longed for the sun to come out. Because of the rain, Liz did not lead me outside, only up a flight of stairs within the funeral home.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Let’s explore.”
I followed her dutifully up the stairs to a long hallway with a balcony over looking the front entrance of the funeral home. She sat down, and I sat down next to her, smoothing my black skirt under my legs.
“Did you stuff your bra?” she asked me.
I looked down at my shirt. “No. Well, not on purpose. I didn’t bring a purse or anything and I don’t have any pockets. I don’t have a place for tissues.”
“So you put them in your bra?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t have pockets in my skirt. It’s what Aunt Helen told me to do.”
“Well, now you look like you have one A cup and one C cup.”
“Its not that bad, is it?” I asked, reaching my hand into my shirt. I grabbed the folded tissues from where they lay, warm from resting against my skin.
“You wouldn’t need tissues if you weren’t crying, anyway,” Liz said sulkily, leaning back against a wall.
I didn’t answer, but leaned against the wall next to her.
“Are you going to school tomorrow?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “The funeral is tomorrow.”
“So you’re not even going to come in for a little while?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure a funeral is an all day thing.”
“So you’re going to miss the Latin test?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Do me a favor and tell Miss White why I’m not in class.”
“Okay,” Liz agreed. “I’ll tell her it was my great-grandmother too, so I can skip the test. She knows we’re cousins and it’s not like she’s going to know it was your other side of the family.”
I didn’t look at Liz, only stared straight ahead wooden railing of the balcony. I opened my mouth to talk, to say something like “You’re going to use my great grandmother’s death to your advantage?” or something even simpler, such as “Fuck you, Liz,” but I only stared straight ahead, waiting for the words to come out of my mouth. They didn’t.
At that moment, a graying man in a stern, black suit came up the stairs and onto the balcony. “You girls aren’t supposed to be up here. You have to go back downstairs.”
“Well, you should have a sign or something that says that,” Liz told him, as we got up. “How were we supposed to know?”
I wanted to apologize, but didn’t, as we walked back the man. He just shook his and went into a side room.
“You think that’s where they keep the bodies?” Liz asked, gesturing with her head to the room as we went down the stairs.
“No,” I replied. I walked faster than her, not wanting to be next to her. When we reached the door of the grandmother’s wake, I turned and said, “I’m going to go sit with my mom. I’ll see you later.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Have fun.”
I walked back in to join the old people and the lily aroma, kicking myself for not yelling at Liz, or at least telling her no, she couldn’t tell Miss White that. How could she think I would be okay with that anyway? Didn’t she have any tact? Or even a sense of decency?
On the floor right outside the room laid a penny. It was smudged, listless and was facedown on the navy utility carpet. I bent down and picked it up, feeling the cold metal in the palm of my hand. I went to put the coin into my pocket, when I remembered I didn’t have pockets. I thought it was bad enough I was putting tissues in my bra, and I penny would be even weirder, so I placed it on the table next to the prayer cards.
I spent the rest of the wake sitting in a stiff pink chair in the receiving line with the rest of my family. I wiped tears from my face, while my sister stood stonily next to me, not showing any emotion except boredom.
The next day before the funeral we had to see the body one last time. We arrived at the funeral home in a steely gray limo with three rows of seats, quite unlike the super stretch white vehicle with the burgundy interior I had lounged in at my recently passed junior prom. I wore the same clothes as the day before, though this time both sides of my chest were equally stuffed with tissues. Throughout the rest of the day I had to remember that every time I took a tissue from one side, I had to take a tissue from the other side next. The only problems was what to do with the dirty ones, and most of them ended up in the prayer book holders at the church a little later that day.
When it was time to say my personal good-bye to my great grandmother, I kneeled on a wooden plank with red padding in front of the casket. I had been a self described somewhat atheist since ninth grade, but that hadn’t been a problem until now. I didn’t know what to do, what to pray. My family was there, so I did the sign of the cross.
“In the name of the father…the son…the holy spirit…amen…” I muttered. Before this, the only deaths in my life had been relegated to characters on my favorite television shows and loved ones in books and novels. I felt the need to wish I had had the chance to tell her I loved her one more time, or to wish that she had never died. However, those thoughts weren’t true. Every time we visited the nursing home where my great grandmother lay bored, depressed and withered in a hospital-like bed, I made sure to tell her “I love you” and “Good bye” because I knew her time was limited. So, what was I supposed to be praying for? Good luck in Purgatory? I didn’t even understand what Purgatory was supposed to be, despite my decade of catechism classes. Besides, why was I standing there praying when I told myself I didn’t even believe in God?
My fingers stumbled over each other as I clasped my hands together. Just in case there was a God I had to pray, and I had to pray that there was a heaven, for it occurred to me as I kneeled there that there might not be a heaven. If there wasn’t a heaven that meant that I would never see my great grandmother again. Not only that, but it meant that she was really, truly, completely dead. This was because in my mind, no God meant no heaven, which meant no place for souls (is that what heaven was a place for anyway?), but if there was no God and no heaven, why should souls exist either? In my confusion, I thought to myself, Dear God, I don’t know if you are there are not, but if you are please take good care of my great grandmother. I know I don’t really always believe in you, but don’t take that out on her. Please make heaven exist and please make sure my great grandmother goes there.

I paused, and then added, And if there is a hell, please make sure that’s where Liz goes. But it’s more important that my great grandmother goes to heaven. Thanks you. “Amen,” I muttered.
I stood up, taking a tissue from my bra and blew my nose. It was my sister’s turn to pray. I walked away, back over to the entrance of the room and away from my family. I picked up a prayer card from the table and, wanting to save it, slipped it into the folds of tissues in my bra and wished that I had just brought a purse with me. That was when I noticed the dulling penny on the table. It was the one I had found the day before. I picked it up. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I knew I couldn’t put it back down on the table.
I rejoined my family where they gathered near the casket. It was time to leave to go to Saint Stephen’s church for the funeral. We were taking one last look at my great-grandmother. Her face was quiet and gaunt and I struggled to remember what it looked like when she smiled and the way her whole face would light up. I tried to remember the way her voice sounded and the way she would say my name. I stared at her cold appearance and wished to someday be able to see the great grandmother I loved again. That’s people created the idea of heaven, I thought to myself. It’s hard to lose someone you love. Believing that I will see her again would just make this whole grief thing so much easier.
And then, when no one was looking, I tossed the penny into the casket. It fell between a pale, thin arm and the white satin folds of the interior. I don’t know if I gave her that penny because I felt that she needed the luck more than I did or because I felt that that penny didn’t belong anywhere except in that casket with her.
I do know that since then, I can’t help but pick up stray pennies I find lying on the ground. When I don’t pick them up, I can’t think about anything else except that dirty coin I left on the ground, and often back track to place it safely in my pockets to have peace of mind. When my friends or whoever I happen to be with ask why I always pick up pennies, I just tell them “It’s for good luck,” though I still don’t know if I actually believe that.