This is the story of my grandmother—my Grandma—and the last time I saw her dry. My grandmother was not a soft woman. She was not the cookie-baking, lap-sitting, lullaby-humming archetype from greeting cards. Grandma was made of more angular things: chapped knuckles, a voice like gravel rolling downhill, and a laugh that could startle birds from three acres away. She was a farmer’s daughter during the Dust Bowl, a war bride who learned to weld ships, and later, a widow who outlived two husbands and three dogs.

I didn’t know what to say. So I just stayed there, kneeling in the puddle, letting her hold my face. She died four days later. In her sleep. The nurse said it was peaceful, which is what nurses always say, and I choose to believe it.

I knelt beside her and took her hand. It was cold and papery, like a leaf pressed too long in a book.