Forty-five Seconds

To an elderly person, time becomes a very valuable thing. They begin to think more about how to structure their last days, creating an invisible timetable in their minds and sticking to it in order to feel as though they are ready to leave at any moment, so long as they fulfil most of the things on their lists. This is the case with my grandparents, especially when it comes to their obligatory phone calls. 

They last only forty-five seconds each time, and if not forty-five seconds then a few seconds under, and the span of forty-five seconds is enough to ask all necessary questions before they feel that they are ready to end the call. Each call is structured like this, but in Lebanese:

"Hello my dear, how are you? 

How is school going? 

May God pass you. 

How are your parents? 

How is your sister? 

Are you all alone at the shop? 

I haven't been very well today, I'm going to see if your uncle can take me to the doctor. 

You should try to come see me. 

I miss you. 

Ask your parents if they want to come over tonight. 

Say hello to them for me. 

Would you like anything? 

Okay my love, I’ll see you soon. 

Bye."

The questions they ask and things that they say, both my grandmother and grandfather quite alike in speech, seem to be sufficient enough to work as a goodbye phone call also. It is interesting how phone calls from grandparents differ from phone calls from friends or parents. Friends and parents live in the ‘now’, and will ask up to the weekend about your plans, no further than that. Their questions also revolve around dinner, your location or why you did what you just did, always varying in questioning. Grandparents however like to ask the same things. They seem to take comfort in repetition, even though mine are not going deaf and even though their memories are intact, I do have to repeat a few things, and I only speak louder each time so that I appear as though I belong to my family. It is a norm for us to ask sympathetic things at the volume of The Hulk’s climax.

Their phone calls particularly interest me because of their contexts. I do not think that I will ever ask the same things that they will if I ever live to reach their age. I think I will continue to speak in a shabby way and I will continue to think of better things to say several moments after I hang up and will remember when it is far too late. They converse in a form of art. Though they stick to the same questions, I too am beginning to find comfort in their structure. I expect each question, and I always recite the same answers. They soothe both myself and them. After all, it feels great to have somebody inquire into your life every once in a while, rather every once in a day. We have become experts in these phone calls, seeing as they last precisely forty-five seconds.

But is forty-five seconds enough for a goodbye? Does it suffice as a farewell phone call? Though I am happy whenever they end, I also worry because I feel that they probably are not. I know that despite my annoyance with the calls because of the fact that they occur when I have customers or when I need to use the EFTPOS machine that is linked to the phone line, I will miss them. I think about the possibility of one day not receiving those calls and I feel a sense of abandonment. Gone will be the days of those minuscule calls that mean so much.

I wonder how I will speak when I reach an age of physical and mental fragility. Will I write an invisible conversation template in my mind and be sure to ask each question before I hang up? Of course I will.