So much can happen in twenty-four hours. Countless lives are put out, suddenly snuffed, like feeble candleflames, so quickly that it’s hard to believe it ever happened. You learn to pay it no attention…until it happens to you.

We (my family and I) were on a camping trip on the southern Washington coast when we got the phone call telling us that our Grandpa Jim had passed away. He had tripped and fallen, breaking his hip, and had to undergo emergency surgery. Afterwards, he was put on life support, but after several hours of no recovery, he refused to continue; soon afterwards, he went into a coma, and a little while later, he died. Peacefully and in his sleep, the way everyone wants to die.

All this had happened within the space of a day.

I didn’t know what to feel. People always tell you that you’re allowed to be happy, that the person who died would want you to be happy, but it still feels wrong, somehow…as if every time you think of something else, every time you laugh, you’re dishonouring them. I hadn’t even known Grandpa Jim very well; he was my nana’s third husband (I never knew the first), but I’d loved him, even though I’d never been old enough for us to just talk. I still didn’t cry. Not really, anyways. I shed a couple tears, but all night my mind was reeling. We’d have to shop for the funeral— shopping for a funeral!— because the only thing anyone in my family had on the camping trip were shorts, jeans, and T-shirts.

We made the sixteen-hour drive back to Lethbridge in two trips, driving fourteen hours one day, and two the next. That day, we went shopping.

I found an outfit with my first try in the first store, then tagged along behind my sister and mother as they tried out countless shirts and skirts. Finally, we ended up in the mall, and Ardéne’s, where I found a filmy black sash and a pair of decorated black flip-flops to go with my outfit…and then, on a whim, I bought a bottle of clear, sparkle-y nail polish.

I bought it for Grandpa Jim.

The day after my Grandpa Jim died, my father had told me something about him. He said that Grandpa Jim had once said to him that the first thing he noticed about a lady were her fingernails; that was apparently how he’d known that my nana was a keeper—her fingernails were always perfectly groomed and polished, even though the fingers themselves were twisted and gnarly.

I had nothing to give to him, nothing to say at the funeral, nothing special to do. My talent lies in writing, and it was too late to do anything, and I didn’t even know what to write, anyways.

So I painted my nails. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I clipped and filed and buffed and polished my nails so that they were perfect; because I wanted my Grandpa Jim to be proud of me; I wanted to remember him; and because it was the only thing it seemed that I could do.

Each of us remembers in our own way. I chose fingernails.

I’ll never look at them the same way again.