Late one evening, the phone rang.  I reluctantly got out of bed and answered it.  Little did I know that this phone call would tear away from me one of the most loving and most important people in my life, my grandmother.
    “Hello,” I mumbled in a tone of annoyance.
     “Hello,” the voice exclaimed, unexpecting a child’s voice, “ Is there a Mister Gary Gardner in the house?”
     “Yes,” I said, “But he is sleeping right now.  Can I take a message?”
     “I suppose so. This news is quite important.  You need to tell him that Lorraine Gardner is in the hospital and in critical condition.  We fear she might pass away soon.”
     “Oh my God!” I cried, “I’ll get him up right away so you can speak with him.”
     That was the scene at my house on April 8, 1994.  There were so many different thoughts and emotions of her running through our minds while we rushed to the hospital.  As we were crossing the 494 bridge, I kept remembering how many times we had crossed it before to visit her, and how happy we all were to do it.  No one was happy to be going now, for this reason.
    I sadly watched the street lamps whiz by.  As they shined down brightly on the street, I was reminded of the shining that’s always in her eyes.  Then the radiant smile of hers came to mind.  The picture of her I had in my head seemed so real that Grandma could have been in the car with us.  Her white curly hair, her white dress with green spots, her soft face all seemed so close to us now.
    A ways farther down the highway, I saw a big dump truck pass us by.  I looked over at it and remembered a time, many years ago, when Grandma had given me one of those big yellow Tonka dump trucks.  It was filled to the brim with Jellybeans.  My mother had never given me jellybeans before so I had no idea what they were.  I would push that truck around my house for hours; dumping out the jellybeans, and putting them back in.  Over and over and over I did this.  In fact, I dumped them around so much, that when I finally found out that I could eat them, they were disgusting and my Mom made me throw them away.
    Once we arrived at the hospital, we began slowly walking towards her room down the long, bleak halls.  I saw a boy, a little younger than I was, playing with a toy tricycle.  That sent me back to riding around my Grandparent’s backyard on their tricycles while my Grandma looked fondly at me playing, and even joined me once in awhile.
    When we got into the elevator at the end of the hall, it reminded me of climbing the stairs to their dusty attic where all the old toys were kept.
    We were walking down the last stretch of hallway, and everything seemed to remind me of her.  Her rosy cheeks while cooking over her gas stove, making cookies with her on a cold December day, and learning how to dunk an Oreo all seemed like distant memories now.
    We finally made it to her room where Grandpa was already waiting.  We all rushed in and hugged them both and cried.  We stayed there with them all that night.
    The next day, Grandma died.  When I look back at my memories of her, I realize that she taught me to be a kid, and I showed her how to be young.

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