My grandparents used to live in a parsonage in rural North Carolina. I was little at the time. One of my favorite things to do during the summer was go stay the weekend with them.

At night when Murder, She Wrote came on my grandfather would call me over to sit in his lap while we watched Angela Lansbury use her wile to solve murder mysteries. If he hadn't shaved recently, he'd rub his chin against my forehead and laugh as I hollered at him to stop. If he had shaved, he smelled like aftershave. He always wore a white v-necked t-shirt in the evenings.

My grandfather (I call him Bub) would eat a bowl of cereal as we watched the show. Most of the time he would eat Wheat Chex. Out of a green pyrex bowl. A bowl so big he had to hold it with both hands. Usually he would put a spoonful of Jif peanut butter on the side of the bowl and take a scoop of cereal and a bit of peanut butter with each bite. He did the same with ice cream.

I remember it stormed a lot during those summer nights. I would go to bed, all the windows in the house would be open, and I'd listen to the sound of the rain as it hit the roof and the trees around the house. I didn't go to sleep right away. I thought about the things I was going to do the next day. I wondered what everyone else still awake was doing. I never guessed it could be something mundane, like brushing their teeth. I imagined elaborate dinner parties went on late into the night. I figured if you were grown up and could stay up as late as you want you would probably spend that time doing something really fun.

Farah Fawcett died today. She was an influencer when my mom was young. Mom had Farah Fawcett hair for a while. She kept it feathered during the late eighties. There are photos of my mom wearing absurdly short shorts. She had killer legs. I think my grandparents try to keep those stashed way below the ones they deem classier pictures.

My grandmother used to tell me stories about how my mom tried to get my grandfather to stop smoking. As a kid she would draw an X in permanent marker on his cigarettes (he smoked Vantages for many years), she wrote him letters through the years begging him to stop smoking. Before she died she put the pressure on a little more. I don't think she thought it was fair that here she was, dying, never having smoked. And there he was, nearly double her age, living and smoking up a storm. I think that might have just made him smoke more. I don't think he knew how to quit right then.

Mom didn't die of Hodgkins Lymphoma, really. She died when her one good lung, the one that wasn't full of cancer, started filling up. She had a magic wand that suctioned stuff out of her lungs. She stuck it down her throat and pulled out the phlegm, parts of her lung. The sound it made was the sound of an airplane taking off inside a vacuum.

Many years later, Bub stopped smoking. A combination of things, I guess. Vision complications. Doctors orders. I'm glad Bub has stuck around like that peanut butter he used to eat that still reminds me of those late summer nights in the parsonage. That was before I went to live with them for good. When we could just watch Murder, She Wrote and pretend like dinner parties lasted all night. Before tiny black Xs grew into the sound of airplanes taking off in a vacuum. I miss those nights with my grandfather sometimes.