Abuelita

My abuelita called me the other day and I was ecstatic. She is my absolute favourite person in the entire world and we hadn't spoken in ages but she's getting older and sometimes I wonder if she's really all there.

After the usual pleasantries regarding her recent trip (my abuelos had just come back from a 4 month vacation to visit our family in Spain) she asked me a seemingly innocuous question:


Did you go to mass on Sunday?


Oh fuck.

Suddenly I was struck with intense feelings of guilt, not the Catholic guilt you would imagine (despite growing up in a staunchly Roman Catholic family and attending Catholic school from kindergarden until grade 12 I have always considered myself an atheist) but guilt that my little Spanish grandmother had developed Alzheimer's in the time she'd been away and I would have to break her heart all over again by reminding her I never go to church because I am a filthy heathen who doesn't believe in God.

I thought about lying to her but then I started to get all panicky about being caught. I am a very bad liar. All it would take was one word to my mother and she would laugh about my heretic ways and how entering a church would surely cause me to spontaneously combust (this is one of her favourite little jokes). And that would just destroy my already fragile, rosary kissing abuelita! No I had to do it, I had to tell her the truth.

I could barely whisper into the phone: No


The pause seemed to stretch forever until I heard her sigh and say in her Castillian accent

No? 
Me neither. I guess neither of us are going to heaven.


...?

Thanks abuelita...at least we'll be together I suppose.