The last time I saw my grandmother was in a cold hospital room in tiny Sandstone, Minnesota on Christmas Eve. I was thirty-five and I was late. There was snow and most of the family had left to go to their homes, their warmer beds, their vanilla-scented kitchens, their children's stockings.

"Gram," I said.

"John," she wheezed, calling me my father's name.

"Merry Christmas, Gram."

"Is it Christmas?"

On the aluminum tray hovering over her frail body there was a small paper cup with two orange pills, an empty water glass and a rosary. My aunt Barb touched my shoulder. "She'll be in Heaven soon. Are the roads bad out there? I've got to get the roast ready for tomorrow. You'll be there won't you, Peter?" I nodded.

The lines on my grandmother's face were deep and many, dug in like trenches. She fought this world bravely, and these wrinkles were the scars to prove it. They sliced and crisscrossed, wound and unwound, spiraled, danced and wove the history of her life across her face.

On her forehead were the worries of child-rearing. There was the story my father told of falling down the stairs when he was six and Gram finding him in a pool of blood in the foyer. There were the countless bruises, cuts and kisses. There was the first stillbirth. And the second.

Around her eyes were the anxieties of love. William, my grandfather, carved deep purple valleys under her eyes when he left and took all her tears with him. Her eyebrows hung low from all the sleepless lonely nights, praying the children would never grow up.

My uncle Frank helped chisel the gridlines on each cheek and widened the dimples that came with her laughter. He was good to her, and once he took me deer hunting. I held the .22 to my shoulder and he said, "It'll push back hard, but hold on and aim for the fuckin' heart."

The grooves in her chin were from the looks of disapproval she gave the passing decades. Women who showed too much leg. Men who encouraged it. Pants pulled too high, then too low. Music, awful music everywhere. In the end, she wasn't very friendly. But she gave us life. And $10 checks at Christmas until she couldn't hold a pen anymore and that was why I came back, why we all came back. To hold her until she let go.

I picked up the rosary off the aluminum tray and tried to remember the Hail Mary. I kissed her lips, dry and wrinkled like everything else. "Merry Christmas," I said again. My Gram, full of grace.