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I went to the grocery store. While I was gone, my mom's little dog decides to give her a gift - a little brown field mouse he has killed. My mom is deathly afraid of mice, even dead ones. She calls my grandmother to bring my grandfather inside. They are living in the house we had built for them in the bag yard. She get a paper bag and asks my grandfather to "take care of the mouse." Fear of mice is hereditary; she got it from her mom. He puts it in the bag for her. He and my grandmother go outside. My grandmother is partially blind, but she can see well enough to watch him walk to the curb and back. My mom has taken to her bed due to the mouse incident.

When I get back home, she tells me all about it. I laugh at the thought of my mom and a mouse. We don't think anymore about it.

My dad comes home from work. He walks in holding a paper bag.

"Is there any reason in particular there was a dead mouse in a paper bag in the mailbox?"

My grandmother, obviously, didn't see my grandfather put the mouse in the mailbox.

The only way that could be any funnier is if it had been the mailman who had found the mouse. Then again, it might have caused the poor man to have a heart attack, given him nightmares, or made him "go postal" in a few years. Not that it matters. It was perfect the way it happened.

I have yet to ever check the mail that I don't think of that. It is the same way with my mom. Not everyone can laugh so hard doing something as mundane as checking the mail. My mom and I can.

My grandfather has been gone for almost eight years now. He made his blessed trip to Heaven in 2000. I miss him more now than ever. Taking care of him the last seven years of his life was a wonderful thing for me. It gave me a chance to spend time with him and to, in my feeble and inadequate way, say thank you for all the things he had done for me. He gave me the great gift of laughter, before, during, and, now, after Alzheimer's. I am so thankful for that.

Learn more about this author, Emma Riley Sutton.
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