“I’d like to switch seats, please.”
My grandmother spoke so quietly that, for a moment, I wondered if I had heard her correctly.
We were at the gate counter inside Boston Logan. She clutched her boarding pass in one hand while holding her weathered brown leather purse tightly against her chest with the other.
I stood just behind her, carrying both of our bags and holding a cup of coffee that had already turned cold.
The gate agent examined the ticket.
Then she glanced at Grandma.
Then at me.
“Ma’am, you’re currently in first class. Seat 3A.”
“I know,” Grandma replied. “But I’d like 34A instead, if it’s available.”
The agent stared at her briefly before beginning to type.
“It is available. But if you voluntarily move to economy, we can’t refund the fare difference.”
“That’s perfectly fine.”
I moved closer.
“Grandma, what are you doing?”
She gave me no answer.
Behind the counter, a printer started humming.
The agent passed her a replacement boarding pass.
Grandma looked at it for several seconds, then carefully tucked it into the side compartment of her purse.
Beside something old and yellowed that I saw only for an instant.
“Thank you,” she told the agent.
Then she faced me.
“Grandma, that ticket cost me more than I want to think about.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“Then why would you give it up?”
She took my hand.
Her fingers were cold against mine.
“I’d rather sit in the back.”
That was the only explanation she offered.
I should probably explain why that ticket meant so much to me.
My grandmother, Ruth Walsh, had recently turned eighty.
She still lived by herself in the modest gray house in Dorchester where she had spent more than fifty years.
Every spring, she planted flowers.
She completed crossword puzzles in ink.
And every Sunday, precisely at six in the evening, she called to make sure I was eating properly.
My name is Sam.
I was twenty-seven and worked as a nurse at Mass General.
Most weeks, I worked three twelve-hour shifts and accepted extra ones whenever possible.
After rent and student loans, I rarely had much money left.
But I had saved for nearly an entire year for this trip.
A year earlier, on Grandma’s seventy-ninth birthday, I asked what she wanted when she turned eighty.
I assumed she would request something small.
Dinner.
A sweater.
Maybe something new for her garden.
Instead, she lowered her fork and said,
