His grandma came in, flipped the blanket off the bottom half of his body, and began to rub his feet. As she pressed deeply into his toes with her knuckle, she began to sing. She sang a song about the months of the year. Then a song about a squirrel falling from a fence and being healed by a kind doctor, only to run away from his savior. 

 

    “Papa never liked to have his feet covered, especially when he slept” she said. 

 

    His grandma made circular movements around his feet. When she thought he was asleep she sat at the edge of the bed. Through a sliver in his eye he noticed that she was too drained to get up. Her eyes were tired but she hummed herself in and out of sleep. It was the type of hum that bees make as they go about their work. It was the bee hum that fills ears and demands to be heard. It was simple, singular, a lull, but it was just loud enough to shoo away the emptiness, to make known the presence of a body next to a corpse. When she left the room, he didn’t fall asleep for another two hours. It was quiet but the hum remained, lullabying and echoing in the shapeless space of the room.