Now back East...well, at least partly.

The view from her hospital window is stunning. Low buildings poking out between tree-lined streets until you reach the curve of the shore. The ocean in the background, centered between two hills, the Santa Barbara City College barely visible on the right hill's slope. The bed, though, is on the other side of the room and only visitors can see the Pacific from the hospital room. I tried to describe the view to her, but she didn't seem terribly interested. It's very hard for her to talk, and her face betrays almost no emotion, except when her grandchildren are close.

We went out on the roof patio one day when she was able to move in a wheelchair. As hospitals go, it's an inviting place. From the patio you can see the mission, the Pacific, and the tiny one- or two-bedroom million dollar homes that dot the ground. My son was busy breaking open horse chestnuts that he'd picked up in Oak Park earlier. He thought the insides looked like brains. My mother-in-law sat passively, looking tired, but following the conversation. Every now and then she would clap her hands repeatedly to get the baby's attention.

She would clap and the baby would turn to her and smile, two tiny teeth halfway shoved out of her pink gums.

Our son, who's too old to have the pure innocence of wide-eyed wonder, drew picture after picture for his grandmother, dictating the titles to his mother: "One Eyed Alien" and "Rainbow Happy Monkey." He drew pictures of his sister. He drew bananas and named it "The Meal: Bananas" because he likes that painting by Gaugin. He taped them up all over her hospital room's walls. Her walls within his arms' reach are covered in taped up crayon drawings.

On Thursday night, when he and I left for the last time, she hugged him as best she could as he sat beside her in the bed. He probably won't see her alive again, and there is something beautiful in his drawings he created for her that are exactly like the drawings he creates for us on any other weekend: there's a consistency that can't be touched by sickness or death and a constant renewal of joy in simple creation. It won't last in him or in anyone else, but it will never go out of this world.