e watched game shows together—Supermarket Sweep, The Price is Right, Press Your Luck. Grandma sat at the head of the table, facing the television. I sat opposite her, twisting around in my chair to watch the programs. She coughed much more than we spoke. It was a pestilent, painful thing, that cough of hers, much less pleasant than her rhythmic wheezes.

Her house had two family rooms. The cleaner, nicer room was called “the living room” and had a newer TV and a second couch. Hers, adjacent to the kitchen, was called “the den.” Grandma was always in her den, sitting at a cluttered kitchen table. Everything she needed was in arm’s reach from her seat at the back of the room: newspapers, romance novels, three boxes of tissues, two pads of stationary, ashtrays, reading glasses, lighters, remote control. We kept one little spot clean for me at the far end, which contained my own doodling notebook and whatever books I was currently reading. The tablecloth was littered with tiny round burns that revealed the pale wood underneath. I would wiggle my pinky in them when bored.

In the commercials between every show, Grandma would ask me to turn off the Machine. The Machine was a medical device that forced air into her remaining lung. It filtered regular air through distilled water, sending it down a hose into her nostrils. Naturally, she could not have a burning cinder next to pure oxygen, so she could never be using the Machine and smoking at the same time.

I never thought that I was helping Grandma die; this was my ritual, my game. I would leap from my chair and sprint down the long hallway to her bedroom, hurdling over her hose on the way. Pausing at her door, I would take a deep breath to see if I could make it in and out with one go. If my lungs did not hold out, I knew I would breathe the poisoned gas, as deadly as wood chip lava. Though unpleasant, the odor was familiar. It still is. Loving Grandma acclimated me to the stale scent of cheap perfume, nicotine sweat, and white zinfandel urine.

Grandma’s room turned every white into a yellow. The walls were stained yellow from her cigarettes. Her dried tissues were yellow with phlegm. Yellow discarded cotton underwear sat on yellowing berber carpet while yellow butts overflowed from her ashtray. Next to them, a yellow set of false teeth floated in yellowed water. Yellow curtains filtered yellow sunlight onto black-and-yellow war photos of my late Grandpa Ted.

Darting inside, I would turn left toward the oxygen machine in the corner. It was my own personal science fiction prop, complete with hoses and jars and a small, no-nonsense black switch labeled “on.” It sat next to the wall sharing my own bedroom, and her fragile house did little to mask its beautifully technological sound effects. Its three cycles came at varying pitches: one the medium, electric hum of a plastic fan; then the low gurgling of water being sucked through a plastic pipe; and the last high yet shrill, the sound of purified air being pushed up her nose. Each lasted two seconds, and the endlessly precise rhythm sang me to sleep like a mechanical lullaby.

Twice a day, Grandma would send me to get another pack from her drawer in the kitchen. This trip was most fun with socks on, as she had the slipperiest linoleum floor. Like a race car I would take the corner around the countertop with a daring slide. If I was lucky, the drawer would be empty, and I would get the task of opening another carton for her. This was also a fun game, made more precious by its rarity. I would sit cross-legged on the floor, delicately peeling away the corners of the box, trying not to create any trash. If done properly, the carton opened like an oversized pack of cigarettes, fitting snugly into its place. I hated the way Mom did it, and would sometimes correct her technique. She ripped the cardboard from the first corner she could grab, dumping the shiny packs unceremoniously into the drawer. I was used to this, of course. Mom rarely understood my favorite games.

The smell of the cigarette smoke was a pleasantly familiar one. I enjoyed looking at it too, in Dad’s bars as well as Grandma’s den. When the weather was cool, it would drift slowly over my head, sauntering over to her heavy oak desk with its envelopes, stationary, and dried tissues. In summer, the fan would be on, and the smoke would leap from her mouth and skip like rocks off her table.

When she had finished a cigarette or two, she would send me to turn the machine back on. She’d usually cough for a few minutes, but I never worried. Time was still new to me then. I knew Grandma would always cough.