My grandma always knocked on my door before school, to make sure I was awake. It was very considerate of her, since I wasn’t the very best about getting up until my junior year of high school; which was last year. She stopped knocking when she was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of fall in 2021, since she had so much trouble going up and down the stairs at that point. With the development of her cancer, I felt alone upstairs, being as my room was right next to hers. Recently, I heard her classic “knock knock knock-knock knock” and I answered with my own “knock knock” absent-mindedly.

She’s been dead since January.