First Memory

The first thing that I can truly remember comes to me perhaps because I felt, even then, at the beginning of my life, that I was witness to a powerfully emotional moment for those who I knew were closest to me. I too, then, was struck by this defining moment of life.
My parents, brother, and I along with an older man I knew only slightly, who would later become my grandfather, stood around a large bed in a white room. Dark colored furniture was scattered throughout the room, and I remember wondering why the bed was metal rather than wood like the rest of the room. I remeber sitting in my mother's lap as she looked lovingly at the person in the bed, who I would later learn was my grandmother. I remember that she wore a torquoise cap, though at the time I did not know the color. The cap hid the fact that she no longer had any hair.
In many ways I can only remember the few happy moments in an otherwise sad day. What I did not know was that this was the last time I would see my grandmother alive. Perhaps it is strange that my first memory is plagued with sadness, but I look at it in a different light, as the only chance that I would really have to remember my mother's mother, and it is a gift that I would never give up.