Grandmother
She had dark hair, dark eyes, strong nose. Like my father, like my sister. In her youth she was spry and mobile. She rode motorcycles with her husband and posed for photos seen years later framed in colorless, dazed remembrance when clearing out her house. But I only remember her sitting or wobbling precipitously on her walker. Sitting in her home, her room padded with a mountain of her possessions. Dressers and miscellaneous clothes and makeup kits. A large thermos atop a night stand beset by a litany of pill bottles in various sizes.
She pulled me near, hand in my hand. Her old skin a cellophane husk pulled too loose in some places and too tight in others. Over the fingers and knuckles like knobby roots. Mulberry veins so distended and raised it looked as though they were scarcely connected to her body, like a detachable apparatus of tubing that laid just on the surface of her arms. She wore thick makeup, a cosmetic disguise that rubbed blush on the bedspread and her purple blouse. Dyed hair, dyed black. Imitations of youth.
There was an orderly who provided her care in one of the hospice facilities she stayed in. A nurse, a male nurse from Africa. An immigrant come here to support a family he couldn't be with. Half of his income, maybe more, sent to them in solidarity and promise that one day they could escape whatever squalor they endured and join him in this great and unified land of opportunity. A man who cleaned the bedpans of the elderly and the diseased; a man of sacrifice. Dad cut him a check. A silver lining to this prolonged gloom. Inch by inch taken over years, years rather than the months she was guaranteed. But she had strong legs and a stout heart. Once she was tall like her brothers, like her granddaughter.
She was called grandmother. Not granny, not grandma. Grandmother. The full title with all its syllables and connotations. A real matriarch like the glue holding together the sons and daughters, the children and their children's children. Now that figurehead is gone and the yoke is fractured and tenuous. Gatherings cloistered only to Thanksgiving, to Christmas. Old faces in an old house full of memories and pin pricks. Things unsaid. We should get together more often.
Glitter on the ceiling. An old Cadillac in the back like an armored war ship in repose. A weathered antique violin in a glass box that belonged to an ancestor. Little ceramic cottage houses that light up when you plug them in. A behemoth of an old stereo radio standing rib high and as big as a chest of drawers with dials and a honey comb speaker. All sold, auctioned, and divvied up. Some kept as memorial totems as though an element of her soul was imbued in them. Skin cells in dust particles and oil from her hands soaked in the wood furnishing.
She was buried by her daughter and husband and other members of her maiden household in the yard and funeral home too often visited. In the winter cold. Christmas time. The lapel of my coat folded in, flowers in my hand and cousins at my side. My dog lost and mourned a week or two prior. Cried for him but not for her. A strange detachment from it, a shameful boredom. All day spent in the kitchen with the perennial fried chicken and cold cut platters and the bathroom and hallways and chamber where her body was displayed. In my black suit. She died spitting up blood in the hospital bed. I was not there. So entitled, so spoiled. I did not grieve for her, not really. The sting of the absence on my skin, in my brain, but not pierced to my insides. I should have. I do now.
She pulled me near, hand in my hand. Her old skin a cellophane husk pulled too loose in some places and too tight in others. Over the fingers and knuckles like knobby roots. Mulberry veins so distended and raised it looked as though they were scarcely connected to her body, like a detachable apparatus of tubing that laid just on the surface of her arms. She wore thick makeup, a cosmetic disguise that rubbed blush on the bedspread and her purple blouse. Dyed hair, dyed black. Imitations of youth.
There was an orderly who provided her care in one of the hospice facilities she stayed in. A nurse, a male nurse from Africa. An immigrant come here to support a family he couldn't be with. Half of his income, maybe more, sent to them in solidarity and promise that one day they could escape whatever squalor they endured and join him in this great and unified land of opportunity. A man who cleaned the bedpans of the elderly and the diseased; a man of sacrifice. Dad cut him a check. A silver lining to this prolonged gloom. Inch by inch taken over years, years rather than the months she was guaranteed. But she had strong legs and a stout heart. Once she was tall like her brothers, like her granddaughter.
She was called grandmother. Not granny, not grandma. Grandmother. The full title with all its syllables and connotations. A real matriarch like the glue holding together the sons and daughters, the children and their children's children. Now that figurehead is gone and the yoke is fractured and tenuous. Gatherings cloistered only to Thanksgiving, to Christmas. Old faces in an old house full of memories and pin pricks. Things unsaid. We should get together more often.
Glitter on the ceiling. An old Cadillac in the back like an armored war ship in repose. A weathered antique violin in a glass box that belonged to an ancestor. Little ceramic cottage houses that light up when you plug them in. A behemoth of an old stereo radio standing rib high and as big as a chest of drawers with dials and a honey comb speaker. All sold, auctioned, and divvied up. Some kept as memorial totems as though an element of her soul was imbued in them. Skin cells in dust particles and oil from her hands soaked in the wood furnishing.
She was buried by her daughter and husband and other members of her maiden household in the yard and funeral home too often visited. In the winter cold. Christmas time. The lapel of my coat folded in, flowers in my hand and cousins at my side. My dog lost and mourned a week or two prior. Cried for him but not for her. A strange detachment from it, a shameful boredom. All day spent in the kitchen with the perennial fried chicken and cold cut platters and the bathroom and hallways and chamber where her body was displayed. In my black suit. She died spitting up blood in the hospital bed. I was not there. So entitled, so spoiled. I did not grieve for her, not really. The sting of the absence on my skin, in my brain, but not pierced to my insides. I should have. I do now.
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