![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
GRANDMA DEAD SAD
Oct. 15th, 2006 12:59 pmThis morning I woke up to the sound of my mom talking on the phone about me. Well the last year he was in school he was very focused on his schoolwork. He did not seem very happy…there were times when he seemed relaxed. It’s been hard sometimes because he’s not like Kyle, who always has everything out there on his sleeve. She paused. When she started talking again, her voice was choked and wet. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Even my sister, who adores him when she came up here for business—she’s very talkative, she said she tried and she just had to give up! There was nothing there. And Howie’s mother, who has always been a very good listener, she’s said the same thing. Outside, a truck drove by. I waited. She had done with me and was talking about my grandmother, who we knew it was coming for, who got what she wanted. She hung up suddenly, like the person on the other end had said suddenly, apologetically, that they had to go. The baby just fell down the stairs, or the pie was burning. I don’t know who she was talking to.
My dad is always leaving doors open. If there is a door to be opened and left, he will do it. Any type of door, without regard to consequences. Car doors, cupboard doors, microwave and refrigerator doors, doors to hearts and minds. We have returned from vacation to find the front door wide open, our trusting mouth. We know that it is always his work, his blame. Anyone could just walk right in.
There was, in fact, a terse message. Time becomes a thing, so we leave at night. It isn’t preferred. Out of the airport’s dark click, we jump into bright, soft morning. The sun rises, big as it wants, loving itself. How dare it. I can’t stop looking for meaning in everything. In California, the hot air feels like an emotion.
Everything is a process of affirmation. Yes, we are those letters, that picture. Yes, we want a mid-size sport-utility vehicle, yes all our luggage will fit in the trunk. Yes, my aunt is liable for any damages incurred to the vehicle while it is in our care, yes, we are visitors for room 414, here to see Rose Mauel. Yes we flew in this morning, yes we are tired. Yes we yes we yes. And we did all this at last, and turned the purple corner, and there she lay like a valley. A small rock slipped out between my ribs and cracked. It was not repairable, or didn’t seem so at first. Everyone’s hands, even hers, everyone’s eyes, everyone’s chins. All the wet noise. Her face had changed, near death. You have to give up too much to get that close to death, there’s no coming back the same. I could smell it. Her eyes were shut, the lids covering nothing underneath, sheets over stones. Tubes in her nose. And, Lady Mauel, her mouth. Oh sad state. It sank into her face. All the living water had drained out of her lips, but more than that even, out of all the skin around her lips, the upper lip that is kept stiff, the lower lip that trembles, gone. It wasn’t a mouth. It was a void. For all its expressive power, a mouth is just a void. For all we maintain and stuff them, just voids, waiting for the structure to collapse and show themselves, to be unfillable, to gape, and empty themselves of even air. She was on morphine, it was said, an ancient curious drug. We all moved slowly, chins and hands and eyes, toward her like wraiths. My aunt said oh little mama, little mama. I could feel the pink coming off my dad, his incredible heat, his warm water. My mom and I, straw and heavy sand. Eventually we became used to it. We sat by her side. My mom had secretly brought pictures from home, one of my grandmother and me, she seated in purple, handing me a red carnation. Me, looking down, when I still had white hair and blood lips, looking like it could not possibly be imagined what I would grow up into. The other picture was of my grandmother and her sister, sitting on a couch. They look like large sated cats. My grandmother is wearing a square on her head. It must be a hat, although to all appearances it defies categorization as clothing, or even a wearable thing. We spread an afghan made by my grandmother's mother over the bed, lurid zigzags of two browns and a sea green. The blanket must be a hundred years old my aunt said, due to its provenance. It is so ugly, and I like it because it doesn't give a fuck. It is what it wants, its clash and its ruined possibility, less than the whole its parts should have become. And I love the history of people I never knew, and it must be at least a hundred years old. I meant to take it when we left, but my graspy California aunt, my mom's older sister, the middle one, took it.
At the hospital, I read 3/4 of a book my graspy aunt brought. It is called Kafka on the Shore, translated from Japanese. My aunt called it "different." It's weird, isn't it, but good? Her book club read it. My grandmother breathed once very fifteen seconds. We timed it. It was due to the morphine, we were told. It eases you, and slows you down. Her breathing didn't sound easy. It sounded like a small child's indignant huffing, loose lipped and heavy. My mom began to obsess over how much my grandmother hated medicine. She would not have wanted to be put on the morphine, she said. She never took medicine in her life, and was sensitive to it. Even when anyone else would have taken two aspirin or three, she took one half. Maybe! If that. She was not in pain, she had never had pain, she said. Didn't they say that when she had come in to the hospital, she had been feeling poorly, but not in any pain. The doctors and my graspy aunt said it was a precaution, to make sure that she passed peacefully. We had her taken off it. Her breathing increased in rapidity and decreased in depth. We were told to watch her brow, to see if it furrowed, and to see if she grimaced. That would mean she had pain. She was not receiving any nutrients. The one time I was alone in the room with her, I put my hand on her hand, her same hand that had not changed. It looked like it could wake up at any moment and crochet a blanket, wave goodbye to a departing car, keep accounts. I sang Hope There's Someone because it was sad and fitting, Crying in the Chapel because it was stuck in my head, and The Mind That Knows Itself because it came to mind. She had entered the hospital on Tuesday morning. It was Thursday night.
On Wednesday, my mom and aunt had spent the night in the hospital room, my mom on the extra bed in the room, my aunt on a cot they brought for her, which she called a "torture chamber." My dad and I slept at the hotel. The next night, as it was nearing ten, we all left. Nobody stayed, nobody has to, and we were too tired. She died during the night. So we were called, and came back, too little too late, walked up and in, and though nothing seemed different, cried and said goodbye. It was what was done. It is what people do. I felt that it was the start of my whole long life, my long life of people dropping out of it. Second verse, same as the first.
My dad is always leaving doors open. If there is a door to be opened and left, he will do it. Any type of door, without regard to consequences. Car doors, cupboard doors, microwave and refrigerator doors, doors to hearts and minds. We have returned from vacation to find the front door wide open, our trusting mouth. We know that it is always his work, his blame. Anyone could just walk right in.
There was, in fact, a terse message. Time becomes a thing, so we leave at night. It isn’t preferred. Out of the airport’s dark click, we jump into bright, soft morning. The sun rises, big as it wants, loving itself. How dare it. I can’t stop looking for meaning in everything. In California, the hot air feels like an emotion.
Everything is a process of affirmation. Yes, we are those letters, that picture. Yes, we want a mid-size sport-utility vehicle, yes all our luggage will fit in the trunk. Yes, my aunt is liable for any damages incurred to the vehicle while it is in our care, yes, we are visitors for room 414, here to see Rose Mauel. Yes we flew in this morning, yes we are tired. Yes we yes we yes. And we did all this at last, and turned the purple corner, and there she lay like a valley. A small rock slipped out between my ribs and cracked. It was not repairable, or didn’t seem so at first. Everyone’s hands, even hers, everyone’s eyes, everyone’s chins. All the wet noise. Her face had changed, near death. You have to give up too much to get that close to death, there’s no coming back the same. I could smell it. Her eyes were shut, the lids covering nothing underneath, sheets over stones. Tubes in her nose. And, Lady Mauel, her mouth. Oh sad state. It sank into her face. All the living water had drained out of her lips, but more than that even, out of all the skin around her lips, the upper lip that is kept stiff, the lower lip that trembles, gone. It wasn’t a mouth. It was a void. For all its expressive power, a mouth is just a void. For all we maintain and stuff them, just voids, waiting for the structure to collapse and show themselves, to be unfillable, to gape, and empty themselves of even air. She was on morphine, it was said, an ancient curious drug. We all moved slowly, chins and hands and eyes, toward her like wraiths. My aunt said oh little mama, little mama. I could feel the pink coming off my dad, his incredible heat, his warm water. My mom and I, straw and heavy sand. Eventually we became used to it. We sat by her side. My mom had secretly brought pictures from home, one of my grandmother and me, she seated in purple, handing me a red carnation. Me, looking down, when I still had white hair and blood lips, looking like it could not possibly be imagined what I would grow up into. The other picture was of my grandmother and her sister, sitting on a couch. They look like large sated cats. My grandmother is wearing a square on her head. It must be a hat, although to all appearances it defies categorization as clothing, or even a wearable thing. We spread an afghan made by my grandmother's mother over the bed, lurid zigzags of two browns and a sea green. The blanket must be a hundred years old my aunt said, due to its provenance. It is so ugly, and I like it because it doesn't give a fuck. It is what it wants, its clash and its ruined possibility, less than the whole its parts should have become. And I love the history of people I never knew, and it must be at least a hundred years old. I meant to take it when we left, but my graspy California aunt, my mom's older sister, the middle one, took it.
At the hospital, I read 3/4 of a book my graspy aunt brought. It is called Kafka on the Shore, translated from Japanese. My aunt called it "different." It's weird, isn't it, but good? Her book club read it. My grandmother breathed once very fifteen seconds. We timed it. It was due to the morphine, we were told. It eases you, and slows you down. Her breathing didn't sound easy. It sounded like a small child's indignant huffing, loose lipped and heavy. My mom began to obsess over how much my grandmother hated medicine. She would not have wanted to be put on the morphine, she said. She never took medicine in her life, and was sensitive to it. Even when anyone else would have taken two aspirin or three, she took one half. Maybe! If that. She was not in pain, she had never had pain, she said. Didn't they say that when she had come in to the hospital, she had been feeling poorly, but not in any pain. The doctors and my graspy aunt said it was a precaution, to make sure that she passed peacefully. We had her taken off it. Her breathing increased in rapidity and decreased in depth. We were told to watch her brow, to see if it furrowed, and to see if she grimaced. That would mean she had pain. She was not receiving any nutrients. The one time I was alone in the room with her, I put my hand on her hand, her same hand that had not changed. It looked like it could wake up at any moment and crochet a blanket, wave goodbye to a departing car, keep accounts. I sang Hope There's Someone because it was sad and fitting, Crying in the Chapel because it was stuck in my head, and The Mind That Knows Itself because it came to mind. She had entered the hospital on Tuesday morning. It was Thursday night.
On Wednesday, my mom and aunt had spent the night in the hospital room, my mom on the extra bed in the room, my aunt on a cot they brought for her, which she called a "torture chamber." My dad and I slept at the hotel. The next night, as it was nearing ten, we all left. Nobody stayed, nobody has to, and we were too tired. She died during the night. So we were called, and came back, too little too late, walked up and in, and though nothing seemed different, cried and said goodbye. It was what was done. It is what people do. I felt that it was the start of my whole long life, my long life of people dropping out of it. Second verse, same as the first.
