mother's day

my grandma has been in a nursing home for like five or six years.  those are the saddest places I can think of.  that's where old people go do die alone slowly.  just the thought of one starts getting me depressed.  granted, some patients - I guess you would call them - have a spouse there, and some have family members who visit them often, so maybe it's not too bad.  but some have degenerative diseases like my grandmother, who has Parkinson's.  her lot in life is to die slowly, staring at the white ceiling above her sterile bed sheets and shaking.  

I can sort of remember her walking around about fifteen years ago, her in a wheelchair about ten years ago, and the rest of my memories of her in this hospital bed.  I think my grandpa - "Nanu," as we call him - tried to feed her for a while, but her masseter muscles and swallowing reflex gave out, so that was the last food she will ever eat.  she was given a feeding tube that drips nutrients into her stomach to keep this whole thing going, dragging on and on.  for a while last year they thought she had pneumonia.  I remember going to visit her once and hearing her bubbly cough, which was really no more than an audible exhaling - that was all her frail body was capable of.  luckily though it wasn't pneumonia.  eventually the nurses there figured out that the feeding drip was going too fast, which caused her stomach filled up completely with the brown liquid that's her breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert; then it filled her esophagus; then after that it had nowhere to go but down her trachea and into her lungs.  she was being drowned by the one thing keeping her alive.  

I used to go with my parents and brother to visit her, but every time I'd get sick of the place after ten minutes.  the walls secrete death and it permeates my skin.  I'll endure it for a little bit, for as long as I can, because she needs to see people.  she needs to know we still love her.  but after not too long I start to die too, so I have to leave.  I would end up mumbling to my mom just loud enough for her to hear but not loud enough for Nanu's hearing aid to pick up, "let's go."  she'd give a nod and mouth, "Ok," then look back at her mother, stroking her skinny arm.  it looked like a piece of chicken that was in the freezer too long, with the skin stretched tight over the bones, and it was pulsing regularly twice a second with involuntary contractions.  my mom was touching it and looking into my grandma's pale blue eyes and said with no false sincerity, "I love you mom.  I love you."  with her other hand she stroked the hair that was turned gray and thin and straw-like.  my mom smiled genuinely, and my grandma stared back with her mouth hanging open to one side and her body shaking gently.  the part that makes me want to cry is that I know my mom sees her mother not as the fragile, bed-ridden ruin of what she once was, but as the beautiful, middle-aged woman she was thirty years ago, and my grandma can just stare back and know what she's thinking and shake.

once I got my license, I would stop by every now and then when I was driving home from Parkway.  the home is on Magnolia, so I'd feel bad driving by and not stopping.  the first time Nanu was surprised and asked, "you came by yourself?"  I talked with him awhile, about school and college plans and life and such.  I would give him enough of my attention to show I was listening, but I would be looking into my grandma's blue eyes because I knew she could hear me.  they were fixed dead into mine.  they followed me.  I like to think it's because she was thinking "he understands.  he knows I am trapped.  he knows I don't want to be here.  all I need is to watch him talk to my husband.  that's all he needs to do to make this moment great."  her blue eyes followed me right out the door of her room each time I left.  after a while, I would be driving up Magnolia on my way home, but I couldn't bring myself to stop.  I couldn't handle it.  I would keep driving straight.  it's so fucking draining seeing that, seeing her still there.  I swear it sucks life out of me.  her in that bed is a fucking black hole of death, but thanks to the machines my Nanu insists on keeping her plugged into, she clings to life indefinitely.  every morning when the home opens, he shows up to be by her bedside, and he stays til closing time.  every fucking god damn day.  he loves her and insists she'll get better, that there might be a miracle and she'll get better.  he loves his wife too much to let her go and he's killing me.

I just woke up from a terrible dream.  my grandma was dead.  my dad was sitting, I was standing to his right.  it was evening and I don't know where we were, but we were outside and things around us were dark and indistinct.  he turned to me and asked, "are you ok?"  I nodded at first, thinking I was.  but before I finished nodding, I thought about how many years she was staring at that god damn ceiling while I was thinking I was busy with self-imposed obligations, so I drove past her nursing home countless times because I'd rather listen to my new cds than brighten her day and say hello.  I started crying softly at first, then I lost control and I was sobbing.  I turned and walked away into the night saying between sobs, "Grandma!?  Grandma!?" expecting to see her ghost appear and tell me it's ok, she understood I was young and I had to live my life.  but she didn't appear.  it hit me... she is gone.  I had my chance to show her I love her, and now that time is over.  it's too late.

I woke up and realized it was a horrible dream.  but even worse, she's still alive.