This morning as I sat down to breakfast I got a text from my cousin: our grandma is on her deathbed and doesn’t have much time. Suddenly my veggie benedict felt obscene; I still haven’t finished breakfast.
My initial reaction was that I’d be right there to say goodbye, but the more time I had to think about it the less I wanted to go. I’d walk through the door into a house that used to feel like a nest but that I would no longer recognize, then I’d walk down a hall into my grandma’s bedroom where she wouldn’t be cheerfully folding and ironing my grandpa’s clothes, but breathing her last breaths.
I decided I’d rather hold on to my childhood memories in a vivid way and not diminish them by undoing all that I remember, because I don’t remember much.
I’ll go back home for the funeral. I’m not going to go home for this.
I’ve spent the rest of the day trying to untangle this knot that’s taken up residence in the depths of my torso. My wife keeps asking how I’m doing and I keep saying, honestly, for once, “I don’t know.”
I’m sad, yes, but I also feel defeated. Yes I want to cry, but I also feel that thirteen-year old me climbing up those knots in my chest, searching for an escape and wanting nothing more than to run. To choke me as she exits my throat, sees the daylight, declares her freedom and runs, but doesn’t know what she’s running away from or running towards and, besides, her lungs are my lungs and it’s exhausting to even think of allowing her to run so far.
So for now she’s leaning against my heart and demanding answers and I wan’t to tell her that she has to quit leaning like that into my chest but I also don’t have the heart to tell her that in 27 years from now she’ll still be in the dark.
So I let her persist.