Rice ecru fuck

She's slipping further away. She still knows me, thank god, but her level of confusion is increasing and she vacillates between irritation and apathy. Today's visit was typical of most, we played cards, she ate some of the snacks I brought her, repeatedly asked me to turn off her bedside lamp (her electrical bill was very high she said) and told me in detail about the large animals that jump from tree to tree. She was so gentle when describing them, these imaginary creatures that are alive only in her mind. She was almost peaceful.

I discovered shortly after arriving in her room today that her wheelchair wasn't working. The wheels were stuck. I asked her to sit on the bed and I got a nurse and explained the problem. No, she said, it's fine. No, I insisted, it is not fine, come see. I had dragged the wheelchair into the hallway so as not to upset my grandmother. After a brief back and forth with two nurse it was agreed that she indeed did need a new chair. They said a request had to be put in with PT. That sounded like it would take awhile. I really need her to have a new chair before I leave, I said. I can't have her stuck in her room.

We finished our card game just shy of 11:00 and I knew I had to leave soon and still, no sign of the new chair. I told my grandma I'd be right back and marched down to the nurses station. I was fully prepared to do my best Shirley MacLaine-Terms of Endearment melt down. The nurse who I had spoken to earlier saw me and I think could tell I meant business. Before I could launch into my tirade she said she'd be right down to my grandma's room with a chair. 

Five minutes later I was pushing her down the hall in a loaner chair towards the elevator which would take us to the second floor where Sunday word games were taking place. When we got there the word 'Firetruck' was printed on the large dry erase board and the residents were trying to see how many words they could make from the letters in the word. There was a large list already started and my grandma wasted no time shouting out "rice", "truce", and "ecru". I was so proud of her. And also silently praying that she would not yell out "fuck", as that was the first word my mind made.

When it was time to leave, always sooner than I wanted to, always feeling guilty, I leaned over and gave her a kiss and promised I'd be back soon. No matter how often I visit, it never feels like enough. 

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Ralph

When I was eleven years old, my grandfather died. I knew it was coming. My grandparents had built a house in Florida and the previous fall they drove down there from New York to spend their first season as 'snow birds'. My grandfather's sister and a close friend of theirs, who before moving to Florida had run a hot dog truck in town, had all moved to a small town called Spring Hill. It seemed to be filled with a lot of Irish and Italian New York transplants.

When they left I cried. My insomnia started. I used to sit in class and count down how many hours were left til I had to go to bed. The same year my grandparents left for Florida, my brother left for military school. I was suddenly very alone. I had shared so many meals with them, watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and Mash many nights. One afternoon my grandfather left his spot in the sun resting against the stone wall and sat in my grandparents Cadillac, he in the drivers seat, me the passenger. It had been years since he'd driven. We pretended we were going down to the  Jersey shore to go fishing and eat pizza. It is my favorite memory of him.

I took a trip to visit them with my aunt and uncle and my cousins for Christmas break. I snuck into bed with them in the morning and soaked in the smell of their sheets, so familiar, something I'd missed so much. When I moved to Brooklyn my grandmother gave me a stack of linen that she no longer needed. They all smelled like her, her house, her tidy little linen closet off the bathroom, a mix of Ivory soap and moth balls. I still have some pillowcases from her, but the smell is long gone. We took my grandfather to the beach when we were there and he sat on a bench, unable to move very well. I had never known him to be healthy. He had open heart surgey in 1976 and I was born in 1980. It seems like my whole life he was dying. But I guess we all are, in our own way.

I returned to Florida four months later for Easter break, this time alone. I spent ten days with them, eating and finding lizards in their back yard and watching him for clues. On the day before I was supposed to leave we were in the garage that connected to the house. He fell back against the door and it closed. My grandmother was on the other side of the door telling me to open it, to pick him up. I was eleven and not unusually strong and I was terrified I might not be able to move him. I managed to help him up and my grandma opened the door and we all went back inside.

I returned home the next day and sat on my bed with my mother beside me and I cried. I told her he was so much worse than when I had seen him for Christmas, I told her I thought he was going to die.

My grandparents flew home the next week and two days later my mom and I were sitting at our kitchen table having dinner and my mom got a call. He was in the hospital, she should come now. She called me from the hospital and let me know he had died, less than two weeks after I told her he would. I told her I needed to go to my grandma's house, I had to sleep with her, on his side of the bed, so she would not be alone. She agreed and came home from the hospital and drove me over there. I slept next to her that first night, holding her hand, protecting her.

I look at her now, diminished, broken down, confused, and I feel terrible, like I should be protecting her again. Like I have failed her. My eleven year old self would be shocked that I allowed her to be put in a nursing home. It was never my plan and yet here we are.

Good night, sleep tight

She was always a creature of habit, a fact I found both comforting and anxiety producing. Meals were served at the same time every day. Breakfast was at 8:00, and if, as was often the case, I had slept over, we would decide the menu the night before. Waffles, scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, cold cereal, half a grapefruit. These were all options. She would sit perched on the edge of my bed, covered with a quilt she had made herself with scraps of Pendleton wool, and ask me, so what's the menu? It was a fun game and one I never tired of.

Lunch was served at exactly noon, when the siren in town went off. If I was playing at the neighbors house this was the sound that let me know I had sixty seconds to run across the street to the mint green house my grandparents lived in and wash my hands, before I'd get in trouble. The mid-day meal varied more than any other. It ranged from cold cuts and fresh Italian bread purchased from Little Italy, the local shop in town that sold bread from Arthur Avenue and fresh mozzarella, to home made wedding soup with oyster crackers to cottage cheese and cantaloupe, a personal favorite of mine. My grandparents watched the Young and the Restless like it was their job, so lunch was always eaten and cleaned up completely by 12:30, as not to interrupt our viewing of the program.

Dinner was no less structured. Somewhere in their lives they had decided that 5:30 was the appropriate time for the dinner hour and they just stuck with that. The only exception would be Thanksgiving and Easter, both holidays that meals were serve at two. When I think of a dinner that my grandmother cooked, one always comes to mind. I don't think she cooked it more often than other meals, and yet this is the one that is seared in my brain. London broil with mashed potatoes and broccoli. She cooked the meat under the broiler and let it rest before slicing it on a wooden cutting board and transferring it to a platter. She'd put a few slices on my plate, with broccoli heavy on the garlic and a mountain of mashed potatoes with a little well of gravy in the middle. As a kid, that well of gravy was awesome. That she could do that was magical to me.

My visit today made me miss her, the old her that is almost lost to me now, and the new her, that still knows me and wants me to visit more. I promised her I would be back next week and described to her the snacks I would bring, much like when I was eight and she would sit on the edge of my bed and recite my breakfast options, night after night. And she would always say the same thing as she walked out the door, after planting a kiss on my forehead, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite."

It might have been

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”

― John Greenleaf Whittier

As I was driving up to my mom's house on Friday, this quote came into my head, while my constant companion napped in his car seat and Fleetwood Mac played softly in the background. It made me think of my grandmother, who I would visit later in the day, and if she had ever been truly happy in her life. It made me consider my life and decisions I've made. Am I following my dreams, I thought, as I drove north in the afternoon winter sun. My life now is so unrecognizable from what it was ten years ago, so much has happened, so many restaurants and babies and big decisions made. I know that I am happy now, but will I look back and have regrets? Did my grandmother?

She was moved to a private room on Friday and my mother and I both felt it was important to help her get settled in to her new room. It was much nicer than her old one, bigger and brighter and at the end of a quiet hallway. She seemed, if not happy, content with being moved. When her clothes were hung, her picture frames placed on her long windowsill, her calendar taped up, her big basket full of yarn placed next to one of the chairs and her bed perfectly made, topped with a handmade blanket from my aunt, we left. We rolled her down to the dining room for dinner and kissed her goodbye. I promised I'd come back tomorrow to play cards, which I did. Two days in a row. It was a lot of driving, but it was nice.

When the day comes that she is no longer here, I will have no regrets. There is nothing I haven't told her, no 'might have beens' for me and her. Our story has been a wonderful one, one I'm thankful to have been a part of.