lola

my grandma is a baby, a baby in her death. the baby of her death. the only living thing in her death. and the newest to it.

she’s wailing and crying. we’re all surprised she still has the strength to do it, and we’re all looking around at each other like where is this coming from? she can’t open her eyes anymore but she can cry all night.

my baby grandmother, she doesn’t want to be put down, she’s tightening her fist and latching on.

i see my grandma five times from last monday to this monday morning. in the afternoon i’m out of breath walking up the stairs, and i feel so tired that sleeping is exhausting. all my doors were open was why. my eyes and ears, my nose, etc. i don’t know how to shut them to her so i’ve been hanging open and every thing in her has been entering me, breath, labor, moans and tears, all passing through into the exhausted room of my self.

i consult a wise man this evening, and he says says lola, it is possible she is hanging on to you for dear life, and that this literal. because im living and im also sort of her, and her instincts are kicking in now. he says it’s probably best if you tell her to let go of you. i say i just saw my grandma today and i wont see her again until maybe tomorrow, so when can i do this. he says you don’t need to be with her to tell her, you can still say it.

so i am whispering into my hands please let go of me, i can’t keep you alive, please let go of me now, please don’t hang on me.

then three hours later the nurses call us and say okay it’s really really happening now, and the rattled breathing has started.

well she listened to me, i know she did, the next day i felt my self as a person full of moving blood walking around again. but she’s still super stubborn. we all thought it was going to happen yesterday night but it didn’t. she just does not want to go down.

because down to what? to sleep? no. down for how long? exactly. she doesn’t know so she doesn’t want to go at all. i go to sleep picturing her in her death bed crib, wondering if she dreaming yet, or still, or however this works, whether death comes once you start dreaming or stop.

so it’s the next morning my grandma is alive. i think because she still has a lot to do.

my grandma’s life is laying scattered in front of her. she’s her tired baby self sitting across abc blocks on the carpet. how many blocks are there to go from baby to matriarch. i think my grandma is trying to see for her self if she ever could have reached it. manically picking up the blocks she was given to build her life with and stacking them as they topple over, and over and over because gravity keeps happening. my grandma is wailing through the night because how unfair is this, to be a tired baby terrorized by a big invisible immovable force that is so neutral about her mission upwards.

no i don’t know any of it is this way for sure. but back when my grandma was still opening her eyes, i saw this i-can’t-help-anything plea in them, and the puppy dog way her eyebrows were pressing against her forehead. and her lips, which are my lips, quivering.

i wish i could write the timeline better but there is no time. im in the desert of a soul over here. i don’t know what’s going on, there are just long stretches, and then something happens, something is revealed, and then something else happens, and what happened before it is all swept. in the desert, time is wind, and it brings in every thing as it erases every trace of every thing also.

but then whatever, i know what’s going on right now, which is that i am continuing with talking to my grandma over the phones. the phones that i use are the nurses’ iphones and my hands, because those are apparently also a phone.

i call her via the nurses and they prop me up against her ear. i confess something sort of. when i say the thing, she moans.

then i am pacing the living room and asking liv do i call her again, do i call her again, should i call her again, one more time before she goes, or was that enough? on what note did i end this on? on what note can i? of course no one can answer these things for you. so i call her again and i say goodbye again.

when she is still still not gone in the morning, i call her via the nurses again, to say good morning. while she is still not not alive, it feels like a kindness to say something normal to her, words she’s used to hearing.

then i call her at night, this time via my hands, i say i’ll keep my hand open for her, i say i’m going to sleep with one palm up. in case you need to find me….

the next morning it’s 10am ish and i tell liv how she’s still alive and i don’t want her to go any where apart from us or me, but i also do wish she would just go, i wish she would just let go now. and then i check my phone, and i see a text that she has.

i go to her with my dad and my mom. i don’t look at her and i don’t touch her, i can’t, until i do. she is still and a little yellow. it’s odd. she’s very old and in a new way. my grandpa will not wheel himself out of the living room where my grandma is. then people come, they say she looks peaceful, and they take her away. my mom is unsure about the peaceful part. my dad and i are thinking what is it like to be those people with these day jobs. they are probably like. going on lunch after this.

one week later, i’m standing in front of my family and a zoom call of some of her old friends, and i am trying to say something about her, but i can’t, so i cry. roxy comes up to stand by me during this. i’m crying up there in front of every one and it’s annoying me because i wish i could just speak. finally i say some words and sit down.

my mom and my mom’s friend tell me after that what i said was beautiful. i said up there that my grandma took me and gemma to tj-max when we were in fifth grade and let us both buy whatever she wanted. maybe i said more, i forget it.

then it is weeks later and my mom can’t pick up the ashes alone and i am going with her. i text pearl from the crematorium a picture of the urns on display. there are seagulls printed on all of them. there is cursive font pic-collaged over it and it says going home. pearl and i text a little bit about this.

then my mom says she can’t hold the cardboard box containing the urn with my grandma’s ashes plastic-wrapped inside, so i am holding it.

i carry her in my arms. i carry my entire grandma in my arms. i prop her on my hip to get one hand free, like a mother holding a baby, and i open the car door with my free hand in a super competent motherly way, and i sit down, and i sit her on my lap, this vibrating cardboard box on my thighs. then i am laughing, because it’s so strange, the feeling. my mom is surprised i’m laughing, so she’s laughing.

and then i see clearly my grandma laughing, clapping her hands together. that’s soooo twisted!!!! she says. she had a good sense of inappropriate and dark humor. the scene of me holding her at my hip and on my lap would have cracked her up. when this occurs to me, i begin to cry.

there is a 15 minute drive from the crematorium to the table in my grandpa’s room where my grandma will stay, and during this drive, my mom and i go silent, and i go into the space between the box and my self, and my crying eyes are out the window, the colors outside are looking so vibrant.

and now it is just sort of

why isn’t she sending me some sort of signal telling me she’s okay now, and that she can still hear and see me, and is nearby to report back to when i do things like go on a date. when she was so afraid and inconsolable, i promised her there would be a moment that would happen, where i’d be looking up, and she’d be looking down, and i’d be going told you so. i told her before she went to send me something from her travels so i know she arrived. she has not sent the thing yet.

sometimes i am half-awake in the morning or at night and i feel my grandma at my foot, by my hand, in the open shapes around me, watching me rest. i’m never discounting the possibility that this feeling really is her here with me, but also. i sort of feel that most of her is back somewhere else. i’m not so sure it was ever my grandma’s will to be an ancestor.

my grandma spent her time here aching, and i feel that the call of that ache is where she is now, back in some gorgeous womb, where she is being helped all over. i like this idea so i’m keeping it with me.

i miss her, i miss her so much, i miss her a lot a lot, that’s sort of it. she was always happy to see me. she would have fake nails that would clack on things. she’d pet me on the head like i was a cat, she’d do it so lightly she was almost hovering, it gave me the shivers. i never felt safe when she drove me in the car. she was very insistent on us all understanding how misunderstood she was. we all tried to assure her we did. she was a dramatic and contradictory person and this both devastated and comforted her about her self.

i love my grandma and i miss her, and i wish i could see her again. if she could read this she’d say it’s veryyyyyy deep. veeerrry insightful….. she would say that regardless of if it is or isn’t. she would say loooooolla….. wheeeere do you get these ideeeeas…… then she would probably ask me something like am i a depressive. and then we would laugh.