A mark on the label

Writer's block has severely been a plague. For a while, I've tried to blame this on a change of career path, instead of working against The Man, I became The Man and the burden of proving I can be superwoman--upstanding citizen, supermom that volunteers at pre-school, yada-yada-yada--has stifled my creativity. This isn't true. This line of thought allows me to run from my true feelings and avoid writing about what I really feel.

When Treasure passed away, I spent weeks, months really, chain smoking and writing every thought that passed through my head. I have to admit, it helped me cope and allowed me to move on. With Grandma, its been a little different. There is a part of me that wants to think she's just on vacation, and will be back shortly. A normal part of grief, but a part I haven't been able to get past, which is holding me back. I don't think I'll ever get the writer creativity back, until I get it out. But, there is also a part of me, that little demon on my shoulder, telling me to move on without it. I know better.

I'll never get back the writing until I get the thoughts out that linger in the twilight as I try to push them back into the darkness. Anais Nin said that the role of the writer is not to say what we all feel, but to say what no one else can.

A year ago, I sat here in the morning, chatting on Facebook, with several friends...all of them telling me to stop putting off the inevitable and head to Arco. I had promised my cousin that I would come help her take care of my Grandmother, who, two days prior, had been sent home from the hospital to die.

Months before, I woke up from a dream of scrubbing Grandma's bathroom with Ajax (she always had Ajax by the sink) while she laid in a hospital bed in the middle of her living room, hooked up to a breathing machine that I could hear in the background as I scrubbed a yellow tub. I'm not normally a superstitious person, but that day as the dream resurfaced, there was something that told me Adrienne and I weren't just going to spend the night with Grandma in order to try on her shoes and tap-tap down the hall before we watched a scary movie and couldn't sleep all night.

I drank a pot of coffee before I showered, and another after. I chain smoked, even though that is the habit that killed my grandmother. I did not want to get in the car. I could see her bald head and blue eyes--eyes that were cloudy the last time I saw her, the time we sat and watched soccer (in Spanish--something that told me she was dying before anyone else seemed to grasp it) and she kept falling asleep and waking up and telling me not to leave.

I remember I packed pajamas (the ones from U of I, back when they actually made you show up on campus for three weeks a semester to get a degree and grandma paid the tuition and gas) and nothing else--clean underwear, and a toothbrush, only because I remembered her being mad I didn't rinse out the sink that one time.

I remember arriving. The terrified look in everyone's eyes they tried to cover with stoic strength--something severely lacking in our gene pool. Grandma's room was blue; the lamp on the dresser was on, giving everything a green hue with its yellow glow. I remember thinking about art classes in 4-H--yellow and blue make green; yellow and blue make green. I sent my sister across the street with a check for a double greyhound--then another.

Adrienne and I were able to get Grandma to take her medicine for the first time i two days. I cradled her bald head in my lap--I remember how fuzzy her head felt, and the look of recognition in her eyes when I asked her to take it, and how she opened her mouth for us after. We didn't turn on the T.V., and I don't know why.

We sat at the kitchen table, in semi-darkness, listening to her labored breathing through the baby monitor, listening to aunts and parents tell us what to do. It's all surreal now, "If she dies..." I remember, for the first time in my life, feeling like an actually grown-up and thinking, "I am going to be the one that tells my dad his mother died."

And it happened.

The evening waned into night.

Aunts and uncles came and went.

I learned from cousins ALL the uses of a toilet paper roll and a dryer sheet.

Then, everyone left. Adrienne went outside to smoke, and I went to the bathroom. I washed my hands and saw the Shalimar. I sprayed it on my wrist and inhaled as I heard the door open and Adrienne come back inside. We were getting ready for bed, and as she entered the bathroom and I left, I took deep note of the quiet, went to the kitchen sink and grabbed the Ajax from under it to scrub off the perfume.

I opened the bedroom door, and the labored breathing was gone. We felt for a pulse that wasn't there. And, we looked at each other in shock--I don't know what came over me, but calm was a part of it. Grandma's mouth was open, and we tried like hell to get it shut, then as bad as it is, we kinda got the giggles when Adrienne said, so matter of fact, "Well, we could tie it with a hanky," and we actually started to methodically look for one. Then we stopped, mid-step, looked at each other, reality hit, then shock. I remember wanting tears that would not come. She looked so much better, so much NOT in pain--out of the dark.

And, I called my dad. There is not strength enough in me to do it on my own, and I only know that God gave me words I do not remember.

I remember sitting in the chair by the bed, and how warm she was. I stared at the wall and my life with her flashed in front of me, and still, no tears. Family came--Judy first.

I've seen television with muslim women wailing--part of their culture--and it was similar. I WANTED to wail, but nothing came. I rubbed her back while she held my grandmother and wailed. I had no tears.

My favorite emotion is laughter through tears, and my tears finally fell when my dad showed up. He came to Grandma's room and I left him alone there. My dad the rock, who when he reappeared and tried to make coffee, had a tirade and slammed the coffee pot, numerous times against the counter, and screamed at whoever had shut off the Bun--"You DON'T shut it off!! I have said this for weeks! Now we're an hour away from coffee!!"

The tears came, because I saw his pain, but at the same moment, I started to laugh. The irony of it all was too much. The mortician checking her pulse with wailing in the background as I sat there and told him I tried to find it. Probably the only person to ever look me in the eye and know I knew, as I asked him, "Can we please get her mouth closed, she'd hate everyone to see that...except she was proud of her teeth." Which made me laugh again when I said it. I think they all thought I was crazy, plus my dad worried about coffee when SO much heavy shit was going on.

I have a gift for disengaging and watching, and as I watched, it did turn humorous. Aunt Laurie looked at me and said, "don't tell him, but I shut it off!" And, finally, through the midst of our grief that had lasted months, we had a laugh. Even dad laughed when she said, "It was ME, Buddy! ALRIGHT?! I did it! Good God!"

And we sat there all night, remembering. We remembered in tears and we remembered in laughs and we remembered in-between, but we remembered. Even the cops showed up and remembered. Even as much of an out of body experience as it was, I remember thinking how much I LOVE my family--every single one of them. Family--they get you through it all.

My mom likes to say that Grandma heard all of us grandkids sitting around her table as she lay dying, laughing and talking about memories, and it gave her the strength to take her leave. She says she knew at that moment that we were all going to be alright.

I have a friend that says Adrienne and I were what she needed, she babied us so much, knowing our potential.

I don't know which is true. I sometimes wonder if the stories we were telling that night around the table gave her a heart-attack.

I do know, that I never gave her enough time, and I pray she has forgiven me that fault, like she did my many others.

I know too, that I cannot believe its been a year...it feels like yesterday.

Love, it gets cheapened and degraded by greeting cards and Hollywood and Disney telling us the only place to find that unconditional love is from a dream-like romance. That, in and of itself, is the stuff of fairy-tales. About as realistic as gnomes, fairies, dragons...

But, we are, always, blessed with people that really do love us, and in a way that makes romantic love pale in comparison. They love us, as the cliche goes, in spite of ourselves. They are privy to every horrible weakness and prejudice, and take our side in spite of it all. No conditions, no strings, attached. For me, on that level of love, I don't think anyone will ever surpass my sister Treasure or my grandmothers, and I mean that in all seriousness.

Friday, I walked into the Village for the first time since Grandma's funeral. It smelled better, but I wanted her to be sitting there at the end of the bar, to get up and give me a hug and a kiss.

Mom took the cover off the liquor rack, and I could still see Grandma's writing on a few of the bottles--the ones that don't get used much.

And, it reminded me of all the people she helped, me included. How we don't use all of our capabilities all that much--despite the potential she saw in us. I love those unused bottles, because, like me, they still hold her mark.

I dislike the ones that take up space she used to use, and look at me like she never existed--the ones that say I'm here on my own. No one is here on her own. Not ever. Someone nursed you, someone taught you to read, someone fed you when you could not do it yourself, physically, spiritually, or emotionally, and like all of those bottles in the cabinet, we're all connected by someone who gave us room and left a mark on our label.