tis the season

... to think of loved ones and spend time with family. I know this time of year is particularly hard for my parents. both have lost parents, we split the holidays between families and an annual party hosted by old friends, none of which is happening this year.

anyway, i was sitting here watching the sun fade into the evening, feeling the temperature plummet, and thinking of warmer days and holidays and family, and got to thinking about my grandfather.

he died in june of two years ago.... maybe. i don't really remember. but i wrote about the experience as i felt it shortly after, and have yet to share it with anyone... so i thought maybe i would on this forum, i guess it's as anonymous as it gets in a way, i have no idea who is or is not reading this if these mysterious non-readers care or are passing through.
but all that is fine by me.

here it is....

My phone rang. jolting me out of sleep, bolt upright and phone in hand mere moments later. Heart pounding, im sure you could hear it along with my mom’s voice asking me, rattling, when I was coming out. We hadn’t discussed this before hand. I was not supposed to know what was wrong. but sometimes you just do.  When I was pulling on my pants over my bare ass you were still stretched out on my bed, the sheet wrapped haphazardly around your waist. The t-shirt from yesterday and my shoes on my feet, as I said, I gotta go. Now. I….this is serious. I'm sorry, I’ll call you later.

Head spinning, and you pulled on your clothes tossing half of them into your bag with your bike lock and toothbrush, we were dripping with sweat from rushing and the early morning heat of June

and I flipped off the two fans which had been making sleep almost possible, bumping into things as I sprinted upstairs for old cold coffee and my car keys, and as you grabbed your bike and I hurried you outside, you grabbed me, we stopped, and with more assurance than was necessary, you hugged me so tight, my shaking stopped for a moment.

I need to go. Something's so wrong. so wrong, go. Go.

I ran to my car, and music seemed inappropriate and traffic seemed to part like the red sea for, this was urgent, why, I couldn’t tell you. I wish, I hope I hoped so hard…

And my mom’s on the other line again as the road races under my wheels and as she presses to find out where I am, I push the gas peddle to the floor and we reach 90, 92, and they are closer than they were before.


Barrelling into the hospital, slooooow it down. Slow. What good would it do to get in an accident now. I’ve been here so many times before, the room is the same, its been in my dreams ever since I drew that picture the last time he was here. I was ten then, eleven years ago. An eternity, a life time.

And my mom is pacing in front of the door and I grab her hand as I walk in, and pull her to my shoulder and whisper for her to get coffee, or tea, and I’ll be with him. I promise I wont let anything happen while she’s gone. She’s been here all morning. And the clock hits 7:30am as I sit down next to him and take his cold hand in both of mine. The skin is taught and loose at the same time, falling off, colors of the earth from years of being in the sun, dark cancer spots have been spreading as long as I can remember. His glasses are not needed, those huge rose colored seventies glasses that just came back in style, ‘cept his are legit and thick as my pinky finger. The while sheets are draped over his body, tucked under the mattress, perfectly flat and unruffled, a far cry from the sheets we left on my bed this morning, and I wish I could tell you the last time he was out of this bed, the last time he moved voluntarily, the last time his legs swung over the side to try and walk around. His limbs make pointed mountains in the bed, his bones visible, though covering them are skin and three layers of fabric. His ribs move up and down, up and down, and the beeping of the heart monitor is unbearably deafening.

His eyes are closed, and there are tubes everywhere, in his arms, in his nose, in his mouth, and they gurgle at different intervals, reverberating around in the room and in my skull and then out into the hall where my mom comes walking back, two styrofoam cups clenched in her hands. Hers eyes are swollen and her usual rosey cheeks are slack and pale. Her hair in a thick rubberband, spewing all over her right shoulder.

I try not to watch what looks like coffee grounds coming down out of the tube in the corner of his mouth, collecting in a large bag hanging under the IV. It makes me want to vomit, and yet I cant stop watching them dribble down the tube, sludge.


When my grandmother died. I didn’t cry. I thought those who did were weak. I loved her, and still remember her fondly, but my dad and I stood at his mothers funeral, side by side, mute and dry eyed.

And here, is the strongest woman I know, and her head is on my shoulder, and we are shaking, silently, shaking with so much love and we hold on to his cold hand, and that damn moniter is still beeping incessantly. And holding onto his other hand is my cousin, my tall blonde, smart witty and incredibly strong cousin, the mother of two boys and who has spent many an hour in this room in these last weeks.


When the nurse comes in we drink our coffee out of our styrofoam, staring into the deep brown liquid and we are grounded for a minute, as he tells us story after story of this man’s three weeks in this room.

How every nurse and doctor was in love with him, and how all he wanted to do was to walk around and meet the other patients and make them laugh by making fun of them, and how it wasn’t until last week that he took off this black shirt with white peeling letters that had been ironed on (I should know, I made it for him) that proclaimed “GRUMPY” across his bony chest.

And then he played a recording for us. See, whenever he would try and get up out of bed, this recording would play, to remind him to stay in bed. And it said in this deeply familiar, scratchy, yet slurred voice “stay in bed, stupid”.

And we laughed and laughed and laughed, and the nurse left the room, and the tears rolled down our cheeks and chins and spilled onto the sterile tile below our plastic chairs.

After a while, my mom and my cousin went to stroll outside for a hot second, and we two were left alone, one hundred years of life stored in that room, and I could see them being ushered away by the tubes into plastic bags near his head. And the dreams and the laughs and the ability to befriend the cashier at the grocery store and that old handsome face once dashing and seductive now hollow and inelastic, monochromatic and listless.

Bright Eyes and Poppy side by side. And I talk to him, even though he’s been comatose for six days, and tell him stories about my life and about how im making a difference in the world, a giving a voice to the voiceless through low power radio, and how I’ve been lobbying on capitol hill, and I know he would give me a hard time, but…

And I say his name over and over, and I ask him rhetorical questions hoping they aren’t rhetorical and I clutch his hand, casue I don’t want him to go yet, and I want him to open his eyes. And ive got both hands over his, trying to warm it, make it feel like it always has, and then, his breath gets quicker, and my eyes shoot up to his face, and for forty second, or thirty, his eyes open, and I know he cant focus, his eyes are so bad, but I know he can hear me, and I talk to him, and I kiss his hand and I tell him how much I love him, and I tell him that my mom and steph are here but walking, and they will be right back,and that I love him, and some stupid almost witty sarcastic remarks about how this is perfect timing for him to snap out of it, what a grumpy jerk, but I love him anyway, and his fingers have closed around my hand, and im trying to not lose my mind through my eyeballs.

And he closes his eyes again, and I beg him to keep them open.


Please, my mom needs him to hang on until she gets back in the room, and that codgedy old bastard kept his eyes closed, but kept the tiniest bit of pressure pushing I nto my hand.

And my mom and steph came back, and I guess I looked like id seen a ghost. I had. Because minutes later, the furrow in his brow, the only indication that he was in pain, relaxed, and his cheeks sunk one last time, and the gurgling out of the coffeeground coated tube stopped, and over what seemed like an eternity, I watched his face turn stone grey and realized his hand felt like soft granite, smooth and hard, and the coldest thing I have ever felt in my life.

And that fucking beeping of the heart monitor kept wailing long after we collected the last of his things, took turns kissing him goodbye, and wept our of the room, and out of the hospital.



His cold cheek print is still on my lips.