I’ve been hanging out the last week with this bitch named Weepy. She’s mostly around during the day and at night Sleeping Pill Bill holds down the fort. I like Sleeping Pill Bill. He is all melllllllow and is allllll about snacks. I like it! But that Weepy is a drag. I mean, she’s alright… no, not really. Weepy makes me feel empty of anything good and stuffed right full of bad and Screaming tends to check in on me and Weepy from time to time to see if we need her services which we do, thank you very much. SCREAMING BANSHEE HERE YOU GO GET IT ALL OUT. But it doesn’t all come out.
I don’t know how to not feel so unbelievably shitty about my grandma being dead in a coffin in the ground where nobody’s going to put fresh lipstick on her before the next round of guests arrives, which is okay, I suppose, because did you see the glossy one? It just…didn’t look like her lips with the glossy one. (I was happy when Grandpa kissed it off before saying “G’night Mom.”) I watched my family members brought to their knees with grief, my father repeating, “I just wasn’t ready for her to go. I just wasn’t ready for her to go.” Another, “I’ll see you in the morning, Mom.”
I wanted to be a vapor. There enough that Grandma would know, maybe I could have talked to her there in the mist. But not more than a vapor. A haze at the top or back of the room. There for me and there for her but not there for you and you and especially you.
But there I sit in a cold, hard pew, watching my son sleep and feeling your presence in the room. Your movements making the air thicker, heavier, oppressive with grief and loss and desperation and panic. Swinging your loop around the room and coming to a stop in my line of sight. I didn’t wouldn’t couldn’t won’t look up but you stand so long. I have to look up and you say it. You say, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” and I cover my mouth to keep from saying anything I’ll regret? vomiting? screaming? crying? I nod quickly and stop looking and you walk away and I sit there alone, almost crying, wrenching, begging for a savior to lift me up and out and high above. Where is he? Drive faster drive so fast. Get here now.
I hide with my kid and play a card game in a corner. We look up and smile and I hear myself being introduced as his daughter and look at how natural it looks and look how normal it looks. Pulling it off. Song and dance. Perhaps we’ll buy you all a drink later.
Then the questions: “Where is your mother? Will your mother be coming? How is your mother?” And “I don’t know.” and “I think Sister can better answer that for you.” But not, “Unfortunately, I’m not yet speaking to my mother. We’re taking a break, I suppose. No no no. Of course she didn’t molest me. She just didn’t protect me. Didn’t give me the tools I needed to protect myself. You should ask my sister how our mother is doing. I hope you have a nice time.”
Then the Little Guy who’s seen me cry an inexcusable number of times in the last year, “Mommy, why you cryin’? Mommy, don’t cry. Stop cryin’.” I stop. Someone squeezes my shoulder, “Your aunt is glad you’re here. You made her day.” And then crying and being scolded for crying again. Aunt hugging me, making me cry while my boy jabs tissues at my eyeballs.
The sinking, the undeniable this is it of the closed casket. Draped with a beautiful cloth and covered in roses. So pretty, so horrifying, so gut-achingly sad.
At the house. Can I go in the house? Will sanity crumble like dry mud pie when I step inside? Is being in the house an insinuation of truce between he and me? The wrong person - THE MOST wrong person sitting in Grandma’s chair causing me to trip over my right toe and haphazardly flap across the living room where I see it: Grandma was behind in pictures of my kids. The act of my heart breaking is audible. Why didn’t I make sure she had newest pictures? My heart hurts. Why didn’t I make sure? I want her to come back so she can see the pictures. Know they were for her. Come back and see the pictures. Please come back you have to see them.
I hear the people talking in the other rooms. Busy, careful, sometimes funny. Bustling. I remember the forest of legs during holidays in this house. Thinking so many people! I can’t move without spilling. And walking about on those legs was not one person who would protect me. I weep and then sob and shudder until I’m sure I’ll turn myself inside out. Why didn’t they save me? Why don’t they ask me now? Why won’t she say, “I know honey. I’m sorry.”
The weight of all this a cement block in my chest - everything swells around it and burns and aches. And I wish I could talk to her one more time. Wish she could tell me about the year she insisted on a store bought coat instead of the usual coat her mother made her. The winter she’d thought she’d freeze to death in that stupid coat, the one she’d had to have. To see her gag at the suggestion of pancakes for breakfast. To hear her complain about finding shoes with a very narrow heel. To see her week-long hair-do brushed out crazy the night before her hair appointment. To watch her crochet and fall asleep in front of Days of Our Lives and laugh at Johnny Carson. To open one more bulky, soft Christmas package with a handmade afghan inside. To actually get one of the scraps afghans (might resort to thievery). To hear her laugh. To see her smile at my children. To see her horrible handwriting in my son’s birthday card a month from now. To hear, “Okay, honey. Love you now.” on the other end of the phone.
