Swimming underneath the water as far and as fast as you can go before it is time and you must burst through the surface to gulp air into your aching chest—that’s what it’s like. Soul crushing; when am I ever going to feel all right again? I do not wish this feeling on anyone, and yet the one person that I love the most in the entire world has lost those who raised him: his mother, grandmothers, and grandfather. A wise man once told him, “It only hurts when you think about it.”
When I think about it, I see her gasping for breath, eyes open but not looking, her hand in mine but not holding.
“…it only gets to me in times like these
times like these are gettin’ to me…”
At least with Mom it was quick. Not days and days of the life slowly draining away. How can you say they’re in a better place when they were fighting so hard not to leave? Why does the soul outlive the body? Why can’t it be strong enough to save the body? Why can’t will power be enough to keep you alive?
The day before I took Jamie to the ER for chest pains one of his relatives called to tell us that his grandfather was in the hospital. His kidneys weren’t functioning properly. The last time I had seen him, I had waddled my hugely swollen pregnant ass down the hallways of yet another nursing home. It was the latest in a series of moves for him initiated by the aforementioned relative. I sat at his bed side in the sweltering confines of the shared room while Jamie knelt at his side. They had lowered his bed as far down as it would go, placed padding on the floor beside it and clipped an alert cord to his sweatshirt.
Life is…a complex series of events that coalesce to form a single giant test. How much pain, hate, and misunderstanding can you take?
Jamie’s Granddaddy died. I went home so that I could attend class instead of going to the funeral. The baby sitter suddenly became unavailable. Somehow in the aftermath of all that chaos, something good came: a friend. Someone who would watch my girls while I was at school, someone who cared for them as I did; she told me that God puts people in your life for a reason. I can believe that.
Too bad I don’t know why they’re taken out.
