forever by your bedside

I don't think I was ever so relieved to get to the hospital to visit my grandmother.

I'll explain. I'm no fan of hospitals but I was just coming from a funeral home. I don't remember ever meeting Anthony. He was just 23-years-old. Died of a mysterious heart attack - not that the cause really matters. His mother was catatonic and inconsolable, denying the fact with a numbing repetition that made it impossible to focus on anything else. I watched her call out her father's name in a similar manner two years ago, the last time I saw this side of the family all together. This was a whole other world of hurt.

Then more bad news struck even closer to home. I found out my first cousin tried to commit suicide this weekend. Ingested too many pills with alcohol and then called the ambulance himself. My brain would not compute the reality - even if it had been quietly preparing for this very news for years.

So this is why I felt a strange sort of calm as I made my way through the familiar emergency room at the Jewish, straight to the elevator and up to the sixth floor. I even let myself get lost for a little bit - enough to find a decent coffee, anyhow.

When I finally did find my grandmother, she was just sitting next to her bed finishing off her dinner. Her hair was combed and golden and her face flush with life and colour. I knew it would be just me and her tonight and that kind of put my mind at ease. I was looking forward to just concentrating on her without getting distracted by background conversation - which is unfortunately easier to do with someone who has a tendency to ramble and repeat herself while storytelling.

I'm always relieved to know she still recognizes me and generally knows what's going on in my life. It makes me feel special even though that's probably stupid. I know even those details are getting hazy. (She asked me if it was still snowing outside, then gently brushed off the question) But then she kind of assured me as much when making reference to the old woman across the hall, who asked me to open her pudding cup and then couldn't even remember where her bed was or whether or not she was even in the right room.

"At least you still remember me," I joked in my broken Italian.
"Yes, I always remember you," she replied.

And then we got talking. We started with the funeral and she almost immediately wanted to change the subject. Then she told me how her mother never really recovered from losing her only son Angelo at 12 years old - the fact that she still had six daughters to raise offering little consolation. My grandmother told me the day her mother died, she stood by her bedside and heard her dead brother's name cross her lips as she reached for her light and slipped away for good.

Then she started telling me about my grandfather, who died before I was a teenager. I never heard her say much about him aside from pointing out he couldn't even make himself toast or boil an egg when push came to shove. Nothing like his brother, anyway. But as we were talking about functional and dysfunctional relationships she told me how the only times they really fought was when he would disappear for nights at a time playing cards. She somehow always managed to track him down (with God's help, of course) and finally got him to admit that cards were the one vice he could not control. In her persistent way, I think it was more important for my grandmother to be acknowledged for raising her four kids alone, for slaving over her sowing machine at all hours of the day and night and for never having to ask her husband for a cent. She was always a proud woman, though maybe too wise to believe she could change the man she was with.

She was repeating herself quite a bit but I was loving every minute of it. I kept thinking that I needed to get home to get this all down. Because this magical conversation - which was somehow everything I needed to be hearing right now - could not be lost or smudged to my poor memory.

And then she said something that blew my mind and nearly broke my heart.

She told me that even if I didn't think her words were important tonight, that I would wake up one day and realize they were. Then she took her right index finger to her right temple, her blue eyes wide and ablaze, and predicted that I would remember everything she said tonight because my brain could not afford to let it go. Maybe the pointless details, but not this. And she promised me I would even remember sitting on the hospital bed in this particular hospital room - the way she still remembered things her mother had told her with perfect clarity - when she was dead and gone.

And then she started to tear up, the way she always does. Releasing the unspoken emotion for the both of us. And she asked me for a glass of water and I gently massaged her arm and smiled.

And did my best to capture every last detail of that beautiful moment.

my twenty one gun salute

I was super conscious of my body the entire time. My feet shuffling back and forth. My shadow bouncing off the pavement, sometimes intermingling with others who were either falling behind or trying to overtake me. And my breath, steady. I had the beats blasting but not enough to drown out the cries and the cowbells of volunteers who had lined up on the side of the road, waving placards and offering plastic cups at every kilometre or so. It all made it even more difficult to not keep track - even if I refused to glance at my iPhone during the entire race. The first ten kilometres seemed to go by quite effortlessly. The sun and the wind felt great. I had time to take in the lake and some clever placards like Getting up at 8:30 isn't easy either. It was actually only some fifteen minutes or so later when I was forced off to the side of the road for a quick whiz that I realized my feet were actually tingling with pins and needles. Until then, my biggest challenge was figuring out the best way to chew those gummy electrolyte snacks and gulp down those water cups without making a mess of myself. But as the minutes dribbled by I slowly started to feel the weight of what I was putting my legs through. After the fifteen kilometre mark I could no longer simply rationalize the remaining distance as simply being less than before. My brain was starting to protest. The wind felt like it was picking up. The gulf between all of us was expanding and there were less people to overtake. I had to stop for another twenty seconds. I knew those last twenty minutes were going to be the toughest yet. My feet were on fire. Women in tights were just not doing it for me any more and all the cheers of encouragement could not get my legs moving any faster. I felt my motivation wavering and wondered when those endorphins were going to kick in. The Asian guy running with the baby carriage finally overtook me. But I never stopped again. I could sense the Falls around every bend in the road. I was making the final approach. I kept my head down and avoided any eye contact, concentrating only on my feet. I promised myself I would break into whatever sprint was left in me once the finish line was in sight. I powered downhill and slowed down only on the last step out of some inexplicable bad habit. Amy wasn't there to greet me. I walked on and absent-mindedly took the medal from an older lady who was trying to place it over my head. I was dazed and almost cried for one second. This was a silent and lonely victory, the way most victories tend to be.

It would be hours until the endorphins hit - until I realized just how important this race was for me.

perfect timing

I just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The big payoff Sandri had promised was even more beautiful than I could have imagined.
Equally mind blowing is how many times the word nostalgia appears in the final chapter.
If there was a time in my life for me to read this book, it was now.
Somehow I already knew that before I started reading.

what you can't shake, can shake you

everyone in my book is dying.
everyone in real life is still very much alive, knock on wood
but it still makes me sad
death has been too close in my thoughts lately
makes me dream up crazy scenarios
and worry for nothing
i'm trying to cherish every moment and every one but it's not that easy
you need to be scared stiff to remember
and by then it's too late