Bone Marrow
When it was nearing the end, she’d fall asleep with her cigarette, red tipped, dangling from her lip. She burned many holes in many things. Luckily she never burned down any buildings, that I’m aware of.
She didn’t care much for food those days and survived mostly on pudding packs. She preferred dream whip over its much cooler competition. I preferred it too. She always completed the TV guide crossword puzzle and she never had cable. Together we’d watch Matlock and Little House on the Prairie re-runs. I ate toast and drank hot chocolate.
Even bed ridden, she’d tell me how to fold her towels properly. She was headstrong and stubborn and set in her ways. She didn’t want help from anyone. Now that I’m older, I can understand why. She didn’t want to feel weak. She didn’t want to need anyone.
I’ll never forget the first day she really needed me. She was in the bathroom, in what I could only imagine to be, the worst pain. She called out to me. I had to clean her like a child. As she bent forward, her cancer bones protruded from her delicate body. She apologized over and over. And that is something she never did. Somewhere between the living room and the bathroom, she had convinced herself that she was a burden. What an ugly lie she told herself. That was the most vulnerable I had ever seen her, in all my 13 years.
It wasn’t long after that, she took her last, shallow breath. She died in her living room while I slept in her Martha-Stewart-made-bed. Tucked in too damn tight, just how she liked. That was the coldest October I can remember.
Sometimes, late at night I think of her and cry. Mostly, I think of her when the wind blows, country music plays, and the day looks like yellow. I don’t have much of hers , except her flower-sleepy-cigarette-hole-robe, and maybe a fraction of her fight. I think of her when my day feels too heavy to bear and the night seems too long. I can always feel her in my bones, holding me together, like a cement glue called, grandmother.
