April 21, 2019
My family's pet Chihuahua, five pounds heavier since my mother passed, follows my father into the elevator at the retirement home.
A dull ding announces the third floor.
My father knocks and then barges into the room without waiting for an answer.
"Guess who's here?!" he yells.
"Mocha!" my grandmother replies.
"Hi, Grandma," I say from the doorway.
Her laugh, always her laugh. Her laugh has always been the same.
Though now it is fading. It is still her laugh. The mother laugh of my mother's laugh: a lively, thoroughly entertained haw haw ha-ah-ha-ah-ah.
Her hug is soft, almost like curling into a fleece beanbag.
Her cheek kiss is wet, and her signature lipstick is stained permanently on her lips.
"Sit down, sit down," she orders me.
I laugh quietly. As I do when I don't know how else to add to the air.
"How are you, dear?"
I laugh quietly. As I do when I don't know how else to add to the air.
My father and step-grandfather grip cold blue aluminum cans and beer-forced guffaws punctuate each statement they make. Tattered and worn war stories bombard my father. Quips about caring for the dog that once nipped his fingers and toes snap at my step-grandfather.
I compliment the rings squeezed around my grandmother's wrinkled fingers. (I can't remember now if her fingernails were painted the pearlescent maroon that they've always been, but in my dusty memory they are and were and will be until she has passed.)
I especially like the thin one with two leaf-shaped cutouts hugging her finger.
"You complimented that one last time, too. Don't worry you'll get it someday," she laughs.
In the background, uncomfortable pauses gnaw into the men's conversation.
"Oh, I like your money. Can I have that? If she likes the rings and gets the rings, then if I like the money then I get the money, right?" my father teases.
My step-grandfather adjusts his hearing aid and says, "Our new maintenance man is an ex-marine."
...
I glance at the cluttered, plastic-tableclothed table in the corner Besides photo albums and a few potted flowers and coupons and birthday cards and the empty cans of beer, there is a small cloth rabbit.
About two years ago, I visited this room with my video camera in hand, because my mother wanted me to record my grandmother and I wanted to know what life advice she could give me from living over 80 years, losing her first husband to a heart attack, raising five kids on her own, traveling to several countries, and so on.
And, besides this, my mother was afraid my grandmother would die soon.
my mother was afraid my grandmother would die soon.
In the video:
-My mother's voice is a ghost floating and mingling with voices in the background.
-And my mother's presence appears, her back to the camera, in the patio's doorway.
-My grandmother holds a cloth rabbit and tells me about how she made it.
-It is Easter time.
In my latest visit to my grandmother's:
-It is Easter time.
-The cloth rabbit that was once on the kitchen counter has been moved to make space for a vase of flowers and a line of photos of my mother.
-The photos are printed on at-home-printer paper
-The ink was likely running out.
-The cloth rabbit is now sitting on my grandmother's plastic corner table.
-Its large eyes are sad.
-The softness and comfort and simplicity of its creation taunt me the same way that dumb song about Christmas shoes is stupid and sad at the same time.
I wish it wasn't here.
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