08.24.09
lean
earson:
eyeson:
thoughton:
i don't know what to say. i mean a lot of the time, i don't know what to say .. but especially today.
my grandfather died on friday morning. my mother was pounding on my bedroom door shouting 'help me with zoe, i can't get her up, my father died.' i heard 'help me with zoe' and then Z said something like 'geeze, i'm up, i'm up .. ' and i was prepared to roll over and go back to sleep. but then i had that waitaminute moment and crawled out of bed .. i told her i would stay home, i asked her if she needed anything. i made phonecalls, i answered phonecalls. then - to be perfectly honest with you - i spent the rest of the day enjoying the semi-quiet of the house all without crying a single tear.
spent the weekend mostly in bed .. drowsing. saw the time traveller's wife (miss it, blech) and district 9 on sunday (see it, but be prepared for exploding bodies.)
(later)
i tried to go to work today. i stuck it out for a few hours but somewhere around lunchtime it just hit me - washed into me, washed me out, took me with it. i was listening to music in earbuds and staring out into traffic on my lunch and just couldn't continue. i saw my boss, i veered out of the hospital, bought some tasteful mourning clothes and went to the wake.
i'm glad i did .. i met two uncles who married sisters. i listened to the mason fraternity's rep stumble over ecclesiastes, an evergreen branch went into the open casket and it felt correct. i met my cousins's pregnant girlfriend, my mother's lover even came to play .. working his way through the absolutely silent hall, even shaking hands with my father. viewed pictures of people's first wives, and times when the table was laid for christmas dinner after both ovens in the old house had been slaving all day.
remembered the turkeybones and the mountains of pie plates and the times when the old victorian was hung in christmas lights and the huge windows with their stained glass panes threw segmented warm lamplight into the snow. or when both the parlor door and the kitchen screen, the TV room door, were all thrown open so that the smell from the hay meadow behind the house rolled through over the bare redbrown floorboards. old books. hiding from relatives at the piano. uncovering the pool table. dreaming in the junk piled to the ceiling in the old greenhouse.
him is synonymous with -those.- soft falling january snow when it's too cold for birds. a motorcycle saddle, a long toolbench covered in shavings.
he was smiling just a little in the casket. he had make-up on his face but his hands were grey and shriveled and locked against one another against his middle. the pictures were so strong, as strong and square as his jaw - i wondered at all of us in them, i remembered the crunch of the gravel and rocking in the rocking chair in one of the upstairs bedrooms at 13 while my sister was in labor with her first child. waiting, waiting.
a house - a man -
and the funeral is tomorrow.
they'll bury him next to ginger, who committed suicide on father's day so many years ago.
i'll miss you like the frost on the windowpanes. like the ride in your classic caddy with the top down from my uncle's high school graduation. like that just once that you took me out on your honda and told me to -lean.-
i love you, grandpa.
written at 12:00 p.m.
