this is how we leave us

Thirty seconds after kneeling down, I grabbed your hand, parchment paper thin. That smell swirled up in my nose, your body emitting the odors of early decay, shutting down, faintly like nail polish remover. A few seconds later your weeping eyes partially opened and connected with mine, igniting the spark of our existence together. Me, a child to raise as you entered your 80s, just as you were hoping to slow down, and you, my bastion of safety and solace, a saving grace.

I saw the glimmer of delight, the same way you’d look upon my arrivals back home from college. Now I return back home from adulthood, five hundred miles away. We excited one another, calmed one another. Made each other laugh. Our similarities created our differences, like in the way we both enjoyed music but you hated to sing it and I hated to listen while I cooked. 

Fifty minutes after arrival, your hand in mine, your eyes straining to remain open, I tell you, it’s okay, it’s okay. Just close your eyes. I’m cooing you like the baby I once was in your arms. Splayed out on the bed changing my diaper, or scrubbing my muddy nails in the kitchen sink. I don’t have anything to say to you and I don’t have to because it wasn’t but five weeks earlier we sat in your living room and shared our truly deepest secrets.

I shift my body weight to the ground after kneeling beside you for several minutes, but I don’t let go of your hand. Those hands that have fed so many, that have held me back after angry nights with my mother, Don’t cry, please, don’t cry, you’d ask of me. Plea for me. You didn’t think it was worth my energy, not worth the pain.

I’d catch you in the living room tears streaming and parted lips strung with spit, sobbing. Your husband, your son, gone. Your father having died before you were barely old enough to remember him. You carried that grief and I carried it, too, trying to take some of those dark parts. We’d sit in silence while you cried, me at your feet, holding one of your hands and massaging the soft skin under your arms.

I’ve been at your side now nearly thirty minutes in the room just above mine, where I’d run up on Saturday mornings and lie in the twin bed next to yours. It didn’t take much to set us into laughter. You slept in so late. 

I get up to let you rest and walk to the back porch where I met you ten years prior. Out of breath, sweaty, practically pushing you over to run into your house. Was she behind me? Chasing after me? No, you assured me, sitting me down to breath into a paper sack. It was agreed shortly later that I’d stay with you, permanently, and get to know and feel safe in a home again. 

When I went away to school, you weren’t happy but you understood, and I tried to come back often to visit. When I moved way north, you weren’t happy but you asked me to call often and we talked on speakerphone while we did mundane things like file our nails. I thought of you every time I looked out a window and saw a bird perched on a branch and could picture you in your rocking chair near the feeder watching hummingbirds while you said a rosary.

I return to your room and grab the pamphlet by your bedside and I now understand the purple splotches on your hands and feet mean death is imminent. Your breathing is labored and your body so limp. I have nothing to say because I’ve already said it all and I don’t need to talk so I continue holding those hands. They’re beautiful. I still trace your veins to form letters, your initials, something you discovered young.

Just an hour before your death, I go to the living room. I sit on the couch and turn on the TV and I don’t watch, I just see moving colors. I peer into your room every now and then to find your chest still heaving until it doesn’t. I come back to your side, not quite forty-eight hours since I knelt beside you. We close your mouth, and we shut your eyes, we tuck your rosary in your hands, and I pray because I don’t pray but you did. I kiss your face one last time and whisper thank you.