salience
January 2, 2004
Her most recent expiration date is the end of this month.
We are now in the fifth and final stage of Leukemia, you see.
And I'm in a weird place. I’m okay with the fact that these may be my last memories of a woman who has had such an impact on my life. These final moments with the only woman people say I look like in my family. She will die here. In this would-be-cheery, sea foam green room, now in a nursing home just down the street from my uncle. After 49 days in Southeast Baptist her Medicare ran out and she had to leave. They could and would do no more.
Now she is here.
She shares these four walls with some older woman, who’s asleep most of the time. We don’t ask what she has. The lesions on her face scare us to silence. I’m the only one of our group of seven (my brother and sisters, my uncle’s kids with his second wife and I) who is comfortable sitting next to her. Every now and again she’ll ask me to tell her about school or what I think of my cousin Teresa getting married at 22. It’s nice to know I can make her laugh when she’s clearly feeling so much pain. The worst thing is to see el papa’s eyes when he looks at her. It’s like Palahniuk says in one of his books, the only thing in her skin is bones. She is deflated, her nails long and yellow. Her skin is flaky, snake-like. How they shed a complete layer of skin all at once. Except she hasn’t shed it yet--it’s still only dehydrated, attached and rough.
Her eyes though, they're the same as they've always been.
When she smiles at me, looking almost through me, I know.
This will be what I remember most clearly.
These will be the eyes that haunt me.
Especially when we leave her for Georgia tomorrow.
My reflection will never match what she sees.
And there isn't enough time.
We are now in the fifth and final stage of Leukemia, you see.
And I'm in a weird place. I’m okay with the fact that these may be my last memories of a woman who has had such an impact on my life. These final moments with the only woman people say I look like in my family. She will die here. In this would-be-cheery, sea foam green room, now in a nursing home just down the street from my uncle. After 49 days in Southeast Baptist her Medicare ran out and she had to leave. They could and would do no more.
Now she is here.
She shares these four walls with some older woman, who’s asleep most of the time. We don’t ask what she has. The lesions on her face scare us to silence. I’m the only one of our group of seven (my brother and sisters, my uncle’s kids with his second wife and I) who is comfortable sitting next to her. Every now and again she’ll ask me to tell her about school or what I think of my cousin Teresa getting married at 22. It’s nice to know I can make her laugh when she’s clearly feeling so much pain. The worst thing is to see el papa’s eyes when he looks at her. It’s like Palahniuk says in one of his books, the only thing in her skin is bones. She is deflated, her nails long and yellow. Her skin is flaky, snake-like. How they shed a complete layer of skin all at once. Except she hasn’t shed it yet--it’s still only dehydrated, attached and rough.
Her eyes though, they're the same as they've always been.
When she smiles at me, looking almost through me, I know.
This will be what I remember most clearly.
These will be the eyes that haunt me.
Especially when we leave her for Georgia tomorrow.
My reflection will never match what she sees.
And there isn't enough time.
lasaliente, 21:42
