Grandma.

Grandpa is snoring with a blanket over his head.

“He’s in Hawaii,” Grandma tells us.

Lately he’s been going places that his body will never again reach. This afternoon we visited with his sisters and he told them in his low, quavering voice that he would be going golfing tomorrow. When he needs to be taken to the bathroom, to be hauled and shoved and cleaned and undressed and dressed, he goes to Hawaii, again.

Grandma sits back on the couch as we talk about the strange balancing act her life has become. We talk about death with dry eyes, it’s such a commonplace topic these days, now that Grandpa has begun to hear things that no one else hears, see things that are not visible to anyone else.

“In the hospice booklet they say illusions,” Grandma says, “I say illusions my ass, but to each their own.”

Last week, when Mom, Sis and Grandma took Grandpa on what may very well have been his last trip, he told Mom to go back into the hallway to see a painting that looked like me, but it wasn’t there.

Now, Grandma sits back on the couch and looks very tired.

“When people ask, you know, what I’m going to do when he passes,” she says, thoughtful, “I think I’d just like to rent a room somewhere…and just sleep for a week.” She shakes her head a little. “It sounds funny, but that’s what I’d like to do. No cell phones, nothing, just sleep for a long time.”

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Grass stains.

Little brother had five medals hanging from his neck on colored ribbons when he squared off on the grass for one last competition. His opponent was a tall, tan boy; undecorated. And as they wrestled, little brother paused for a moment, thinking of his medals and the boy’s barren neck, and wondering if he should crumble and let the other walk, victorious. Instead he brought the boy to his knee, and walked away with six medals clanking from his chest.

But in the car, winding home as the sun slipped away, he was not victorious but ashamed and he cried for the other boy, imagining the defeated boy in his own mother’s car, wondering if the boy's friends would tease him, wondering if he, too, would cry when he arrived home with nothing but grass stains to show for the day.

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How to be.

Here is me being useless and surrendering to the futility of my ant-hill life. I guess we’re all going nowhere, busy in carpeted rooms that smell like popcorn, that sit against our souls in greenish despair — we’re all going nowhere, going to the copy room and running our fingers over hot pages of meaningless text that we’ll press into some other hands and later, come home to our lovers, and have nothing to show. Working up to, working on, and never leaving, spinning in the endless spiral of our old stories, and getting lost in the familiar grooves of our once-upon-a-times, and here we are, clacking away and muttering with sore throats, stapling and shaking hands and trading facts. The fact is that we are sitting very still in all this claustrophobic motion, hoping for a way out. Fuck.

There’s a chance of showers, dust storms, and a welling up in my chest that will make me cry small tears and open and close my hands, wordless with desire and nowhere to put it. I am not enough people, I am only me, bruised shins and freckles, and no idea how the fuck to be. I remember sitting in the temple and wondering if I was comfortable, even in my own head, reverberating with the music of gongs and the sigh and murmur of all the sad fucking people, so sad, so heavy, with the burden of our limited years, all the dying, every day, all the living, all the choosing. And it feels so hard, but it’s the only thing we’ve ever done.

Outside the parking lot is bright, and there’s my car, cracked windshield and cluttered seats, rattling speakers and streaked windows, and a few things that I carry around from here to there, and back, spending long hours sitting and letting the Californian landscape rush past on either side. What the fuck am I even waiting for? More time to elapse behind a window, with all my fears bunching up around my bones until they grow solid and unmovable, imaginary zeros to march away from my bank account, despite my lack of motivation? I am not supposed to be this petrified person with a life behind walls, with boxes and stale letters, am I?