Crossing the Line

It has never occurred to me that I should be afraid of crossing borders. Borders are these imaginary lines, drawn on maps that indicate some figurative division of space. At times, these lines even blur time or reality. Of course these lines can be significant; lines that divide enemies or ethnic groups. But the lines themselves seem so arbitrary and the crossing of said lines, even more so. They’re just ink on paper. But recently I spend all my time thinking about lines. Thinking about the ways in which we cross them all day long—important lines, imaginary lines, emotional lines. Thinking about the ways we ignore them; the ways we exploit them. I talk about lines in abstract ways—in how we build our communities, and how we rebuild relationships. How we relate to each other; how we disrespect each other. How we learn and how we heal.

These lines remind me of traveling. There is a moment when you’re exploring new space when you just let go of the lines—when you just move organically and let what happens happen. It’s this magical release of order; a letting go from the systems that run our lives. Two January’s ago, I traveled to West Africa with a dear colleague. We were scoping out our next adventure. We were crossing borders. We’d just come to the western border of Benin, traveling into Togo.

Approaching the borders, there is a distinct sense of authority in the air. There is also an overwhelming sense of chaos. There are unwritten rules in the body language of armed police officers and border patrol agents. There are signs written in French. Some have been translated to English, but most have not. And this is most definitely intentional. They’d rather you not know the protocol. There are gates and lines and bizarre fenced off areas that are full of people waiting. I’ve gotten used to this lifestyle of waiting. It is part of the culture here. You wait. Sometimes there are things you’re waiting on—people you’re waiting for—but sometimes you’re simply killing time. Sometimes this is just a part of the day. During my first trip to Africa, this made me nuts. Now I almost relish in this delicious nothingness; it’s such a treat.

My first West African border crossing was completed from the comfort of a 30 passenger bus. Our guides and professors handled all the details, marched away from the bus with a furious sense of authority, and somehow managed to come away with stamped passports and smiling faces. We sat on the bus, in the air-conditioning, watching the people around us. It was oppressive. I remember hawkers coming to the window and putting their fingers to their mouth, mouthing chop, begging for food. I remember children, most of whom were severely disabled, looking up at us with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen asking for money. There were unbelievable things for sale in large baskets and rolling carts—black market DVD’s from China, knock-off designer handbags, gum, tissues, chocolates, homemade foods, and more. People bought things through the windows—peanuts and pineapples and luggage sets. I thought it was incredible.

But this time, it’s just the two of us. We get out of our rented car, a black Mercedes-Benz sedan, and are immediately approached by beggars. This time there is no glass divider. No window for me to shut. No blinds to pull down. I have to avoid eye contact and quickly dismiss hands that reach out for mine. Once the contact has been made, it is much harder to walk away without this lousy travel companion of mine: guilt. This whole experience of coming back to Africa, without a group, is so different. I feel less like a spectacle and more like a traveler. There is less structure to my day—fewer lines. The dark blue document in my hand, this precious passport, is like gold here. An American passport is a luxury many strive for in these small rural countries. This passport represents autonomy, opportunity, and prosperity.

We approach a dated, dusty outpost that looks more like something from an old Western film than an official border crossing station. A dark-skinned man sits with his feet propped on the wooden army-style desk. His green uniform has been starched. It is snug across his obviously muscular frame. He has deep dark marks on his cheeks, generally a tribal affiliation of some sort, marks leftover from childhood ceremonies. His odor is prolific. His tall military-style black boots are tied tight over his uniform. I wonder how he doesn’t stroke out from the heat. I’m sweating profusely in my tank top and skirt. He wears a wool hat. Sweat lingers on his forehead. Mine, however, is dripping. Also, did I mention the array of weaponry on his person? A large gun is slung around his shoulder. Something metal is attached to his leather belt. A holster is on his belt that holds a knife, a knife that seems to look more like an Elizabethan dagger than an official border-patrol pocket knife.

I approach him sheepishly, keenly aware of his arsenal of weaponry and my missing franc phonic tongue, and I pull my little piece of gold out. I shoot him a flirtatious, giggly smile. He smiles at me, aware of my sheepishness. He can probably smell how afraid I am of his gun. Can’t he tell? I freaking majored in Peace Studies!? My travel partner is a short American professor who was born in India. Few people acknowledge him as an American here. He is “Indian”, no matter where we go. He smiles at him, too. We’re an odd couple. I’m loud and plus-sized and quite clearly American. He is quiet and short and unbelievably thin. We present our passports, opened to the appropriate page, so that he can see our pre-paid visa’s, stamp it, and we’ll be on our way. He flips through our golden books like a small child would a picture book. Have you ever watched a child who is learning how to read? I love when they become impatient with the reading and just start violently charging through the pages and start making up the rest of the story to get to the end. This is how he proceeds.

He leans back and sighs. It is obvious that he is going to need some time to think about letting us pass. Which is fine. I’ve become good at waiting. I can wait. Look at me, waiting patiently. But what happens next is what terrifies me. He begins speaking to us, angrily, in French. I know about five words in French. I can say oui or non. I can ask parlez-vous anglais? Or, je voudrais un tonic s’il vous plait? What he is asking or telling or shouting, I could not possibly understand. Umm, hello!? Je suis Américain!? Allow me to ask again: parlez-vous anglais?

Here is what terrifies me more—my travel partner is pretty fluent in conversational, street French. He tends to make people angry. He challenges them. He questions why we’re being asked to do certain things. This doesn’t amuse anyone but himself (okay, it amuses me most of the time...but not right now). He begins talking back. I can tell by his body language and tone that he is questioning this agent’s demands. He begins gesticulating wildly and pointing at our small, blue, precious books. K takes them from him, flips through and points at the series of previous visa’s we both have (clearly trying to tell him that we’ve been here before, I'm guessing). This man smiles, leaning back even further in his squeaking, wooden chair that is practically bending from his frame. He obviously wants to ignore what he is being told. I tend to feel that whatever this man wants—he gets. I’m horrified by his power. He wants a dash; he wants money. We’re used to this. The padding of the pockets is a regular occurrence at these crossings.

Suddenly, I’m aware that the two men, one of whom is supposed to be on my side, are no longer talking money and are now talking about me. Once again, I’ve become K's bargaining chip. This amuses him to no end. The agent eyes me up and down and winks. I give the agent a shy smile (and shoot K a death stare). He laughs boisterously at my grin. I know, I know. I shouldn’t be smiling back. I shouldn’t be feeding this masculine greed. This man could rape me. This man could take me into the unmarked office behind him and give me that African baby I’ve always wanted. But my option is what? Got any better ideas?

It is important to note that in Africa, my physique is what makes an ideal wife and mother. African men love me. I have hips and an ass and breasts. I have thick thighs and full arms. These things can keep a man warm at night (although who would want that in this heat?). I’m stopped constantly by men who want to marry me. Women touch me adoringly. They grab my stomach and my upper arms. They pat my fat rolls. They tell me I’m beautiful. This is reason number two hundred and seven that I think I may move here someday. Who needs a diet? Just take a vacation to Africa. Besides, you’ll probably lose weight from the inevitable stomach bug you’ll pick up at some point during your trip.

Suddenly this previously exclusively French-speaking man is asking me, in English, when and where we should host our wedding. I play along, insisting that I’m ready whenever he is. I remind him that he’s at work, however, and ask him how his wife would feel about his new American bride. He laughs. We’re both aware of how much we’re joking. I breathe an internal sigh of relief that I won’t be taken home with him this evening and presented to his family as their newest addition. He stands. He wants a hug. I hug this man. This large, brut, odorous man with weapons. This man who has the power to detain me, rob me, and take away my dignity. He sits back down, pulls out his stamp, and grants us permission to cross these lines, these terrifyingly important lines, and does so with a smile on his face. Of course, this was after we’d already given him lunch money. We had one border down. Three to go.

And one hell of a lesson in line-crossing.

Homecoming

Most people seem to get seasonal depression in the winter. The sun stops shining and weeks of dreary, rainy, cold grey dominate all parts of life. Sometimes it snows, but mostly it doesn’t. It’s just cold. Slushy, dirty ice water gathers on the side of the road and cars get covered in white, dusty salt. I’m weird, I guess. I love the winter. I don’t mind the cold. I don’t mind the grey. My worst seasonal depression happens in fall, when I miss home the most. I struggle with myself in the fall. I get wanderlust. I make grand life plans (life plans that I rarely keep). I talk about moving home. Growing up I loved the fall. I loved the way the oak trees that surrounded my house would drop their thick, fat acorns on the cracked stone driveway. The leaves would slowly turn from summer’s fresh green to brilliant shades of red, yellow, and orange. Our local football team would begin their season and my friends and I would spend our evenings in the crisp, fall, mountain air cheering for the home team. I’m not even that huge of a football fan these days, but high school football was a permanent feature of my late adolescence. We loved it. Our lives revolved around it. There was a palpable energy in those stands and a real community in my town that seemed to congregate on Friday nights. Everyone gathered there together. Like the biggest kitchen table you’ve ever seen.

I remember when it changed. When I moved away and I started resenting those days—feeling as though I’d come from the most backward, archaic town in the South. I moved to this small college in Baltimore and met people who, for the most part, came from glamorous northeastern cities and towns with progressive city councils and private school educations. They never had prayer in public school. They’d never heard people use racist slurs. I was in awe of this progression; it was my very own domestic culture shock. As I struggled with who I used to be, and more importantly who I was becoming, I said things I didn’t mean about where I was from. I told stories I shouldn’t have. I shared secrets about my small, beautiful, mountain town that only those of us lucky enough to have grown up there should be allowed to know—things that you just can’t understand unless you’ve been there. Unless you’ve seen it. I guess this is my own cathartic confession: guilt I’ve been holding onto for years. As I’ve gotten older, and struggled for that sense of home in my life that I always had growing up, I’ve started to recognize just how much that small town taught me about how to behave in this world. I feel horrible that I haven’t always loved where I’m from—like I’ve committed the ultimate betrayal to this place that now means so much to me.

Before my own grandmother passed a few weeks ago, my dearest childhood friend, Maggie, grieved for her own grandmother. I went home. This is what you do when you’re from where I’m from. You go home. You sit with people. You kiss cheeks and squeeze hands. You laugh. You cry. You eat. Maggie’s grandmother was a wonderful woman. Her funeral was such an incredible testimony to her life—nothing at all like the quiet, simple service we held for my own grandmother this last weekend. The small Baptist church filled with people who had in some way been involved in her life. This is also what you do when you’re from where I’m from. You go to funerals for people you barely know—because you know that it means a lot to the people who are still alive. The people who are grieving. The definition of family gets wobbly and almost anyone counts. In the middle of the service, a group of six or seven cousins got up and sang old-fashioned mountain music. They sang her favorite hymns. It was so moving I couldn’t help but cry. This thing, this simple, old-fashioned funeral, was all about home. This is what it means to be from a place that is simple and full of grace. This is what it feels like to be around people who believe in the power of prayer and faith. This is what it looks like when family lines are large and undefined; where songs get sung around out-of-tune family pianos. Where stories get shared and stretched over the dinner table. Where simple things are still simple things. This funeral reminded me about what it means to be from this place—how lucky I am. How blessed.

Coming over the mountain into the valley I've called home for my whole life, I always sigh with a deep breath. My cell phone coverage breaks. The radio crackles. I roll all the windows down, hoping I’ll catch a whiff of that unruly honeysuckle bush on the side of the road. I turn on something like Gillian Welch’s Revival and sing all the words as loud as I can sing them. Something in my heart clicks into place. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this over the last twenty-six years. Every time I come home I hold my breath for this part. It’s like when you watch your favorite movie and there is a part you love so much that you can hardly stand to watch it; it feels like you’re too lucky to have that feeling on demand. There is this bend in the road where you start to go back down the mountain and suddenly all you see is this incredible panoramic mountain scene. It’s like my guilty pleasure. Within minutes you’re back in town. It’s done in an instant. But I love it. It means I’m home. And I hate that for so many years I couldn’t see it. I couldn't see anything but what I wanted to see. I only saw the red on the political map. I only saw the pick-up trucks and the trailers and the junk on front porches. I couldn’t see the things that mattered—the real beauty of this place. Not yet, atleast.

There is a distinct feeling I get when I get to a place I call home. There is a settled contentment in the pit of my belly. My body relaxes, my shoulders let loose, and my hips get low and wide. I feel grounded. I feel safe. I feel happy. I can take a deep breath and feel contentment as my lungs fill with air and release, slowly, with satisfaction. Over the years this place called home has become as undefined and wobbly of a word as family at a Baptist Church funeral. I’ve found home is in a lot of places. I’ve fallen in love with people and ideas all around the world. But nothing beats that mountain view. Nothing can compete with what my childhood taught me life was all about. Annie Dillard writes a lot of essays about nature. I’ve always connected to her work. She writes in A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.” This quote has somehow captured all that I feel about where I grew up.

I’ve moved to the creek. My life is complicated and messy and absurd. There is so much stuff in my life. But the mountains are home. They are quiet, and giant, and unshaken by my choices. In the chaos of the last few weeks, I’ve been reminded about what it means to have family. What it means to have faith. What it means to go home. In Ghana, people refer to this symbol Sankofa, a bird resting his head on his back, which symbolizes returning to one’s roots. Every now and then I need to go home. I need to return to my roots.

Today the weather turned cold. The leaves have already begun to fall. They hardly changed color this year and most certainly didn’t shine in brilliant shades of red and yellow. Autumn doesn’t happen here the way it happens in the mountains. I got sad. I missed the mountains. I wanted so desperately to be home. I had to push this desire to the side, recognizing my responsibility to my life in the creek, and simply dreamt about coming over that crest. I pretended I could see the mountains and the thousands of shades of orange the landscape becomes this time of year. I had to be satisfied with what I had in my memory. But deep in my heart, in the tiniest, most secret folds, I knew the truth about where I really wanted to be. And perhaps for now, that’s good enough.

Praying for Pink

I’m surrounded by noises that are rough and abrasive. I’m flying home from my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve spent the weekend listening to soft words. I've heard pieces of scripture read in soothing, quiet tones. We’ve shared stories and memories quietly with each other; gently acknowledging the way our eyes get wet in the corners when we think of her. We've been trying to be safe zones for each other, protecting one another from the outside. There has been a hushed silence forcibly placed on our lives this weekend without us asking for it—just an assumption that we couldn’t handle the noise that life makes all on its own. A correct assumption, I might add.

Suddenly I’m sitting in an airport, surrounded by people who can’t sense that the dark circles under my eyes are there because I haven’t sleep well in weeks. They don’t know that I’ve cried more in the last month than I have in the last year. They can’t tell from looking at me that last night I found myself so overwhelmingly sad, I had to excuse myself from a family dinner to run warm water through my fingers. That I had to sit down on the closed lid of a restaurant toilet to hold my face in my hands and take deep breaths.

There are children running around, with the happiness only children can have in an airport, and an anxious teenager behind me is chattering nonstop about her week at the beach. A woman across from me sloppily shoves food into her mouth—noisily chewing this disgusting thing an airport calls a sandwich. She drips food all over the seat she barely fits in. A man runs his wheeled luggage over my foot. He doesn’t apologize. And I can’t be upset with these strangers—these insensitive, disgusting, obnoxious strangers—because after all, I’m not walking around with a sign on my chest that says fragile. The experience is grinding and I can’t help but feel oppressed, attacked, and singled out.

The airport messages are blaring above my head, reminding everyone to limit their luggage, to queue up quickly and efficiently, and to follow the millions of rules that are now placed on all of us, surely, for our greater safety. There is a symphony of noise coming from behind the ticketing desk; clicking and beeping and the obnoxious noises coming from walkie-talkies. I feel like the people who work here have no regard for how noisy they make this space—how frequently their messages are repeated and overlapped with others. There are machines backing up. Loud people scream into cell phones. And I’m just looking for a quiet corner to sit in and write. I just want to release all the millions of things I’m thinking about right now. But I feel tongue-tied sitting here alone. I feel like I’m in such a strange space—this zone of grieving, sadness, and overall relief.

Finally, there is a break in the noise. A plane boards to Atlanta. For the time being, it appears the slobs, the anxious teens, and the insensitive owners of wheeled suitcases have boarded their plane to their final destinations. There is a soft silence that falls over this end of the airport. A wash of relief. A chance to breathe. Temporary, but necessary.

Four hours ago I sat in a quiet cemetery, thinking quietly to myself how peaceful this place is; an expansive cemetery covered in old live oaks. Moss hangs tenderly in the air. Despite the overwhelming sadness of this space, I’m astounded by how beautiful it is. As we sit through the short and tender graveside ceremony, I look forward at the small metal box that holds my grandmother’s ashes. I desperately want to open the box, let her breath in the humid Florida air. I’m feeling stifled thinking about an eternity spent in a small metal box. I want her ashes to float in the air—for her body to be here with us. I want her to be released, not held. I want her to laugh and share and cry together. I want to smell her—to feel her skin; to hug her soft frame. And I know that I’m being irrational—that what’s left in that small, metal box is basic biology. It’s the ashes of bones and cells and proteins. Her spirit has left us and gone forward. But I’m not sure how this space will feel without her. I’m not sure how long this sadness will linger.

Two weeks ago when I came to say goodbye to her, I knew death was around the corner. I saw him creep in with silent feet. I watched him slow her breathing and curl her toes. I listened, as she fought him entering her heart. He shut her eyes and turned off her memory, for good. But he did us all a favor—he stopped her pain. He ended her suffering. He closed her book. He wrote the final page. He took her home. And I can’t hate him for this. She was ready. She was tired.

But right now I’m sick to my stomach. I’m exhausted. I’m annoyed. I’m sad. I’m grieving. And I’m stuck in an airport—surrounded by all the things I hate most about America. I’m hoping that getting home and breathing deep makes this week easier. I’m hoping that all the people in my life can respect my need for quiet, my desperate hunger for gentleness. I’m hoping for relief. I’m praying for serenity and grace. On my first trip to Ghana, one of the people traveling with us asked the group, "I wonder what color the sand will be?" Another girl on the program thoughtfully responded: "I don't know but I'm praying for pink." This is what I'm doing right now. I'm sitting on a beach of gross, dirty, cold sand and I'm praying for pink.

The Sound of Dying

Sitting next to her bed, I can hear her breathing. I look over at a woman that vaguely resembles my grandmother. Her face has lost weight—her angular features looking even sharper in her final days of life. She stopped eating three weeks ago. She has had sips of juice and bites of ice cream, but nothing substantial. Her skin has become clammy. Her eyes are vacant. Out of kindness, one of the nursing aides has put lipstick on her. She has begun to moan. We can’t seem to discern whether this moaning is her confusion, brought on by the dementia that has plagued her for years now, or if she’s truly in pain. We can’t get comfortable in this space with her. It is too noisy. Her breaths fade in and out of being loud and quiet. When the breaths get too quiet we all hold our breath and look at her, wondering if this breath will be her last. We’ve decided this is a horrible day. One of the nurses reminds us: It is hard work to die.

I guess this is true. It is hard work to die. It is hard work to break down your body. You stop eating. You stop being hungry. You stop caring about everything else. You retreat into yourself. At some point, you just begin sleeping. And you sleep until you can’t wake up anymore. While sleeping, all these things begin to happen to your body. You get cold. Then you get feverish—like this final opportunity to sweat out what is left. Your feet begin to curl. From the bottom up, your body begins the shut-down process. Your lungs fill with fluid. You stop being able to swallow. It’s painful to watch—knowing how eminent death really is, but having no control over how and when. Eventually, your heart just stops. It gives up the battle. It’s like preparing for a trip—once everything is packed, all the lights turned off, and all the details are confirmed—you go. The hospice nurse tells us that the “spirit world” feeds her from this point forward and that she will get the energy she needs for dying from spirituality. I’m unsure about this nice, comforting thought. Right now I feel that every ounce of my energy is being ripped from me, stolen, and transferred, so that my grandmother can shut down her organs. I’m so exhausted I can’t even cry. I’m not even doing anything—just sitting. Just listening to the cacophony of noises her body is making.

I stand over her body and stroke her soft, grey hair. I whisper, “It’s okay, Grandma. It is safe for you to go. You’ll feel better.” I think about what might be happening inside her mind. They say people cross over in these final days; that they straddle both worlds—keeping one foot among the living and one among the dead. I wonder if she could communicate with her sisters and her husband Jack and her daughter Kathy. I wonder if they were calling out to her—“Boggie! Get in here! We’ve got so much to tell you!” She seems to be fighting death. I feel like my words would somehow comfort her; make it past the muck in her brain that has kept her from hearing us these last few days. No one else is believing this is possible, but I'm the ever-hopeful.

The skin on her forehead is already beginning to feel more like wax than skin. Her color has shifted drastically through the course of the day. She looks almost colorless now. I leave the room for some relief, to get out of earshot of the sound of dying. Down the hall an older woman wheels around in her wheel chair. All of the people on this floor have dementia. Visiting this floor requires patience—patience I fear I don’t have today. She wheels towards me, with a plastic baby doll in her arms, and begins the same conversation I’ve had with her three times already today. I politely smile, about to walk away and ignore her, and then I remember that this is someone else’s grandmother. So I ask her, “Do you need to know how to get to your room?” She says, “Yes. And you have beautiful teeth.” Outside of her door, she re-introduces herself to me. “I’m L.” I smile, despite my desperate urge to cry, “It was so nice to meet you, L. And your baby is beautiful.” She winks at me, “Thanks. He is my little treasure. Children, and visitors, are such a treasure.” Yes, L. They are.

It occurs to me that the staff here are saints. These men and women must have the same conversations and the same arguments everyday. Just in the last two days, I’ve already learned the routine with a few of them. You have to walk them to their rooms. You have to remind them that certain behaviors aren’t acceptable. Most of these people linger by the elevator, which can only be accessed with a code, hoping someone will take them off of this floor. They ask, “Where are we going?” and get upset when you say, “You’re staying here.” Many of them smile at you, as if you are their very own grandchild, because they don’t remember what their family looks like. That smile they have is so brief, that you don’t even have the heart to tell them that you really aren’t theirs. In twenty minutes, they won’t even remember you came in. Plus, anyone coming in is everyone’s family. There is an effective way to interact with patients with dementia—a nurturing lightness that requires empathy and patience. Dementia does horrifying things to the brain. I figure any softness they can experience with people is probably good, even though they won’t remember it.

B., a particularly sad, lost woman, wanders in circles, mostly. Her short shuffling footsteps don’t carry her far. She has been lingering outside of Grandma’s door. When I arrive at the door, I ask her, “Do you need me to take you to your room, B.?” She mutters, “Yes. What is happening in there?” I say, “Oh nothing. Margaret is just very sick.” She asks, “Oh. Do they know what’s happening in there?” “Oh, nothing B.” She asks repeatedly, “Did they figure out what’s happening in there?” I can’t help but wonder if B. can sense the death coming. They all seem to wander down here throughout the day, asking to come in, wondering what is going on. They say patients with Alzheimer’s are highly sensitive to emotions. Or maybe they just hear it. The rattling in her chest. The breaths that have become more shallow and sharp with each hour. The hospice nurse says, “There is hope in every hour with Hospice.” I'd like to hit her. I’m beginning to feel less and less hope in each hour. Hospice tries to make this experience pleasant for the family—they try to offer encouragement and advice to us as we struggle through this. I get it. But I can’t help but find myself agitated by the clichéd lines I’m being offered. I can’t help but want to throw things at these people. We aren’t stupid. Dying is hard. This is going to suck. Maybe I’ll print a brochure for Hospice to use for people like me—something that says, “The next few days are going to suck, but that’s why sweet baby Jesus invented bourbon. And cake.” Because the truth, is dying is hard work. For all of us.

Bees are Stuck in my Aortic Valve

It is 4 am. I wake up with a jolt. In my dream, a man pulls up into my childhood driveway. He gets out of the car with a gun. We lock eyes. I can’t seem to shut the back door. My mother is in the other room with one of my childhood friend’s babies. Strangely, this is a baby I’ve never even met—I’ve only seen pictures of her on Facebook. I’m afraid this man will come in the door. I’m on the phone with the police, reporting a suspected robbery down the street. For some reason, I hang up. Strange assortments of people are streaming through my living room. I can’t seem to get anyone to run out the front door. I’m so scared, I wake up, terrified of what will happen next.

I thought nightmares ended with childhood—wrapping up at right about the same time as when my chubby cheeks lost their charm and canned Spaghetti-O’s became unacceptable as a dinner option. But here they are, still speckling my REM cycles. Although I suppose nightmares have just become scarier, more real, now that I’m all grown up. Instead of dreaming about evil clowns and monsters under the bed (not that I ever had those nightmares), I dream about things that really haunt me. I dream about heavy things like death, deceit, and money. I’ve been working in an intensely poor urban environment now for almost five years. I confront evils on a daily basis that are darker than dark. I also watch too much television. And I eat a lot of spicy food. I’ve heard these things are interconnected.

For weeks now I’ve been having horrible dreams. I’ve been dreaming so vividly that I often wake up exhausted, feeling as though I’ve been up all night, acting in a play to a sold-out audience. My poor roommate has had to sit through weeks of my early morning rumblings of how bizarre my last dream was, who was in it (and where did they come from?), and my constant ponderings about what the underlying message is to all this active fantasy.
I can’t seem to help it. I’m sitting on heavy words. My grandmother is dying. These are hard words to say out loud. Words that tumble around in my mouth and brain like that game in the pediatrician’s waiting room—the giant maze of colorful wires with wooden beads, twisted and twirled around like a rollercoaster. It is a bizarre feeling knowing that you must say goodbye to someone—someone who has always been around in your life. Someone who taught you important things about yourself; who challenged you to be bigger and better than what you thought you could ever be.

I used to spend my summers in Florida. Grandma Boggie and Grandpa Jack were just about the best set of grandparents a kid could ask for—we went to the beach, we went to the mall, we watched The Golden Girls and The Price is Right (and lots and lots of soaps), and I got the opportunity to participate in the active lives of two amazing seniors. My developmental psychology textbooks all tell me this “intergenerational exchange” is extremely beneficial to the development of children. Anyone who has spent a lot of time with older people doesn’t need a textbook to tell them this. We helped with Meals on Wheels. We volunteered at church. We walked dogs. We read National Geographic. We baked cookies. My grandma taught me how to cook. My grandpa taught me the art of sarcasm. We laughed a lot.

But my fondest memories are of playing Scrabble. Grandma Boggie was an avid Scrabbler. She had the version of the game that twirled around on a table. We would climb into her, what felt like giant, full-size four-post bed and sink into crisp light blue sheets with eyelet trim. She would place the board in between us. I would run my little fingers over those square indentations, just perfectly ridged to hold my pathetic 3-letter monosyllabic word, dreaming that someday I’d have my very own Deluxe Scrabble, if I was lucky. I’d spend hours reading the scrabble dictionary—trying to force words into my vocabulary that I’d never remember to use when the time actually came to put my word down on the board. Every word I put down was a victory won. She taught me to love words. Even simple, stupid words. Especially two-letter, high-scoring words placed on a triple word score. Plus, she let me make up a few of my own rules. I guess she had her own rules, too.

Over the years I learned a lot from these two people. I spent a lot of time with them—asking tender questions about the world and trying to figure out just how exactly it all worked. I’m sure I challenged them—this loud-mouthed curly-headed baby from North Carolina. I was so confident and full of energy. But I was, and am, just like my mother. Except a bit more “out of the box” and bizarre—qualities I’ve happily taken from my father. So perhaps it was more of a review for them. A chance to spend quality time with a child, a generation removed, that was just like one of the children they had already raised.

When Grandpa Jack died, now almost eight years ago, I thought my world had stopped. The news crushed me. He had been such an amazing grandfather to me—I was desperately trying to figure out how I’d go on without his jokes. Without his commentary. I loved my Grandpa Jack. I know that no one is perfect, and Grandpa Jack’s life was living proof of this fact, but from my small, freckled vantage point, he was perfection. He was silly and smart and full of great ideas. I guess now I realize he was a Republican, but I feel sure he would have changed his mind for me. I could have bribed him to vote for Obama with a sweet smile, a good story, and a double scotch on the rocks (“light on the rocks”, as he used to say). I was heartbroken when he passed, although it was at the end of a long battle of illnesses and strokes. This, coupled with the death of a close friend from high school at about the same time, and I thought my life would never be the same. And I guess, in truth, it wasn’t. Nothing ever remains the same. All these years later, I still miss him dearly. But it doesn’t hurt as bad as it did that first year. And so much has changed. I was just a kid.

Grief has this funny effect. It’s like this heavy lead jacket. You walk through your day as if you’re on your way to get an x-ray, all day long. Occasionally you sit down, and the weight seems to temporarily disappear, but soon you feel it creep back into your bones. And after some time, after walking around feeling heavy for what feels like an eternity, you heal. You recover. Sometimes you still feel that deep heaviness—like the floors are sinking in. Like a man is pulling up in your driveway with a gun in his hand. But most of the time you’re okay. You remember the people you’ve lost in small bits—the way someone flips through their hair or a small smirk on a face. These are the happy moments through which you remember the people you’ve loved and lost. It is hard to make that compromise. Knowing how much you love someone, knowing they’re dying, and knowing that at some point in the near future their memory will melt into tender moments that are brief, albeit touching.

Over the last few years, we’ve slowly said goodbye to her. As her memory has slipped, it is has become harder and harder to call her Grandma. She isn’t the woman I spent summers with. She isn’t the woman who taught me to always serve blueberry muffins with chicken salad. She isn’t the woman who could never remember if the dog was a girl or a boy. Her body is there. She still looks the same, for the most part. She just turned 90 years old. 90 years and four children later, it is remarkable that she still has any semblance of that young girl from Arkansas that my Grandfather fell so passionately in love with so many years ago. She still has the same voice, although the sound has become disconnected. This disease, Alzheimer’s disease, took her away from us a long time ago. It’s like the words are all still floating around in her brain and she struggles to grab them—to pull them down and put them into a sentence. What comes out seems artificial, strained, lost. Like her brain has become one of those prize machines in the arcade that you pump quarters into constantly and rarely come out with a prize. The grabbing mechanism is flawed, intentionally, and you think you’re getting this awesome new stuffed animal and it almost always slips through the claw in the retrieval process. How frustrating this must be. How uniquely inhuman she must feel.

I still smell her sometimes. I catch a whiff of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door and I’m taken back to sitting at her vanity table, my little tan legs dangling wildly from the stool, rummaging through a drawer of twenty tubes of the same red lipstick. I can smell her powder. She’d be getting dressed for some occasion at the church—someone’s retirement party or anniversary. She had about four dresses she cycled through. Today she might choose the pink one with the big bow around the neck, worn always with a smart shoe. I’d play with her old wedge heels from the 60’s and 70’s and she’d gawk that she once wore such frivolous things. She never really let me get too carried away, always insisting that I remain appropriate—she fiercely held on to this idea of “appropriate”; decorously holding fast to some nameless tradition, which I of course felt was archaic. We fondly referred to it as her living testimony that she was indeed from the “fallen down aristocracy of Arkansas”. In reality, I think it was her attempt at creating order, despite our collective chaos. Today I relish in this decorum. I live by many of the standards she stated as fact back in those days and try hard to channel that dignified sense of propriety (perhaps a Southern trait?) she infused into so many elements of her life.

The memories are so real, so vivid, like my recent habanera-induced dreams. So it seems weird that over the last few weeks I’ve been struggling with saying goodbye. I have her, the grandma I want to remember, right here in my memory bank. I could spend hours telling stories. Going through pictures. Remembering her. I know, in my heart of hearts, that she has lived an amazing course. She has had unbelievable highs and unmentionable lows. She has survived 90 years of this world—this crazy, mixed-up, upside-down world. And I feel as though I’ve said goodbye one hundred times now. I’ve waited, with bated breath, these last few years for the phone call that would relay this sinking news. When I finally got that phone call, I didn’t react the way I thought I would. It struck me in such a strange place in my heart, I almost felt stung. Like a hornet had somehow weaseled its way into my bloodstream and was passing through my pulmonary trunk (does that even pass things?). It hurts. And I’m scared. I’m unsure about what will happen next. Like bees are stuck in my aortic valve.