my mama and aunt were here this past week, as u know if u've been reading, which i suspect you havent. when the phone rang late yesterday evening, the though flashed quickly across my mind but i dismissed it. still i wasnt surprised to hear the urgency in my mama's voice or see her brow furrow the way it does when she's worried but too busy trying to fix things to show it. it was her youngest sister, my other aunt; she'd been staying with my granny while my mother and aunt were up here visiting me. she got to the house from work that evening and found my granny in the house, drooling, unresponsive, and unable to speak.
once, about two years ago i think, my mother and i got home from the movies to find her sitting on the front porch swing in the same manner. my mother had me go call 911 while she tried to rouse her out of it. she eventually did, though she was speaking unintelligibly for awhile, audibly clear but nonsensibly. she was fine after that. the dr's called it a seizure, i called it (and still call it) a fainting spell due to dehydration. it was hot, she drinks too much caffiene and not enough water. i fainted once & was very confused when i came to, as she was.
this time though, she couldn't speak at all, it all came out garbled, slurred, childlike, and even after she snapped out of it, her speech never returned.
my aunt said she was hard to understand but she was able to make out that she had fallen in her bedroom (this is what my granny told the aunt of mine who found her; its still unclear whether she fell as a result of the stroke, or if she had the stroke because of her fall).
i should stop her and correct myself; im not trying to jinx anything or speak anything into existance--it's possible that my granny had a stroke. when they got her to the hospital, they ran some tests, the results of some are yet to be analyzed. but the dr who examined her said that it was more than likely a stroke. she napped in the emergency room and when she woke, she was fine physically--walking, moving about, fussing because she wanted to go home. by all accounts, as far as i know, she's been fine aside from her speech.
so it hasn't yet been confirmed, but when i heard about what happened, the first thing i thought abt was a stroke. either that or some sort of paralysis. my neice's mother called me while i was at work today and gave me an update; she said that she was fine but her speech was still really bad, and she'd get frustrated to the point of tears when no one could understand her. she said that she understands that she's had a stroke, and she kept rubbing the side of her face, asking if everything was okay, if she looked alright (afraid of the paralysis). that gave me some hope. she was in nursing school for awhile so i asked her if she'd ever regain her speech, and she said it depends; it could be back tonight, could be back in a week, could be a month or a year or never. they'd just have to see how extensive the damage was.
my mom and aunt were supposed to leave tomorrow morning. they left this morning instead to be with my granny.
i don't know much about strokes. i have a rough knowledge of what happens, and ive seen the after effects (one of my granny's sisters-in-law had a bad one and now has limited use of the left side of her body). but i dont know any details; i dont know what happens to the body during a stroke, i don't know what life is like for the victim in the immediate minutes afterward, and frankly i don't want to know. if i do know, i'll put my granny inside those details; i'll imagine her alone in the house, in the bedroom she loves so dearly, slipping, tripping on something, or her knees simply giving out; falling, flailing, convulsing; going rigid and laying, just laying until someone finds her; grabbing and reaching for the corner of her chest or a handfull of her bedspread to try and try and try to pull herself up. its disturbing. also disturbing is the thought of her never being able to talk again. i love to hear my granny speak. her accent, the phrases she uses, her sayings. they're beautiful; sometimes when i think about certain things i do so in her voice because hers has more color. but there's already so much she can't do, and she already wants to die (or puts on that she does, at the very least); this would be a massive, massive blow. they're going to take the house from her; i figure that's pretty definite. at her age, and in her condition, both now and before the potential stroke, she shldn't be living in a house with lots of steps for her to fall down and a sprawling backyard with an alley she doesn't know how to stay out of where she's alone for 10+ hrs a day. but that house is her pride. taking it will make it official for her: everything she's ever worked for will have been taken from her; she'll be rendered helpless, considered an invalid, treated like a child, and no longer the woman life forced her to be when she had her first child at 17. she'll feel that she really has nothing to live for now, become more depressed. these are all worst case scenarios, of course; i'm hoping for the best and trying to remain optimistic, but sometimes it's hard to do when reality is boxing your ears and spitting in your face. of everything possible, her morale will suffer the most.
i love her so much.
i can't imagine her not here anymore. i mean i wonder about it at length sometimes; i peer over my fingers, crossed for good luck before i uncross them to go knock on some wood somewhere, and watch a parade of 'what ifs' in secret before i start to feel bad about it. but she's 80 years old, and i know people don't live forever. and i know she's had her share of medical troubles--borderline ovarian cancer, triple bypass heart surgery, impacted bowel surgery, degenerative disk disease. but still, ive never really thought it possible for her to go, i guess. she's so strong, man--two different people have said that to me of her in the past day, she's so strong--and so constant, so unchanging. so... i dunno.
i read a book once. i think it was called 'woman on the edge of time' or something like that. my memory is fuzzy, but it was about a woman who visited the future, and it was all about how the customs had changed, what they thought of people from her time, etc (i feel like ive discussed this book and the passage im about to proceed with here already). in the future society, they let people die when they wanted to; this was very odd to our woman on the edge of time. the future people went on to talk about how selfish it was to make someone stay alive even when they didn't want to, strictly because we didn't want to let them go. i think there may be truth in that; a man dying of AIDS, who will inevitably die--is it wrong for him to want an end to his suffering? is it wrong to let him? is his grieving mother reason enough to keep him alive, thus creating two grieving souls? life is always the answer, according to us. i wonder about that; i wonder if there are any souls stalking the earth who would trade heaven for another shot at life (those other than those who were not ready to go). and i wonder about people who committed suicide. how many of them wish they hadn't done it? how many would walk back through the portal were it reopened to them? how many would turn the clock back to that precise moment, just before they pulled their triggers, right before they tasted their arsenic?
at any rate, i'm afraid to toy with such ideas, that death isn't a bad thing and nothing to be feared. in fact, it is my biggest fear, and it has a profound effect on my happiness and the way ive been living or trying to live my life. i know that death is a part of life. but when i hear that phrase, "death is a part of life," i think about the circle: baby is born, baby grows up, grown up lives a great, long life, grown up grows old, old person grows older, old person dies of old age, gets buried, becomes soil, becomes an apple tree, the fruit of which is used to make baby applesauce and thus the circle begins again. but it's not so clean. i have experienced too much unexpected death not to be afraid of it, i think. and by too much, i mean only three instances, two family members, my cousins whom i speak of often here, i think, and a sunday school teacher of mine who was killed in a car crash when i was in middle school (or elementary school, i forget which). i think that's what did it. before that, death happened to old people when they had lived enough--my great grandmother for instance. she was very old, in her 90s i believe. and my great uncle john henry, also old. but when ms. royals, my sunday school teacher, died, it was then that i saw that no one was safe, no one is immune. and growing older and simply watching the news everyday (especially in THIS city), that fact becomes realer and realer to me everyday. the crime rate is rising, AIDS is spreading, ppl are generally unhealthier, nuclear missiles, suicide bombers, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes--any of us can go at anytime. with this in mind, i wanna do everything now. now. i wanna write this novel and have it sell big right now; i wanna do somethin with all this love i have inside of me right now; i wanna travel the world and live big til im 30-35 and have babies right then if im fortunate enough to make it that long (which i pray feverishly that i will be, everynight), because who knows what'll happen? who knows?
who fucking knows.
who knows anything these days.
im confused about lots of things. im even confused abt what im confused abt so i wont even start rambling about that.
anyway, im afraid for my granny and terrified for us. something in me tells me she'll be around for awhile. its a simple assumption to make; anyone who knows her would say the same thing. still, i worry. i havent cried yet, and havent really tried to. i spoke to my mother today while she was with my granny; she said she was speaking better and asked if i wanted to talk to her. i did want to, but i cldnt. i can't bear to listen to her like that. i felt guilty for that and still do, but i'd be upset, and i didnt want her to hear me upset because i didn't want to further upset her any.
i wish like hell that i was home right now. i'd go to that hospital and sit with her every day, every single day until she came home, just like i did when she had her stomach surgery. it's crazy.. i talked to her on the phone the night before for the first time in like a month or so. im so glad i got to do it then. before we hung up she said she was gonna send me some money to bring me home for a visit, and she told me that she loves me better than anything else.
i have to call her more.
im trying tno to think abt it too much because i know if i do i'll feel guilty abt having moved. 'if only i was there...' i dont know what i cld have done. i wld have found her sooner, if nothing else--she told my aunt that she had been like that, unable to talk, all day (the details of when everything happened are still blurred, at least to me); and one of her church members called my other aunt, saying that she'd heard that my granny cldnt talk, which suggests she'd tried to answer the telephone after it happened... man, the thought of her being all alone in that house like that for so long...
i try not to think abt it.
she's lucky. we're lucky. and exhausted.
im very tense. im still transitioning from old me to new me (somehow), and settling into this apartment (it's lonely being in it alone right now, especially when i want to be with my family at home in ky, and if not them, my family here in philly, and plus this apartment will feel strange and lonely to me until im here long enough for it to become part of my familiar), and im gettin impatient with my writing (its still there, it just doesnt come when i want it to), and this job situation is starting to stress me (i havent heard anything at all from the folks at penn, not by phone or email), and im lonely. im drinkin this weekend. if nothing else, it'll loosen up my body and muscles. that'll be enough for me. maybe a smidge more to get me gigglin. i need a good laugh.
in other news, my birth control pills got lost or hidden from me in the move. it's been a week. i'll start bleeding as a result in about another one. won't THAT be fun.
i'll post pics of my new place as soon as all these boxes are out of it.
if ur the praying type, please pray for my granny. if ur not, do whatever you do to bring about good things. if anything.
