Wednesday, November 21, 2012

sweeter than a grape on a vine

Waking up with a tiny bit of hope changes a girl. It makes waiting for tea not so burdensome. And putting off chores not such a chore. It makes drinking tea with honey AND milk like a New Year's Eve Party. It makes "Unchained Melody" even sweeter, like the first love story. Hope does crazy things. And that's okay.

I may even just sit here, press these little buttons, make words and sip this tea like nothing is wrong... at least, just for this small moment, this brief sliver of time.

We all know, though, after the tea is finished, I'll stand up. I'll disturb the sleepy, black kitten and life will come back. My grandma is still (mostly) blind, I still have dishes to do and covers to fold, and the songs have moved on from love to betrayal.

Just like life. Never stops.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

I Think I'm Cured

It's been a long time. And I'm not going to sugar coat anything, so, be prepared for facts that slice through human bodies easily and without remorse.

Let's start with the basics: life can fuck you up. That seems circular, I know, but go with it. Truths are vague and ever changing and unfair. Existence is hard, because it is, and also because, if we go in and out of it, is it really existing. Okay. Basics covered.

Now, on to the hard-stuff: Remember my grandma who had the health scare? Well, it wasn't over. As it is with life, things only got worse.

She was finally diagnosed with Giant Cell Arteritis. The devastation is, though, she was diagnosed too late by her back-woods physicians. She has lost complete vision in her right eye and approximately 80% in the other. No peripheral. She'll close her good eye and cry about the "gray mud" she sees. "Gray mud" she'll cry - that's all I see. Now, the 20% she has retained is dim. She calls life the "Dark City" - and it wouldn't be so beautiful if it wasn't so shattering. She'll smile and shake her head and cry and convince me that she'll be fine living in the Dark City.

Yesterday morning she woke up and everything was a little dimmer. She began shaking and crying and we admitted her into the hospital again. This time in Indy. (We'll never go back to Ball Memorial in Muncie. Fuck those guys).

Blindness, guys. We are battling an auto-immune disorder that attacks blood flow to the brain- it's already killed one optic nerve and it's trying so hard to slaughter the other.

We're sad. My papa cries and cries when she's not around. She cries and cries when he's not around. We're all dying in the Dark City.

But I suppose we all are.

I will write more about this somewhere, sometime.