Read this while listening to this
You A, were so elegant, and so caring. “I am the riverbed, and you are the dove. I’ll stay on my side and be embraced by love”. The lights flare, I’m talking to you A, you dropped me off, you came to say hello to Oma. You’ve shared so many days with me there, cooking them dinner with me, and watching wheel of fortune. You went home to go and study, you dropped me off there when the darkness first set in the night during these cold winter months. You spent almost every single day with me when we were together, and in this demise, we are reunited. While I watch my world burn, and I feel the guilt of having prolonged my grandmother’s life because of the continuous pain pump medication being intravenously fed to her. You calm my soul. You ground my being. You hold me, cradle me. Sooth me.
We say elephant shoes, which is our I love you. A, you have no idea just how much I love you, how much I need you, how much you make me a real person. You say goodbye, and I say… what if today is the day, and without a thought, you tell me that if I call, you’ll be right back. You will come to rescue me. My sweet prince you are. February 25th of 2018, a fresh into the morning, when it’s darkness, others would be stumbling out of the bars around this time… drunk staggering home. I’m here sitting in a chair beside my grandmother’s bed… inside this hospice, this beautiful hospice. My aunt and uncle are telling me stories of my father growing up. We are chuckling. I’m paying attention to my Oma’s breathing, and I’m picking it up… I know this is diminished, reduced. I know she’s fading. I know in my heart of hearts… this is the day.
I’m watching your mottled skin Grandma, I’m observing the cyanosis… the blue tinge to your caring face. I know… it’s time. I get up and say… she’s actively dying now… my aunt and uncle don’t believe me, but I go and get the nurse practitioner… and she clarifies that I am right… and the first thing I do… is I call you A. I’m in tears… you tell me you’re going to be here as fast as you can from Guelph to Kitchener. Then I call my sister, my brother, my father… I call everyone. And my mother was driving my father here, and he was so upset, everyone was so upset because in my grandmothers’ final moments, she had but me, my uncle Todd, and my aunt Kathy. And that pain… those tears we shed as we all held my grandmother’s hand and watched her disappear. Will forever change us. We watched her die. My heart sunk into an under toe. My lungs filled with so much pressure, I could not breathe. I was dying from grief.
“I fear this thread, that weaves it’s way around, drag me high above, and push me to the ground.” You call me A, you’ve arrived, I come out to greet you to let you into the building. I open the doors and I meet you a few steps, and you’re already there holding me, and my knees give out. And I can’t stop choking on the air, stop choking on my tears. And like you did when I first saw you again, you whisked me up into your arms and carried me. You kissed my forehead, you cradled me. You held me so tight, you absorbed my pain into your own body. You A were my salvation in that night. And in the spitting rain, we had this precious moment, that you’d only see in the Hollywood screens. But this was the reality, this is how much you love me, and how much I love you. You will always be my hero.
You tell me to give you my house keys, that this moment and this ceremony of saying goodbye is for me and my family… and although I don’t want you to go…. You go. You carry me inside, I give you my keys, I ask you to not go, you stay until everyone else arrives… and that the minute I get home, you’ll be outside to carry me inside. “I am the riverbed, you are the dove, I’ll stay on my side, and be embraced by love”
Open the Flood Gates 