It’s June 11 and the weather is still cold. I have six chapters of math to study, articles to edit, applications to review and Bukowski to read, if I have the time. I managed to work out for two or so hours this afternoon (in hope of it being some sort of catharsis), and babysat for the remaining daylight. I allowed the boy to watch seven consecutive episodes of television and left ten or so minutes early to take a drive by the beach (for my own mental health). Tomorrow is Sunday and I have some distant relatives coming to visit; we will make small talk at our dining room table and drink coffee in mugs, even though it will be night time. Yesterday was my nana’s 91st birthday and I did not give her a call and I did not go to visit her, though she resides in a nursing home only a few minutes away. It would be nice of me to say that I’m a shitty person at the least.
I told her last August that I would bring her out to eat, “sometime next week,” I said. And I watched her say okay and rub the tops of her wrinkled, thin-skinned hands. When I gave her a hug goodbye, I noticed that she had stopped wearing her overly potent perfume and no longer wore a bracelet around her wrist to hide its misshapenness. She had shaky arms when she put herself back in the wheelchair and I knew that she had begun to cry when I turned the corner of the door frame to leave. I thought once, twice, to turn around and give her another hug- an unspoken reminder that I would be back soon. But, instead, I kept walking. I got into my car and convinced myself on the drive back home that she was happy and that she enjoyed being there. I told myself that I had not seen her cry as I left, that other relatives would come soon to visit for fifteen minutes or so, and that that would suffice.
It was ten months of leafing through papers in small rooms, waitressing nightly, and attempting to sustain a long distance relationship that washed away the thought of my nana. I became so absorbed in my own narcissistic world that I had forgotten about childhood tea parties with her on her living room floor, buying plastic school supplies and pencils with her at the start of every school year because my single mother could not, and catastrophic baking in her kitchen, eggshells and all, while her old dog sat at my antsy feet.
“How much time is left?” I would ask, and she would measure time from the floor to the ceiling so that I could understand. I knew well enough that a foot from the floor meant that I would be leaving soon, and when the time came I would watch her through the window as my mother carried me back to the car.
Last August, she looked at me with sad eyes and told me that she didn't want my sisters and me to forget about her. But, I didn’t tell her that I couldn’t, that it was impossible. I was a coward then, and I still am.
When I was seven and my father had died, I asked her at his wake who would take care of us. It had been she who had kept me safe in her perfumed house with tea parties and cakes full of broken egg shells. And when she needed me after I had grown up, I had already convinced myself that I didn’t have the time and that her days were restful and easy and that there was sunlight, though all the walls were brick and cement. I was selfish- I am selfish- and became consumed in marking manuscripts, receiving paper paychecks, and reading poetry that advised me to acknowledge the transience of life. I became narcissistic and forgetful and had blatantly ignored the fact that my nana was unhappy and dying and that I did not care. I had pushed my promise to her to the back of my delusory mind and told myself that when I had left her last August that she did not cry, so I did not cry.
Tonight, I have six chapters of math to study, articles to edit, applications to review, and Bukowski to read, for my own sanity. I have alarms to set because tomorrow I have places to be and distant family to make small talk with. Soon, I will see see my nana to fulfill a promise I had made ten months ago. Still, I wonder how many moments I have left, if I can find the time, if I can find the time.
