Porno For Pyros
Part 6.
After a week of being together, Amy asked me a question. This question reaffirmed one she hadn’t asked yet.
“So, you’re taking me to prom, right?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me at all. But this was the first time I’d been asked directly to take a pretty girl to a dance.
There was that time in high school, years ago, when Amy Dick IMed me asking if I would take her to my school’s prom. That really doesn’t count because we didn’t know each other all too well. Then there was that time when Erica Slutsky almost asked me to the same dance, but I had already accepted the other offer out of desperation, so I let her down gently. It was refreshing to - finally - feel like I had received a direct question from a girl. Perhaps taking her to prom would push all of that teenage regret out of my mind. Would it? I was leaning in her favor, but I wasn’t sure.
Actually, I had already said “yes”.
This prom would be special. In high school, when I drove a station wagon and had no money, I never thought to do something like rent a hotel room, adorn a bed with rose petals, or light a hundred tealight candles. I was terribly insecure, and was always saving something for just the right girl. Somewhere since then, I had left behind that attitude. Even though we had only officially been going out for a month, I knew Amy Kelley was that girl.
I knew I had wanted to do something surprising, to “get back” at Amy for surprising me, but the thought came late. It started with the idea of a hotel room, which she herself had suggested. I bluffed a bit when I heard it, telling her I didn’t have the money, when I actually did. That idea spawned a chain reaction in my mind.
Creative energy burst forth. I spent a week planning on how to execute the ideas I had, and in the process generated new ones. I scrambled back and forth across town getting the materials necessary for the feat. It took lots of time to prepare everything; lots of lists and mental scheduling. It was no small task, and to be able to pull it all off under Amy’s nose was challenging. So I hid everything like a buried secret.
The Saturday of prom had come. I woke up early that morning to get ready. I got the last couple of items on the list, everything we would need. I loaded my car up with supplies and headed out to the hotel to check in. I breezed through the process, and nonchalantly hauled everything from my car up to the room, which took more than a couple trips. I set everything up and double-checked. Good to go.
It was a clear, beautiful April day. Amy had been at the annual Renaissance faire, hanging out with her goofily-clad friends. Just before finishing up at the hotel room, she texted me asking where I was. It was almost four in the afternoon!
I sped out to Sedgwick County Park, where the fair was held. I parked, called Amy, and we both spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to sneak me in. They had a neon plastic fence draped around the entire area, and it was nearly impenetrable. Nearly, for their main weakness was in having a lake.
My jeans had gotten wet even after I had rolled them up. Filthy Kansas water.
Amy and I walked around the foot-trampled grounds of the Renaissance faire in an attempt to find her friends, who apparently didn’t want to be found. After finding a few, she had to say goodbye to them, as we needed at least an hour to get ready. Becoming overwhelmed with a sense of urgency, I floored it all the way back across town to my house.
After a violently quick shower, I donned my brand new suit, an expensive Christmas gift from my grandma. Amy was getting ready in the other bathroom. After I was ready, I nervously paced around the house, waiting for her to finish up. We had reservations. Sitting in my living room in a three-piece suit and worried about being late to dinner, I imagined ourselves as a rich married couple.
Long after our dinner reservations were effectively nulled, Amy opened the bathroom door. She wore a black and silver dress which fit her perfectly. Her face was somewhat made up, something that doesn’t happen often with her. Dark eyeshadow, blush, and lip gloss, the latter of which I found extremely sexy. Her lip gloss didn’t survive long, it never does.
I handed her the corsage, which a local flower shop had delivered but never billed me for. We headed off to Sweet Basil, a quite nice Italian restaurant, to see if we could salvage what was left of our dining security. Dozens of promfolk were there. Tuxedos and dresses. You could smell the money burning.
After only a few minutes of waiting, we sat down, had some wine, ate some great food and a lovely dessert. Amy and I talked with tenderness and sincerity. My mood changed from one of nervous concern to one of bliss and enjoyment. At once, I was not concerned about how I looked in my suit, or how the rest of the night would go. I was in for the ride and I was going to enjoy it.
When paying the bill, I wondered: Could it still be considered a “date” if I was already in love with the girl?
We showed up at the dance an hour late. This was fine, since they usually take an hour to get started. The party was at the Radisson hotel, and inside the convention room was a DJ with a smattering of lights and video equipment. The theme was “A Sky of Diamonds, an Ocean of Pearls”. I imagine they came up with this because whatever nameless student committee involved was considering a theme like “A Night Under The Sea”, when all of a sudden “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” came on the radio, and no one could make up their damn minds.
Amy and I hit the dance floor, and expressed our excitement through a series of wild body gestures. To unrecognizable pop beats I was again visited by that crazy meth addict who used to bounce off people in the atrium at Derby High. But, this time, we had gone together, and I felt extremely fortunate to be able to share in her madness.
There was a banquet of finger foods set up nearby, but we were way too full to stomach any more. We ate some anyway. And, in that manner, we danced ourselves sick. Later, we got professional pictures taken. We snatched souvenir keychains and glasses from the glittered tables. Amy’s corsage kept falling off. My shoes were uncomfortable. It was the whole prom experience.
The dance ended, and we were invited to one of Amy’s friend’s houses. I agreed, even though I was working on a way to get her to open my car’s glove box.
Still in our formal dress, we sat on a matted carpet floor and inhaled cigarette smoke. She smoke was coming from the fingers of Melody’s mother, an enormous cow of a woman, who was also apparently pregnant with her 187th child. Through puffs of tobacco, she swore loudly at her daughter, who then retaliated with gossip and sex jokes.
Ah, I thought, so this is what I wanted to avoid.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“I don’t want to be rude,” Amy replied.
“I don’t care,” I said.
On the couch near the far wall were two young men who sat with blank expressions on their faces. They hadn’t said a word the entire time.
Amy spoke up. “Five more minutes, then we can leave.”
After five agonizing minutes spent staring at my watch, we stood up and walked out. We let the gossip continue to flow, the brothers continue to stare, and the mother’s body continue to swell over the sides of the couch.
“If you want, you can put your things in my glove box,” I said.
“No, I’m okay,” said Amy.
This would probably be the only time I would curse Amy for being so damned modest. Next, I’d pretend to be lost.
“Where’s the map? I think it’s in the glove box.”
“I know exactly where we are,” Amy said.
My plan might not trigger as easily as I had hoped. Getting Amy to do something out of suggestion only seemed a one-in-a-million shot. She yawned. “I’m getting tired,” she said.
“No, you can’t get tired!” I drove her to a park to make her walk around, because being tired was worse than stabbing me in the face at this point. I started off on a nice moonlit walk, but after about twenty feet, Amy said that her shoes hurt.
“You know what,” I said with a groan. “Here’s what you’re gonna do.” I walked back to where I had parked. “You are going to get in my car,” I unlocked the door. “And you are going to open the glove box.”
She found that the only thing inside the glove box was an envelope with her name on it. She opened it. Inside was a card, printed just for her. On the front was a list of reasons why I loved her. And, nestled on the inside of the card, was a keycard to a Hyatt hotel room. She gasped and hugged me.
We drove to the Hyatt, parked, and hit the button for the top floor. I let Amy open the door to the room, and she walked in. She saw a big white bed with a dozen red roses, and multicolor rose petals scattered around them. On the bedside table was a metal ice bucket with a bottle of wine rising out of it. On another table were three long red candles in a holder. A large stereo system hid underneath this table. Arranged in a circle around all of this were dozens of little tealight candles.
In the bathroom, I showed her that I had gotten some bubble bath solution, “just to consider, no pressure”. The bubble bath I got was actually Mr. Bubble. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were more options than what I could find at Wal-Mart.
I went back downstairs to my car to get a couple things. When I came back up, I found Amy in a chair. She was crying.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“No one’s ever loved me this much before.”
We held each other for a long time. Then, although she was still tired, I got her standing back up and helping out with the candles. We had fun lighting all of them, while the stereo beamed the voice of Frank Sinatra. We burned some incense that Amy got at the Renaissance faire earlier that day. We’d set the perfect romantic mood.
-
Sunday dawned, and Amy and I woke to the sun in our faces. We ate an expensive but disappointing breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I tried to hold back my opinion to keep Amy’s mood high.
We packed up the hotel room and spent the afternoon together at the Renaissance faire. We drank honey mead and ran away from Bryna, who was again wearing her Christmas tree dress! And a couple people commented on how Amy was, indeed, wearing my shirt. We watched a pirate show and looked at countless pieces of merchandise. We stayed until the fair ended, which was just before sundown.
I took Amy home and kissed her goodnight. I took the short drive back to my house, where I spent the rest of the night sitting around and watching television. After a late night phone call from Amy, which was full of happiness and love, I plunged myself into my bed and fell asleep, anticipating class the next morning.
April 25, 2005.
The standard stuff. I woke up to my clock radio. Took a shower that lasted too long. I got dressed in something comfortable. I passed my mom, who was at the dining room table looking at a phonebook. I looked around for all the textbooks I needed for class that day. I was about to grab a quick breakfast and head out the door when I heard my mom yelling for me.
I ran to where she was, next to grandma’s room. I’ll never forget the next four words she said.
“I think she’s dead.”
Wide-eyed and mouth open, my grandma stared at the ceiling. My heart sank. Mom called 911, who told her to attempt CPR. Having been a nurse, she had done it before. But she followed the 911 operator’s instructions anyway.
Nothing happened. They wanted us to take her off the bed and put her on a hard surface and try again, but that was impossible for only me and her to do that ourselves.
Firefighters came. Our housecat tore across the carpet in fright. They got her off the bed and onto the cold tile floor. Again, they tried CPR. And again.
An ambulance arrived. They got a defibrillator machine and shocked her a few times. They hooked a line to her leg and let blood flow to an upper area of the body. They hooked a heart monitor up to her and saw no reading. Nothing was working.
I looked at her from a few feet away. She was surrounded by huge men in black and yellow, but she could not see them. Pale forehead and white hair, huge glazed eyes staring at the ceiling.
It was no use.
My mom started crying because she thought it was her fault. Just a few minutes earlier, she had tried feeding grandma some soft food. She then began coughing, and didn’t stop for quite a while. Thinking she might have been choking, my mom started looking for someone to call in the phonebook. The number for the hospice. But when she returned to her bedside, she was gone. I consoled her and told her that it definitely wasn’t her fault. Soon, she edged back into reality.
Darrel showed up right after the ambulance. He got there extremely fast, even if he did live only a mile away. But my other brother, Mark, lived across town. He had been mysteriously absent during the four months since my grandma’s stroke, and we both called him up and told him to come over now.
But for some reason he went to the emergency room.
Darrel called him back and tried to talk Mark into coming over to the house, but he didn’t seem to understand. “He’s fucking on drugs again, that dumbass.”
A few months earlier, Mark had begun acting strangely. It started with a phone call at 11pm, to our mom. He started rattling about something that had happened almost a year earlier. My mom just hung up on him, thinking maybe he was sleep-talking. Then, a couple of days later, he lost his cell phone and couldn’t find where he had parked his car. Thinking they had been stolen, he called the cops, who found his car and called his dad. Mark was sent to the emergency room where his blood tested positive for opiates. He was on some kind of illegal drug, but we never found out exactly what. Only that they turned him into the dumbest human imaginable.
After that incident, Mark had been completely clean. Up until the time when he actually needed to be.
After an hour of cell phones and complete bullshit, his truck pulled up in our parking lot. The ambulance had already left at that point. He stumbled out of his stuck, acting completely stoned.
“Nice to see you could make it, buddy,” I said to him with as much poison that I could possibly mix into words.
“What?” He said sleepily, completely unknowing.
“You’re too late,” Darrel spoke up, quietly. “She didn’t make it. She’s gone.”
I saw his reaction. My anger faded into regret.
Sobbing, Mark stumbled into the house, past the policeman who was sent for a report, and into my grandma’s room. He found her on the floor, with a white sheet covering her. He started to bend down.
“I don’t think you wanna do that,” Darrel said.
He did anyway. He lifted up the white sheet, exposed the cloudy white eyes of my grandma, and gently kissed her on the forehead.
Darrel and I both looked away. Tears flooded my eyes. I began sobbing.
I cooled myself by pacing around the house while things got settled with the police, and finally the mortician. Mark had said that he was going to drive to the store and get some cigarettes. No, I can’t let you do that, I said. I’ll drive.
Mark, who was sobbing in a Walgreens on a beautiful sunny morning, said, “she was a good woman.” I paid for the cigarettes, it was the least I could do.
I had the task of informing just about everyone. Calling them up in the morning and hearing them break down. Some were sadder than others. I was sad too, but somewhat relieved.
Back around March, my grandma’s Medicare was running out, and we wanted to take her home from the specialty hospital instead of paying their huge bill. Despite their advice to the contrary, our house was well equipped for her. We had an adjustable bed, wheelchairs, walkers, ramps, lifts. Furthermore, my mom had been a nurse for almost twenty years. We were ready, so we brought grandma home.
On the first day home, she and I had a conversation. An actual conversation. Yet, she asked many of the same questions repeatedly, so much that she finally asked me to “write everything down”. I did. I wrote you had a stroke in January, and the month is now March. You had to have surgery on your head. You were at the hospital, but now you are home.
After this conversation, though, she became less and less concerned about her situation and surroundings. Soon, she wasn’t speaking unless you asked her first. Then, you had to ask repeatedly.
Getting her in her wheelchair every night for dinner started out easy. The process took about three minutes with no complaints from anyone. But it quickly turned into one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, even with all our equipment. Things just became more and more difficult, and we couldn’t determine the cause. We thought it was the lift, so we had the lift replaced. Then, we had problems with the sling, so we got that replaced. Nothing was working correctly, and then we just realized that my grandma was getting less and less cooperative.
Soon it was hard to get her to eat anything. She wouldn’t keep her false teeth in her mouth. This lead to what was probably the most stressful moment of my life. My mom, shouting at the top of her lungs, “put your teeth in!” I was shouting it too because I wanted mom to stop shouting. I was throwing stuff around the kitchen and breaking things because I was so irritated.
Then, during the nights, she moaned loudly with each breath. A soul-clenching, painful moan. For hours at a time. When asked if she was having pain, she always said no, but I think that she had misunderstood the question, or had just forgotten how to say yes. She was losing all of her personality and just ended up babbling things.
In my mind, it was not fair at all. For a woman to live a life that was as self-sacrificial as hers, being like a mother to everyone, saving all of her money and never spending it on herself; to be in such agonizing pain, and for so long. She shouldn’t have to die like this.
The last time we bothered trying to get her into a wheelchair, she shouted at us to stop. We gave up when she started calling for her mother, who died twenty years ago.
My optimism and hope faded. My belief in any kind of other-worldly presence escaped me entirely. In my mind, I was absolutely certain. There was no God.
We drove two hours out to Wakita, Oklahoma for the funeral. They have a tradition of serving food before the ceremony. It was lunchmeats and cheeses for making sandwiches. The eulogist was not well versed in English, even though he was whiter than Ryan Seacrest.
It was an open casket funeral. The coloration was not right, it looked like someone had spraypainted my grandmother yellow. It was sickening. Still, I touched her hand and told her thank you. We all stood around her casket sobbing, and my mom asked me a question.
“She got on our nerves sometimes, but we loved her anyway, didn’t we?”
I nodded.
My brothers and I all wore the suits she had bought us, less than six months earlier, for this very occasion. It felt strange, since I had already worn this suit that week.
We gathered with my mom, dad, and aunt Debbie. Multiple pictures were taken of what was left of my family.
Although I accepted it, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea that she was gone. The empty room where she once lay and watched television seemed too quiet.
After a week of being together, Amy asked me a question. This question reaffirmed one she hadn’t asked yet.
“So, you’re taking me to prom, right?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me at all. But this was the first time I’d been asked directly to take a pretty girl to a dance.
There was that time in high school, years ago, when Amy Dick IMed me asking if I would take her to my school’s prom. That really doesn’t count because we didn’t know each other all too well. Then there was that time when Erica Slutsky almost asked me to the same dance, but I had already accepted the other offer out of desperation, so I let her down gently. It was refreshing to - finally - feel like I had received a direct question from a girl. Perhaps taking her to prom would push all of that teenage regret out of my mind. Would it? I was leaning in her favor, but I wasn’t sure.
Actually, I had already said “yes”.
This prom would be special. In high school, when I drove a station wagon and had no money, I never thought to do something like rent a hotel room, adorn a bed with rose petals, or light a hundred tealight candles. I was terribly insecure, and was always saving something for just the right girl. Somewhere since then, I had left behind that attitude. Even though we had only officially been going out for a month, I knew Amy Kelley was that girl.
I knew I had wanted to do something surprising, to “get back” at Amy for surprising me, but the thought came late. It started with the idea of a hotel room, which she herself had suggested. I bluffed a bit when I heard it, telling her I didn’t have the money, when I actually did. That idea spawned a chain reaction in my mind.
Creative energy burst forth. I spent a week planning on how to execute the ideas I had, and in the process generated new ones. I scrambled back and forth across town getting the materials necessary for the feat. It took lots of time to prepare everything; lots of lists and mental scheduling. It was no small task, and to be able to pull it all off under Amy’s nose was challenging. So I hid everything like a buried secret.
The Saturday of prom had come. I woke up early that morning to get ready. I got the last couple of items on the list, everything we would need. I loaded my car up with supplies and headed out to the hotel to check in. I breezed through the process, and nonchalantly hauled everything from my car up to the room, which took more than a couple trips. I set everything up and double-checked. Good to go.
It was a clear, beautiful April day. Amy had been at the annual Renaissance faire, hanging out with her goofily-clad friends. Just before finishing up at the hotel room, she texted me asking where I was. It was almost four in the afternoon!
I sped out to Sedgwick County Park, where the fair was held. I parked, called Amy, and we both spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to sneak me in. They had a neon plastic fence draped around the entire area, and it was nearly impenetrable. Nearly, for their main weakness was in having a lake.
My jeans had gotten wet even after I had rolled them up. Filthy Kansas water.
Amy and I walked around the foot-trampled grounds of the Renaissance faire in an attempt to find her friends, who apparently didn’t want to be found. After finding a few, she had to say goodbye to them, as we needed at least an hour to get ready. Becoming overwhelmed with a sense of urgency, I floored it all the way back across town to my house.
After a violently quick shower, I donned my brand new suit, an expensive Christmas gift from my grandma. Amy was getting ready in the other bathroom. After I was ready, I nervously paced around the house, waiting for her to finish up. We had reservations. Sitting in my living room in a three-piece suit and worried about being late to dinner, I imagined ourselves as a rich married couple.
Long after our dinner reservations were effectively nulled, Amy opened the bathroom door. She wore a black and silver dress which fit her perfectly. Her face was somewhat made up, something that doesn’t happen often with her. Dark eyeshadow, blush, and lip gloss, the latter of which I found extremely sexy. Her lip gloss didn’t survive long, it never does.
I handed her the corsage, which a local flower shop had delivered but never billed me for. We headed off to Sweet Basil, a quite nice Italian restaurant, to see if we could salvage what was left of our dining security. Dozens of promfolk were there. Tuxedos and dresses. You could smell the money burning.
After only a few minutes of waiting, we sat down, had some wine, ate some great food and a lovely dessert. Amy and I talked with tenderness and sincerity. My mood changed from one of nervous concern to one of bliss and enjoyment. At once, I was not concerned about how I looked in my suit, or how the rest of the night would go. I was in for the ride and I was going to enjoy it.
When paying the bill, I wondered: Could it still be considered a “date” if I was already in love with the girl?
We showed up at the dance an hour late. This was fine, since they usually take an hour to get started. The party was at the Radisson hotel, and inside the convention room was a DJ with a smattering of lights and video equipment. The theme was “A Sky of Diamonds, an Ocean of Pearls”. I imagine they came up with this because whatever nameless student committee involved was considering a theme like “A Night Under The Sea”, when all of a sudden “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” came on the radio, and no one could make up their damn minds.
Amy and I hit the dance floor, and expressed our excitement through a series of wild body gestures. To unrecognizable pop beats I was again visited by that crazy meth addict who used to bounce off people in the atrium at Derby High. But, this time, we had gone together, and I felt extremely fortunate to be able to share in her madness.
There was a banquet of finger foods set up nearby, but we were way too full to stomach any more. We ate some anyway. And, in that manner, we danced ourselves sick. Later, we got professional pictures taken. We snatched souvenir keychains and glasses from the glittered tables. Amy’s corsage kept falling off. My shoes were uncomfortable. It was the whole prom experience.
The dance ended, and we were invited to one of Amy’s friend’s houses. I agreed, even though I was working on a way to get her to open my car’s glove box.
Still in our formal dress, we sat on a matted carpet floor and inhaled cigarette smoke. She smoke was coming from the fingers of Melody’s mother, an enormous cow of a woman, who was also apparently pregnant with her 187th child. Through puffs of tobacco, she swore loudly at her daughter, who then retaliated with gossip and sex jokes.
Ah, I thought, so this is what I wanted to avoid.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“I don’t want to be rude,” Amy replied.
“I don’t care,” I said.
On the couch near the far wall were two young men who sat with blank expressions on their faces. They hadn’t said a word the entire time.
Amy spoke up. “Five more minutes, then we can leave.”
After five agonizing minutes spent staring at my watch, we stood up and walked out. We let the gossip continue to flow, the brothers continue to stare, and the mother’s body continue to swell over the sides of the couch.
“If you want, you can put your things in my glove box,” I said.
“No, I’m okay,” said Amy.
This would probably be the only time I would curse Amy for being so damned modest. Next, I’d pretend to be lost.
“Where’s the map? I think it’s in the glove box.”
“I know exactly where we are,” Amy said.
My plan might not trigger as easily as I had hoped. Getting Amy to do something out of suggestion only seemed a one-in-a-million shot. She yawned. “I’m getting tired,” she said.
“No, you can’t get tired!” I drove her to a park to make her walk around, because being tired was worse than stabbing me in the face at this point. I started off on a nice moonlit walk, but after about twenty feet, Amy said that her shoes hurt.
“You know what,” I said with a groan. “Here’s what you’re gonna do.” I walked back to where I had parked. “You are going to get in my car,” I unlocked the door. “And you are going to open the glove box.”
She found that the only thing inside the glove box was an envelope with her name on it. She opened it. Inside was a card, printed just for her. On the front was a list of reasons why I loved her. And, nestled on the inside of the card, was a keycard to a Hyatt hotel room. She gasped and hugged me.
We drove to the Hyatt, parked, and hit the button for the top floor. I let Amy open the door to the room, and she walked in. She saw a big white bed with a dozen red roses, and multicolor rose petals scattered around them. On the bedside table was a metal ice bucket with a bottle of wine rising out of it. On another table were three long red candles in a holder. A large stereo system hid underneath this table. Arranged in a circle around all of this were dozens of little tealight candles.
In the bathroom, I showed her that I had gotten some bubble bath solution, “just to consider, no pressure”. The bubble bath I got was actually Mr. Bubble. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were more options than what I could find at Wal-Mart.
I went back downstairs to my car to get a couple things. When I came back up, I found Amy in a chair. She was crying.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“No one’s ever loved me this much before.”
We held each other for a long time. Then, although she was still tired, I got her standing back up and helping out with the candles. We had fun lighting all of them, while the stereo beamed the voice of Frank Sinatra. We burned some incense that Amy got at the Renaissance faire earlier that day. We’d set the perfect romantic mood.
-
Sunday dawned, and Amy and I woke to the sun in our faces. We ate an expensive but disappointing breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I tried to hold back my opinion to keep Amy’s mood high.
We packed up the hotel room and spent the afternoon together at the Renaissance faire. We drank honey mead and ran away from Bryna, who was again wearing her Christmas tree dress! And a couple people commented on how Amy was, indeed, wearing my shirt. We watched a pirate show and looked at countless pieces of merchandise. We stayed until the fair ended, which was just before sundown.
I took Amy home and kissed her goodnight. I took the short drive back to my house, where I spent the rest of the night sitting around and watching television. After a late night phone call from Amy, which was full of happiness and love, I plunged myself into my bed and fell asleep, anticipating class the next morning.
April 25, 2005.
The standard stuff. I woke up to my clock radio. Took a shower that lasted too long. I got dressed in something comfortable. I passed my mom, who was at the dining room table looking at a phonebook. I looked around for all the textbooks I needed for class that day. I was about to grab a quick breakfast and head out the door when I heard my mom yelling for me.
I ran to where she was, next to grandma’s room. I’ll never forget the next four words she said.
“I think she’s dead.”
Wide-eyed and mouth open, my grandma stared at the ceiling. My heart sank. Mom called 911, who told her to attempt CPR. Having been a nurse, she had done it before. But she followed the 911 operator’s instructions anyway.
Nothing happened. They wanted us to take her off the bed and put her on a hard surface and try again, but that was impossible for only me and her to do that ourselves.
Firefighters came. Our housecat tore across the carpet in fright. They got her off the bed and onto the cold tile floor. Again, they tried CPR. And again.
An ambulance arrived. They got a defibrillator machine and shocked her a few times. They hooked a line to her leg and let blood flow to an upper area of the body. They hooked a heart monitor up to her and saw no reading. Nothing was working.
I looked at her from a few feet away. She was surrounded by huge men in black and yellow, but she could not see them. Pale forehead and white hair, huge glazed eyes staring at the ceiling.
It was no use.
My mom started crying because she thought it was her fault. Just a few minutes earlier, she had tried feeding grandma some soft food. She then began coughing, and didn’t stop for quite a while. Thinking she might have been choking, my mom started looking for someone to call in the phonebook. The number for the hospice. But when she returned to her bedside, she was gone. I consoled her and told her that it definitely wasn’t her fault. Soon, she edged back into reality.
Darrel showed up right after the ambulance. He got there extremely fast, even if he did live only a mile away. But my other brother, Mark, lived across town. He had been mysteriously absent during the four months since my grandma’s stroke, and we both called him up and told him to come over now.
But for some reason he went to the emergency room.
Darrel called him back and tried to talk Mark into coming over to the house, but he didn’t seem to understand. “He’s fucking on drugs again, that dumbass.”
A few months earlier, Mark had begun acting strangely. It started with a phone call at 11pm, to our mom. He started rattling about something that had happened almost a year earlier. My mom just hung up on him, thinking maybe he was sleep-talking. Then, a couple of days later, he lost his cell phone and couldn’t find where he had parked his car. Thinking they had been stolen, he called the cops, who found his car and called his dad. Mark was sent to the emergency room where his blood tested positive for opiates. He was on some kind of illegal drug, but we never found out exactly what. Only that they turned him into the dumbest human imaginable.
After that incident, Mark had been completely clean. Up until the time when he actually needed to be.
After an hour of cell phones and complete bullshit, his truck pulled up in our parking lot. The ambulance had already left at that point. He stumbled out of his stuck, acting completely stoned.
“Nice to see you could make it, buddy,” I said to him with as much poison that I could possibly mix into words.
“What?” He said sleepily, completely unknowing.
“You’re too late,” Darrel spoke up, quietly. “She didn’t make it. She’s gone.”
I saw his reaction. My anger faded into regret.
Sobbing, Mark stumbled into the house, past the policeman who was sent for a report, and into my grandma’s room. He found her on the floor, with a white sheet covering her. He started to bend down.
“I don’t think you wanna do that,” Darrel said.
He did anyway. He lifted up the white sheet, exposed the cloudy white eyes of my grandma, and gently kissed her on the forehead.
Darrel and I both looked away. Tears flooded my eyes. I began sobbing.
I cooled myself by pacing around the house while things got settled with the police, and finally the mortician. Mark had said that he was going to drive to the store and get some cigarettes. No, I can’t let you do that, I said. I’ll drive.
Mark, who was sobbing in a Walgreens on a beautiful sunny morning, said, “she was a good woman.” I paid for the cigarettes, it was the least I could do.
I had the task of informing just about everyone. Calling them up in the morning and hearing them break down. Some were sadder than others. I was sad too, but somewhat relieved.
Back around March, my grandma’s Medicare was running out, and we wanted to take her home from the specialty hospital instead of paying their huge bill. Despite their advice to the contrary, our house was well equipped for her. We had an adjustable bed, wheelchairs, walkers, ramps, lifts. Furthermore, my mom had been a nurse for almost twenty years. We were ready, so we brought grandma home.
On the first day home, she and I had a conversation. An actual conversation. Yet, she asked many of the same questions repeatedly, so much that she finally asked me to “write everything down”. I did. I wrote you had a stroke in January, and the month is now March. You had to have surgery on your head. You were at the hospital, but now you are home.
After this conversation, though, she became less and less concerned about her situation and surroundings. Soon, she wasn’t speaking unless you asked her first. Then, you had to ask repeatedly.
Getting her in her wheelchair every night for dinner started out easy. The process took about three minutes with no complaints from anyone. But it quickly turned into one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, even with all our equipment. Things just became more and more difficult, and we couldn’t determine the cause. We thought it was the lift, so we had the lift replaced. Then, we had problems with the sling, so we got that replaced. Nothing was working correctly, and then we just realized that my grandma was getting less and less cooperative.
Soon it was hard to get her to eat anything. She wouldn’t keep her false teeth in her mouth. This lead to what was probably the most stressful moment of my life. My mom, shouting at the top of her lungs, “put your teeth in!” I was shouting it too because I wanted mom to stop shouting. I was throwing stuff around the kitchen and breaking things because I was so irritated.
Then, during the nights, she moaned loudly with each breath. A soul-clenching, painful moan. For hours at a time. When asked if she was having pain, she always said no, but I think that she had misunderstood the question, or had just forgotten how to say yes. She was losing all of her personality and just ended up babbling things.
In my mind, it was not fair at all. For a woman to live a life that was as self-sacrificial as hers, being like a mother to everyone, saving all of her money and never spending it on herself; to be in such agonizing pain, and for so long. She shouldn’t have to die like this.
The last time we bothered trying to get her into a wheelchair, she shouted at us to stop. We gave up when she started calling for her mother, who died twenty years ago.
My optimism and hope faded. My belief in any kind of other-worldly presence escaped me entirely. In my mind, I was absolutely certain. There was no God.
We drove two hours out to Wakita, Oklahoma for the funeral. They have a tradition of serving food before the ceremony. It was lunchmeats and cheeses for making sandwiches. The eulogist was not well versed in English, even though he was whiter than Ryan Seacrest.
It was an open casket funeral. The coloration was not right, it looked like someone had spraypainted my grandmother yellow. It was sickening. Still, I touched her hand and told her thank you. We all stood around her casket sobbing, and my mom asked me a question.
“She got on our nerves sometimes, but we loved her anyway, didn’t we?”
I nodded.
My brothers and I all wore the suits she had bought us, less than six months earlier, for this very occasion. It felt strange, since I had already worn this suit that week.
We gathered with my mom, dad, and aunt Debbie. Multiple pictures were taken of what was left of my family.
Although I accepted it, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea that she was gone. The empty room where she once lay and watched television seemed too quiet.