As You Are

A warm late summer sun shines, ignorant of the changing seasons and the chill of winds at night. You keep light clothes easily accessible, glancing at your sweaters in bemusement. It's a morning as sunny as many, many years ago, and that day barely makes the front page anymore: the earth revolves perpetually, it is a comforting fact. Time will pass whether you are ready for it to, or not; I bookmark foliage maps and will myself to accept the coming of the dark. Three years ago I crossed the ocean to watch my grandmother die before my eyes and the fall was beautiful then, too, it was warm, and still, and vibrant, and we sat in the sunny window reading poetry. I knew she was mostly elsewhere already, a tiny frail bird in oversized sweaters and hospital underwear, ready to return to her childhood north and she saw only my mother in my face. I stayed long past visiting hours while the nurses left food for me in the fridge that I could not will myself to eat. Late at night falling into the kitchens of my friends as they tended my wounds: I thought family is created, they did not falter.

The last day, I read our favorite poem, and the light in her eyes returned. She looked into my tear-soaked face, listened intently to every line and nodded. We both knew it was the last time we read these words together, but in every line lay the previous thousand times we had. In every last trill lay years upon years of laughter together. The last time I hugged my grandmother and told her I loved her was only one time of countless; maybe it was unique, but it was only confirmation of a love we no longer needed words for.

I still hear her laugh in mine sometimes. It is light, like the lemon curtains of her kitchen window, like the pink magnolia in her backyard, like the way she only ever wanted beauty and joy in the world, it dances to the ceiling. I still hear her laugh in mine.

And so she is not gone.