Spitfire

When my mom and grandmother got out of the car, I did too.  Daddy didn’t want me to, but I had to go, and I don’t do well when people tell me what to do.  When I looked at the building, really looked at it, I was shocked.  It was the worst possible place I could imagine.  It was smallish, with yellowed bricks and surrounded by suburban nothingness-parking lots, Walmart, and creepy massage parlors that look like you might get raped instead.  A dead world with no visible people, just cars and dust.1

To get in, my grandmother had to punch a code into the number pad.  As she opened the door the cruel stench of dying and age reached my nostrils.  I closed my eyes and stepped back, part of me regretting my decision to come.  All around me were wheelchairs and little wrinkling people, the air frigid with the loss of hope.  Most of them were silent, losing themselves in memory as I know I would.  Some looked at me without blinking, etching their eyes on my back.  I looked down and put my sunglasses to my eyes.  I couldn’t bare to see their pocked, limp skin, couldn’t look into their sunken, pained eyes.2

Finally we saw him in a common room watching horse races on television.  Since last I saw him he had changed dramatically, he had shrunken and he looked like he had deflated.  He was in a wheelchair and his legs were frail and tiny, anorexic.  I choked back tears and smiled, held his hand so tightly, wanting to feel that he was still there.  The blue had faded from his eyes and they looked greyer than I had ever seen them.  Purple blood vessels protruded from his formerly tan skin.  I tried to block out his nonsensical speech and focused instead on the gold chain he had always worn around his neck.  It was some comfort that it was still there.3

I blinked the tears out of my eyes, trying to look as if I was happy.  Trying to pretend that my grandfather wasn’t gone.  Because this wasn’t him.  He was the strongest, bravest person I know.  And that man isn’t here anymore.  This withered person I try to hold onto is just a shell of Jack Leach.  My grandfather did no deserve this.4

When we walk out I put my hands to my face and will myself not to cry.  But I can’t help it.  I start crying and I can’t stop.  I put my sunglasses on again and the little girl inside of me runs away to fly with her grandfather.  5