"If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."

~Billie Holiday

#10 - The Matriarch

There were tremors in her body and an emptiness in her eyes. She looked straight ahead, pursing her lips carefully, breathing with a heaviness that dared to make each breath her last. And yet she pulled herself out of the recliner, cane held firmly in her right hand, and slowly walked me to the door. I slid my right hand into her left and held it lightly. If these were our last moments together, I would give her all of my love, all of my heart, and all of the tenderness I could offer. The Matriarch.

-

Her smooth hand slid into mine as we made our way to the door. Does she know what I only vaguely know? Is this the moment that she fears is the last? I move slowly. "We sure do miss you," I say. "We hope you come home soon." She hugs me twice—her body that has changed into womanhood now stronger than my own—and I wonder. I can see her outline, I know her voice, and I am not quite ready.

I am not quite ready.

Writing Prompt #11

"I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of."

~Joss Whedon

Choose one (or multiple) to write about:

A character that has a trait you wish you had.

A character that does not possess a fear that you personally have.

Something you are afraid of that you can explore through writing.

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream..."

~C.S. Lewis

Writing Prompt #10

Write a memory that you have about a grandparent.

Now write about it from your grandparents perspective.

#9: Redo

If you could visit anyone on the planet right now, who would it be?

---

“Can I rephrase that?” I’d say, standing in the doorway of 1994 by my grandfather’s hospital bed— but this time as an adult, in an adult body, and with a more fully developed adult mind and understanding of the situation and its repercussions.

I would go stand beside my younger self and beside that hospital bed where my grandfather lay, broken but peaceful, a mixture of chemicals keeping him sedate. With one hand on my younger self’s shoulder, I would stroke my grandfather’s cheek. I would tell him I love him—and mean it—and of the moments I wish I could remember and the home videos I wish I could make real—and not just fiction—in my mind again.

I would tell him that Grandma is still here with as much life as ever, though she is slowing down, and there seems to be a bit of sadness and quietness in her eyes now. She’s going blind and she fell down a couple weeks ago, but she’s okay. 

She still keeps his photo by her bedside.

Then I would sing to him. I hope he can hear me—the nurses said he could hear me.

In real life, I am not there. But years of loss and grief, I hope, have shaped the way I approach such pain and sadness. I wish I could take that moment just one more time.

My mother once told me that, as that timid and uncertain little girl, I had reached out and held my grandfather's hand. "When you took his hand, he tried to open his eyes," my mother told me. "He wanted to open his eyes so badly."

I remember nothing.

I yearn for a redo—I yearn to love more fully and with more intention. And I hope my grandfather, in his heavenly home, heard me rephrase that.

"Thatched Cottages at Cordeville" by Vincent Van Gogh

"I've just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting."

~Vincent Van Gogh