Two Tear Drops

“What are you thinking about?” he asks me, and the waves hum silently on the shore. Here I am, here I go, I am gone, they say. They tease me with their temporality.

“I was just wondering if my grandma has ever seen the ocean,” I said, and the tears were warm, salty, sudden, like the water.

And I don’t know if she has seen the ocean, if she has breathed New York air, or seen San Francisco’s Haight-Asbury. I don’t know if she has seen the naked bums in Austin, or the Flatirons in Boulder. Does she remember the grandiose of Vegas, and is Chicago still on her mind? Has she experienced the peace in Guatemala or the pain within her own home? Does she know what it’s like to kiss in the rain, and was there something she regrets, early on, that she can never take back? When she remembers life, does she remember salt and pepper scrambled eggs and the Nutcracker Ballet at the Buell Theater? Is she mad at him, or at her, or at us, or at anyone, and does sorry ever cut it, even when you’re dying? I do not know, and for that, I am sorrow-stricken.

She has to be scared of dying.

Where do we go? What is ever after? And she will never go home, they say. I wonder if she ever said goodbye to her pillow, her shoes, and her Cabbage Patch doll telephone. Did she bid farewell to the dishes, dirty in the sink? Or the sewing machines, lining the walls where my mom used to sleep? What about the hard boiled eggs still uneaten and the diet coke cans in the fridge? Who will consume them; will they die along with her? When will we have the heart to throw her crocheted Chap Stick holders in the trash? And are these things still in your mind while you are dying?

And no, a higher voice says from above. You do not think about things, but about the moments. So, I think about an Italian bus driver taking out a young girl that had dreams of becoming a stewardess. And I think about matching Easter dresses, and the momma who made them. The dolls, the costumes – they dance and curtsy, thanking their creator. I think about unicorns, and how real they felt every year with her, and I think about my own mother, crying so hard, because she’s losing the only thing that’s always been constant.

Gramma is dying of lung cancer.

Listen: Steve Wariner, Two Tear Drops