The last memory I have of my grandmother is holding her while the cancer took away her body and the morphine took away her brain. Maybe reverse that. Maybe this isn't true but it's the last memory I will think about.
High dose liquid painkillers don't end the pain, if you ever wondered. They turn your day and night inside out, so 4 am is your afternoon tea, even if you can't keep it down. Even if nothing at that point could keep anything down. But yeah, those painhiders: they shove the reality to the side and present you with a mountebank smile to distract. Better living through chemistry based on a domino effect of synthesized neural reactions that cause illusions. They make pain less important than the pretty sounds and colors. It doesn't matter that it isn't real. Maybe none of it matters at the end of the day. Or the middle of the night. It's what you need.
It's more than 3 months later. It still doesn't matter that it isn't real. I wake up straining to hear my name at 1, 2, 3 am. I worry that she needs me. She needs the messy version of who the chemicals told her that I was, the gnat, her twisty little bug, to hold her down to this earth. Or maybe to help let her down gently, to help her let go. A part of me will never let go and will always be straining to hear her ask for me in the dark. I can't say I really mind. Maybe.
Most days, the reality that I want to set to the side is that she gave me this huge gift. I read somewhere once some advice: "Some day, someone you love is going to die. Then you'll realise none of this matters." Maybe that was the gift. Maybe it's that she is helping me break free of this cycle of debt, from this job, from this life that I am trying so hard to make work that is breaking me down, piece by piece, without the benefit of medicinal sleight of hand to take my mind off of it. At least I know it doesn't matter.
But all the electrical impulses and axons and dendrites and misfires in all the world cannot push reality aside enough. And the reality is, every single damn day, I would give anything to have this gift taken away and have it/they/Whomever give her back to me. No matter the cost. At almost the height of his ecstacy, I'm sure Icarus regretted the gift of his wings. If I fly close enough to the sun, I can melt away this freedom and dip back into the ocean, where I belong. But wait. Maybe that's what's not real. Maybe that's the symptom. Because underneath this false shelter of nihilism, in this pain, it's that she was ever here at all. It's this gift that makes me fireproof and lovable and unstoppable. It's this gift that lets me give and give and that let me hold her, and care for her, and protect her dignity, that showed me that I can do these things. That I can give and never break.
So, maybe the gift is that she loved me and that little feather in my cap was the source of my strength all along, Dumbo. Or maybe it's that I could love her, without condition, without question, to the bottom of my soul. Maybe it's the simplest thing in the goddamn world and all these chemicals and emotions and synapses bumping along together just managed to achieve creation of something better. Of a life and a strength and a legacy. Maybe I can use this and make her so damn proud.
Because at the end of the day, maybe I don't need to mask a damn thing, because this is all that matters.
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