This afternoon I found myself in a hospice in the Bronx, visiting a great uncle of mine made skeletal by some form of disease or another, the unwelcome territory of the progression of age.
We came to his room greeted by an empty bed; an uneasy sight in a place like that. But lo and behold, he was down the hallway, shining sterille and smelling of amonia dreams and spittle on chins and stale gloves. Inching down the hallway slowly, balancing foot after foot on a walker with split tennis balls on either poled end to prevent scoffing the tile. Dressed in loose fitting pants that fell from his waist, emaciated and pallid arms, sunken cheeks...his eyes were huge and half closed under thick glasses that he could barely keep on his face; his stubble maintaining stubborn strands of black among the white and brittle majority.
I turned after initializing myself as my Father's daughter to him, having only seen him roughly 4 times during the entirety of my life. Behind me and quickly progressing I saw a woman, old, but happy, with eyes that were happily lost with a determined half grip and a European mouth.
"Bella!" she cried. "Oh, Bella!" She grabbed my arm and embraced me, holding me to her shaking chest. And I, after initial secondary bouts with shock, smiled halfly and held her to me quickly. She stood up straight and, before I could reilize anything else, began to dance. She grabbed my hand and told me to dance with her through thick accent, and so, dance I did. We spun in laughing circles, my father all the while absolutly hysterical with chortled laughter.
The room from which the woman had emerged was a room in which many other women sat, staring idly in circles to nowhere, some looking lost beyond conceivable return, and those that were lucid looking miserable beyond all possible conception. And the cycle ends and begins anew; the new generation of lost boys lay dormant and alone in nursing homes.
Another woman came out, mumbling incoherently and clutching a baby doll to her breast protectivly, eyeing both myself and my father with an inexplicably queer mixture of glad amusement and suspicious content. When my great uncle wanted to go to his room to the bathroom, his roomate, an ex-soldiur from the second world war, stood pants around his ancles and hopelessly shitting himself before the door.
My great uncle used the public restroom.
He wanted so badly to be outside, so we took him there, his hands cold and shaking, his nose protruding and his ears protruding furhter around his shrunken skin.And speaking to him gently of silly things, of simple things, of the functionings and progression of lives of family, we walked. He seemed indignant, and with good right. "Diane", my father began, reffering to the daughter of this man. "Do you know Diane?"
"Why the hell wouldnt I know Diane? She's my goddamn daughter!"
"Well...uh, sorry," my father started with a look at me and another half escaped chortle.
"So have you any friends here?" I quickly blurted. "Friends? I havent had the time to aquire friendships yet," he said, regal in his posture and tone. "I've only been here for two days..."
My great uncle George has been there for going on two years now.
My father got up to go to the bathroom, and that left me there with George. We sat, and I crumbled leaves from the bottom of a flower pot between two fingers. He looked at me for a minuite or two, and then out at the sky.
"It's too soon." he said suddenly.
"Too soon for what?"
"For death." he said.
I looked to him and I saw that there was an increadible sadness in his eyes. "It's too soon."
I spoke something to him, and began to try and say something of actual meaning save immidiate and useless sympathy, but the nurses had come. There was real recognition in him, though. And all I wanted was to extend myself. And all I wanted was to let him know that I was there to listen...and to tell him that inevitabilities are, although hard to ignore, ultimitly pointless to regret the timing of.
As he saw us off in the elevator, he walked away from his walker and he hugged me. He hugged me tight around the waist and I saw something in his eyes when I looked to him as the doors were closing. I promised to write him and to visit him again, and soon. And I want to, I truly want to. I barely know that man but feel such compelling love for him. I want to help him. I want to speak to him and learn him, I want to know him, and to see him off with as much ease as he can muster.
Jesusfuckingchrist inevitabilities are frightning and stonewalled, but love, love is fucking huge. For better or for worse, it is fucking huge.
*lana*
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