Everything seems measured in Morphine now.
At times Billie is incoherent. Trying to communicate, through the Morphine that so eases the pain and offers energy, but the drug also jumbles the words and thoughts. Grandma is aware that she's saying "nutty" things and this increases her frustration.
Saturday was a day of rollercoasters. Billie seemed horrible during the morning, then she rallied in late afternoon when several women from the Adult Apartment house she lives in stopped by to visit.
My sister brought my grandmother's great granddaughter Kelcie to visit, and at one point Kelcie stole the show when she climbed up on a chair and told Billie that she loved her, in that shrill high pitched voice that only a two and a half year old girl can share. I tried to keep Kelcie occupied, which involved a lot of creative energy, a digital camera, and being "pretend happy".
Keeping a two and a half year old occupied for several hours in hospital, stretched all my creativity. Yet the distraction, and the focus on someone so innocent and unreserved, provided an escape from the sadness. Still, children know-They might not understand, but they know. Kelcie seemed exceptionally well behaved, was full of hugs and generous unsolicited "I love you's". The pictures shot by my mother and my sister certainly capture this.
In the evening, things went downhill. Unexpectedly after we'd just finished feeding grandma things deteriorated in a scene I never want to experience again. You pray for God's mercy and his angels and then you see something like this and it makes you wonder just where in the hell is He? Has God gone HMO as well? Mercy is no longer covered in the plan?
Eventually things in that room did calm, but whatever relief the dose of morphine provided earlier was gone. Returning to Billie's side on the disheveled bed, I listened as she continued to tell me things important to her, struggling to set the record straight or at least put them into some order. Her final words to me, as I got up to leave were, "Timbo timbo watcha gonna do-e o..."
This was first my grandfather's song, then my grandmother's, yet it is also one that my folks have mimicked.
Leaning down to kiss her forehead, she held my hand. "Tim, I've always loved you. You know that?"
I choked out an affirmative.
"But, You still can't dance. You look like your having seizures."
I listened as she struggled to describe me, as a kid with my walkman, dancing on their back patio, and that those gyrations had produced serious concern among both Billie and Orin. "We thought you'd grow out of that. But you never did. Promise me you will?"
"Grandma, you know I can't do that! I got to dance my own way."
"Well I guess you have to do what you have to do." She smiled, gazing up at me. Her eyes were that deep, big sky blue, now only slightly hazed from the drugs and medical issues she faced. Ever since I was a kid Orin and Billie teased me about my dancing, and they'd imitate me, flying around their kitchen or following one another around the patio, as if it was pow wow season, arms flailing. One time I'd looked at my grandmother and said, "I don't look like that."
My grandfather pausing, mid pose, had looked at me and said, "Oh yes you do Timbo. You really do."
I suppose at a time like this, more than at any other, we all have to dance like Kurt Vonnegant's infamous speech. Whether in grief, sadness, or in the joy's of our memories, it's important to "dance like no one is watching".
Because those steps are sometimes all we have leading back toward where we came from.
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