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Vignettes
05/15/03
Vignettes
All that is left is a thinning wedding band,
Left, with respect, on a thinning, hollow hand.
Every time she moves wherever,
Her fingers shake,
The rings click together.
It's like a memoir of days from a time I've never lived, a place I'll never be and a face I only know. Is this the memory I will receive to smother all others of better times? This frail spectre of the past will never fit in. It elbows its way into my mind, but I know better.
And I want to wear her wedding gown, a reminder of once upon a time when there were still amusing love stories. How soon things change, how quickly we all end up fed and clothed by another aside from ourselves. Now it is: change her diaper, comb her hair, help her hold her sandwich. Give her her medicine, pick up her fork, tell her that today is really Tuesday and I am really called Cassie. I don't mind. I just know that everything must change.
Where is the shame for this naked, childish woman sitting silently in the tub? The lines of wisdom, time, and experience are blurred with plain old age, and I find myself treating her as a child of mine, yet I am the product of her lineage, not the other way around. And I talk to her as a child, for only then can she understand. She talks on the phone in Greek, so quickly, and the words only pop out sporadically. I hear clips of her world but can't fully understand. Maybe this is how it feels for her.
The wedding band is all that's left - an engagement ring of almost fifty years - everything else has changed.
Everything must change.
Everything else is different.
12 comments
You have a good heart,Cass, by God's grace. Keep at it. It's just, you know, one of those days. Or something. It'll pass. God is good. But I thank thee, my Martha. :) Isn't God so good to even let us see beauty in sadness? It's kind of like walking through an old house and you know that the walls have stories that they could tell but the house has been long aboandoned and there is no one left who knows the story. It's also like when you are ten years old, riding in your Dad's pickup on a drizzly Saturday morning and the radio is playing a slow classical piece. It' a beauty like that, a sadness with a hint of comfort that you wish could tell you its story. But even though you wait for it, that story never comes and you are only left knowing that it must have been a nice story.
When I get to be old and incapable of taking care of myself, I hope that I will have someone to be there to take care of me, someone who will be as loving and as caring as you have been to Yia-yia.
May God bless you for all that you have done. I loved the way you wrote that, Cassie, and had to send it to my mom. We've taken care of my two great-grandmas up until this year, when both of them passed away. Within a few months of each other. My mom says to let you know, you made her cry. The emotions it brought to me are indescribable. I love you, Cassie. Hey, I love you too, Kate. My parents and I were talking about you at your mom taking care of grandmas just last night, as coincidence would have it. It's not easy, that's for sure. wow. just, wow.
that made me think of a poem i read once by one of the greats (but i can't remember who). i envy (yet celebrate) your poetic prowess. Cass, did you know we're now grandmother-less? It's...weird. I can imagine. I always feel kinda weird when people talk about their grandma who is like... well, a grandma. It seems like the older we get the more things change, ya know? The whole thing about grandma's baking cookies for you changes. THat must be tough. Tell your mommy I said hello. And Josh. And Jennee, and your Dad. :) I only have one grandma and one granddad. I miss Grandma. She died when I was twelve. I've never met Grandad. I only have one grandma and one granddad. I miss Grandma. She died when I was twelve. I've never met Grandad. 
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