Showing posts with label Gloria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gloria. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Exit, Stage Left


SWISH. That's how I feel right now. Like a basketball shot clean through the center of the hoop. Its after-wind whistling through the net...rippling those nylon diamonds as it drops and rolls across the court to uncharted destinations.

Yikes! The saga of G.G. continues. In my last post, I wrote: G.G. left behind a husband who doesn't even know she's gone. Doesn't know his own name. Doesn't even remember that she existed. They told him she had passed. He doesn't know the difference between G.G.'s death and stuffed eggplant.

I was so wrong. Me. The one who's spent countless hours studying recollections people have of what transpired around them when they were unconscious, sedated or in Near Death Experience. I've read enough case studies from medical journals to know that there is a high incidence of recorded cases where people could quote, verbatim, what was said or done. Enough to know that, despite being in the last stages of Alzheimer's in a coma and on hospice, G.G.'s husband, T.G., could comprehend the that she was gone.

When my brother told T.G. that she had passed, he also told him that if she was the reason he was holding on to life, he could let go now. And after G.G.'s memorial service, he went back to tell T.G. that we had held a memorial for her and had honored his life at the same time. All of their mutual friends and family were there, as was his hospice worker, and it just seemed fitting. Less than 8 hours later, T.G. left his body.

Since he and G.G. met, he had always bobbed along behind in her determined wake. It was like she made one last grand exit, spun on her heels, and with a haughty SWISH of her cape, wrapped it around him and...ZOOM...they were gone. Both in less than a week. Leaving together in death as in life.

I'm the one left standing here with eggplant all over my face. Thanks, T.G., for the wake up call. Bon Voyage...but I have a feeling I'll hear from you again.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Faux Spring Day


Bagging their droplets, the rain clouds

have swished on to shower other states.

Some drier.

Some whiter.


Gray and wet skies have

lost their hand to the

blue and the sunny.

We welcome the break with

open windows and doors

letting in 70 degree temperatures...

letting the breath of warm breeziness

stir the curtains.


People smile...

Inwardly and outwardly.

Shorts and flip-flops,

ball caps and muscle-man T's

bare flashes of white, pale skin...

blinding affirmations of the coming warm.


Animals soak up the warmth of El Sol.

I swear they are smiling too.

Especially those happy California cows.



The steady drone of mowers

and weed eaters from across the way

accompany my walk to the mailbox.

And clean it smells...and green.

Fresh soaked earth--steaming.


And one family member

chooses to leave her body

during this brief respite.

She saw the Light...

too bright to ignore.


Goodbye, G.G., I'll miss you.

But you were wise to

make your move now.

This won't last,

It never does.

It is just a faux spring day.