Grandmother Morphine
based on a true story. Names have been changed.

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I visited you today, although you probably won’t know it: you were already flying when I got there. It has been sometime since I’ve seen you on the ceiling, but I suppose I’ll get used to it. Lately, you’ve been up in the air more often than not; I hope you don’t fall too suddenly. Your old bones wouldn’t take the fall.

A guilty part of me wonders if that wouldn’t be better, and I push it away violently. Even if you could have died in his place, like you often say you want to, Grandfather would have never wanted to live on after his last attack; brain damage would have crippled more than his body. He never wanted to live anywhere that he couldn’t “piss in his own front yard”, as he said…but that isn’t you now, isn’t it? You now, you will hang on long after you should have been gone, even though you aren’t able to go out into your front yard.

You inquire about my health, and I answer you blithely. As usual, my attention is actually focused on your person. Are you eating right? Have you bathed lately? What about your back sores – the ones you get from being in your chair. Not a wheelchair of course, heaven forbid…only dependents would admit they cannot use their legs. It’s better to just stay at home…on the couch…watching television.

“So really, how are you?” I ask again, and the emphasis is lost on you. Not surprising – you’ve lost most of the wit you once had. How are you still living, Grandmother…that is a question I still fail to understand.

“I am just fine!” you reply happily, and as always, your treacherous hand leans for the pill bottle.

How long have you been a hypocrite? I want to ask. How long have you been killing yourself with a smile?

Pills to take in the morning; pills to take in the evening. Pink pills for rheumatism, blue pills for the resulting shakes. Green pills for your heart disease, and tan pills to keep the former from destroying your liver. And always, always white pills to chase them – codeine and tylenol and , nature’s wonder drugs. They sing to you, don’t they, sitting in their little bottle by the night-stand: the perverse sort of lullabye that’s all you listen to these days.

“We take them when we’re hungry, we take them when in pain.
We take them if it snows outside, we take them if it rains.”

So you do take them, just like the good doctor wants you to: you never drank much, but now you follow a bottle all the same. You take them to smile again, you take them to stop crying. You take them for a cold, for a headache, and even for a stubbed toe. And above all, you take them to stop the pain of living – even as crippled as you are, your body endures better than your mind, with its constant spiritual toothache. It doesn’t matter anymore to you now, does it? Your Granddaughter is getting married and you won’t remember her husband’s name; the pills make sure of that too. Is this what you want?

And it must be, I realize slowly, because there isn’t a Grandmother under that faded pink nightgown anymore – only the Wolf, with cold and calculating eyes. How can it pry sympathy out of well-wishers? Who can it guilt trip into letting it survive? And above all else, how can convince everyone – yourself included – to bring it more pills?

And for the first time I see how kind words can hurt…nice-sounding phrases calculated to cut at me, well-timed remarks that are truthful enough to slice down to the soul. Yes, Grandmother, I do not visit you much anymore. What big eyes you have, to notice that…and not the rest of my life. No, Grandmother, I did not tell you I would get your medicine out of the safe...your big ears hear very selectively, it seems. And behind it all, that squirming, nasty feeling bleeds through your filmy eyes, and I know beyond a doubt that you are already dead. The woman who raised me, the lady I loved so dearly, is gone.

I have no time for tears because you need your bath, and I draw it accordingly. You complain the whole way about the pain and ignore the way my knees groan as I kneel to wash you; you stumble purposefully when you let my helping hand go, just so you can blame everything on me. I tuck you into bed, and for one fleeting moment you are yourself again—you turn to me like a lost child.

“Janie…” you whisper incredulously, as if you haven’t seen me for years. Your withered old hand hunts for mine longingly, and I seize it my strong one. It feels like a bag of bones, jumbled loosely under folds and folds of skin. These hands that taught me as a child, baked my bread, sewed my clothes, carried my burdens…the burden is all mine now.

And for one brief moment, I think can make a difference…I open my mouth to tell you so many things. How I missed you so, while you’ve been out in space; how her son needs his mother after his father’s death. How much I love you, just in case I never see you again. I start the first of so many words…

Then your eyes flicker toward the pill case, and we lose each other all over again.

Goodbye, Grandmother.

Hello, morphine.

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