simple's good.

This weekend I went to see my Grandma. She was sleeping when I got there. She is nearing the end of her life and I wanted her to wake for me. Just like a newborn baby, so I could see her eyes. She shook a little in her sleep; I could tell she was dreaming. Does she dream of her days spent in the nursing home? On her nightstand there's a picture of her the way I remember her. Does she dream of those days? Fire red hair, cigarette in one hand, gin in the other? Will I look like her?

I touched her skin, her shoulder, her collarbone. I wanted to feel frailty. There she rested in her bed, her breath like a snowflake hanging in the air, and it dawned on me that her life has become very simple. She wakes up, she lives. Nothing else. All the things that she has worried about in her days, all the things that ever held her back, are muted by the simplicity of her days now. I like her Zen but without the old and the sick and the lying in bed in a nursing home part.