07:40:35

 

It didn't occur to me that if you make an emergency call and report that you believe your stepson is not alive, the news blotter might put it in the 'fainting' category.  Fainting... I wish.  

It took Kaleb four months to address me by name.  It was not lack of respect, quite the opposite actually.  This was my Kaleb.  Shy, silly, quiet, and he didn't want to lack the respect of saying someone's name without the familiarity of informal formalities.

In the wildest of horrible thoughts would I have ever imagined a few short years later, the girls and I would be sitting in a cold, laminate, fake wood, booth at Stewarts,  waiting for the coroner to take Kaleb's body away from his bedroom, never to be seen again.  Our Kaleb, ours...

I wondered if the person pushing the gurney with him, away from our home would imagine that just months earlier, Kaleb was gleefully excited when we pulled into a go-kart track in the bay.  He boldly stood at the window and almost ordered up (and paid for) an hours worth of racing for all six of us to the tune of $400 prior to myself interjecting and suggesting that we start small and not be impulsive.  A few months prior to that, he had hosted a day of mini-golf in Myrtle Beach, again, treating his family.  

This kid, this quiet gentle kid.  Best person to bring to the grocery store because he took his job of protecting me so seriously.   I was to carry nothing and it pained me to take that away from him so I would awkwardly watch him carry it all so he could say he did, even though he would never actually say it because that would be taking credit and causing awkward moments of recognition.

Two months prior to his sudden and abrupt departure, Kaleb's dad was sick enough to actually want to seek medical attention.  It scared Isabelle.  She retreated to her room to quietly cry.  I had to go down and collect them to leave and rounded the corner to find Kaleb embracing Izzy.  Calming her down, and for once, she was allowing him too.  Two years later and Isabelle said she forgot about that when I brought it up.  A quiet smile snuck to her lips as she thought about him. 

This is year three.  Three years and the cruel joke has not been undone.  He is still gone.

Kaleb.  His name.  Saying his name... hearing his name... a quiet, sacred prayer.  So much has happened since you left us and I often wonder what you would be saying and doing here in our new house.  Wondering which room you would have wanted and if I'd still find you sitting on Haeley's bed talking to her about things that you would talk to nobody else about.  

There is not a soul in our family that doesn't feel your absence like a dagger through the heart.  Insert soulful and inspirational closing statement here - I'd write it but I can't write something that I don't feel.

The angry little hamster.

I once wrote this poem for a person that I thought I loved.  Saying "I thought" because it is so irrational, me loving someone who was so hurtful and controlling of me.  Constantly in a theoretical jail cell with bars that kept me emotionally paralyzed, making me stay put and continuing on the hamster wheel that I could never bust off its tracks and move forward.

I sometimes look back at conversations and scream at myself for not pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisies of the lies that were being fed to me on a daily basis.  I've lost the time and continue to lose the time when I reflect on all the things...

I try to turn it into something positive in my mind.  How did that experience make me grow?  What did I learn?  How did this help me improve myself?  But the anger fogs my thoughts when I allow myself to go there.

Anyway, I came across this poem and was touched by my own words and pleased that I thought of them.  I wish I hadn't wasted them on someone so undeserving.

This life.

 This things that make me so happy in this life are so funny to me.  Organized spices and powders.  Making dinner for my family.  A glass of wine.  My damn dog, the most loyal being I've ever met.  School.  The epitome of safety, always warm, always filled with people who express love freely.

My grandmother is in her last days.  It is impossible to think about her not being here, on this world, being the center of us.  I was able to be with her last week for a few hours, just us.  I watched her sleep, I fed her some, but the best thing I was able to do, is talk to her.  She listened and it was natural.  Not like talking to someone like they are a baby... or thinking that because they can't respond you need to scream at them and dumb everything you say down... I just talked to her.  Talked about the place at the mall that you can go to, to get boba tea.  How I hate the little jellies but still order it... tapioca seems the most popular because they are black jellies and look pretty in the tea.. how the straw is thick and you never know when one of those big black jellies is gonna come flying up and choke you at any moment.  I talked to her about being a grandmother and trying to dig deep into my memory from when I was little to try and remember if she was as young as I feel as a new grandmother.  She chuckled.  

Her life, an amazing life.  Her house, built by her and her husband, her summer house, same.  They built their life from the ground up when it was the only way to do it.  They figured things out, knew what would happen before it happened, had a butt load of kids, created something from nothing.

Here she is, trying to stay comfortable until she meets him again, almost 40 years of separation.  I wonder what it would have been like had we been girlfriends rather than grandmother/granddaughter.  Would we have sipped on old fashions rather than her serving me buttered bologna sandwiches while I lay on her couch on my days home sick from school?  Would we have bowled together and I shared her trophies which would eventually find their way to dusty shelves in the basement?  Would we have digressed about our husbands and life's trivial situations, and laughed until we cried and pee'd a little?  I think so.  I have those kinds of friendships.. they are the only kind I look forward too.

So she lays there, and I sigh.  Will I lay there while my granddaughter talks to me?  I fucking hope so.  I really, really, fucking hope so.  I feel like my one day of presence isn't enough but I put myself in her shoes and can only hope for a nice day with my sweet granddaughter talking to me about boba tea and being a grandma herself.  I CANNOT even imagine it... but... I hope for it.

Indigo DeMarse with her great great grandmother Eileen Morrison

Danielle, Tracy, Bridget DeMarse with their grandma Eileen Morrison