‘Denial.’ def.: She’s Dead and I Can’t Write About it

I want to write, believe me.

I want to write about my poor obese grandmother lying on her back with her mouth slack and her hair damp in a shabby government issue hospital bed, illuminated by a single flickering fluorescent blue ceiling light that can’t make up its mind. Sometimes, a little electronic buzz accompanies the pale light as if the fixture itself needs Herculean effort to breathe life into itself. Other times, it shuts off completely, suddenly pitching the gray room into complete blackness; no one notices and no one cares. All the beds in the room carry prone, helpless bodies that lost their light years ago.

Sometimes, they flicker. Sometimes, they breathe, struggle against the pesky plastic cords and bags that contain their oxygen, their only means of survival, and then the children, the parents, the friends, they think, will she make it? There’s a collective gasp of slight relief – not the real unadulterated sound of joy, because let’s face it, happiness is never guaranteed – and then some poking , prodding and calling the doctors, the nurses, whoever is around. Come check Mrs. So and So! She just moved her arm! And just as suddenly the light goes out and now there’s no proof that anyone here was ever alive.

I want to write about my grandmother and her half-life, and the endlessly flickering bulb in the waterlogged ceiling of a drafty disintegrating hospital.

I want to write about this, about her looming death and the moment she finally breathed her last; it rose out of her like a weak dust cloud rises from an old cushion you’ve just thumped. Just like that, she stilled. And just like that, it was over.

I want to, but I cannot. Not just yet.