Denial

I woke up this morning between the secret walls of your room.

I was confronted with the words of 'you have a call, it's a family emergency.' 

Immediately my thoughts were, 'no that's not possible, that sort of thing has never happened.'

I was quickly slapped in the face when all the people that breezed through my mind abruptly stopped at my grandma and the struggles she has had recently. 

I stood at the desk, holding the phone to my ear listening to the other end saying to stay strong. Exposed to the outside and the unfamiliar people, tears immediately came to my eyes and my voice became shaky and unstable. The tomato resurfaced, choked me up and made it unbearable to speak. 

I have spent the day in the hospital laughing, crying, admiring the hot doctor and conducting an interview for my next story. A day filled with so much pushing and pulling. 

She laid in the bed all day as we sat by her side. It was heartbreaking to see someone so frail and that I love so much lay helplessly in her own tears begging to go home. In and out of conversation, random thoughts that went through her mind were expressed through her requests. 'Don't throw anything away,' she said. 'Well, why would we throw anything away?' 'Because it's a mess.' she answered as she turned her head and looked at me. 'We won't throw anything away,' I promised as she looks at me with the most trusting eyes that I have ever seen. She smiled at me solidifying the fact that she trusted what I said. It killed me. It immediately brought tears to my eyes and my head down to shield her from my sadness.  

The bruises all over her arms, legs, feet and hips showed my oblivious family just the pain and struggles she has been going through on her own the past few weeks. Has she been keeping this from us to postpone the possibility of someone helping her? Is she so stubborn that the mere thought of going into assistant living or having a nurse would make her keep these secrets, these pains and these injuries from her own family? Scary, sad, numb.

I got back from my short shift after being at the hospital for the day and walked into the room of red eyes, exhaustion, two doctors and my grandma, the center of it all, frail as splinter but still just as beautiful. They found a mass on her lower right lung and a mass in her brain. Melissa took me outside the room to catch me up to speed, as if anyone or anything were about to change. I stood there waiting for something to happen, for it to absorb within me, but it's as if I heard it and it just pinged back to her. 

As I sit here and type it's too surreal, too soon, too new, too impossible. It's not really happening, it just isn't.