Memento Mori

All Hallow's Eve tonight. Spirits walking the streets and all. Dia de los Muertes calaveras, ghosts of Halloweens past. My brunch today was living proof that you cannot reconstruct the past. Last year's event was much more celebratory and populated. We had a guitar and some drums, which may have helped. I'm not complaining. My friends brought good spirits with them today and though our conversations were more subdued, I enjoyed the mellow, even keel and let things be what they were. The candles are still lit now a full two hours after the last guest left. I'm mesmerized by the steady burn, hardly a flicker. The centerpiece, a dedicatory altar of sorts, is beautiful with pictures mostly of grandparents and one of my cat, Django, who died about this time last year.

My maternal grandma is close to dying. The latest news from my mother is that Grandma Florence's body is shutting down and we may be attending a funeral in the next weeks. A body shutting down. Organs ceasing to digest food that is no longer needed. Timelines and memory broken up and fading. Should I be ashamed to admit that I haven't seen my grandma in years? The last visit I remember was nearly four years ago when she stayed at a rest home after a spell of illness. She knew me then, but wouldn't now. My sister stayed closer to Grandma over the years, paid a visit yesterday and says Florence talked mostly about Spring City, where she was born and raised. But then again, that's what she talked about when I was younger and would spend a week or two at her house every summer. In my mind, Grandma was exotic, maybe even glamorous. She walked with a limp, one leg shorter than the other and I don't know why. Not polio. I don't think. Her tan face powder in the pink sky-lit bathroom smelled soft and alluring. She painted on eyebrows every morning and went out dancing on the weekends with Grant, my step-grandpa. She was a talker, fascinating at times, scary at others when she'd read parts out of books about Revelations and the apocalypse. Boring, too. She had lived through the Depression and could recount tale after tale of kids who were poor as church mice, bless their hearts.

This news of her closeness to death stirs up feelings of isolation and estrangement for no other reason I can make out than that we, Florence's descendents, are a band of introverts. The last time I saw my mom's siblings together was at Aunt Virginia's funeral a few years ago, and that strange shyness in conversation and look was absolutely familiar and disconcertingly comforting. Sheepherder stock, used to long summers in high meadows, I suppose. Rugged introversion, maybe. Or maybe this is just me feeling a lack of connection to a woman I do not understand and love nonetheless.