Fragments

The cold smell of a nursing home is one that lingers. It's a grey stench that, if smelt again, can send your mind into a frenzy of memories. I was fifteen when I realized this. One step into the building full of fading lives at Florida Living Nursing Center, and my memory traveled to the last room my grandfather lived in years earlier. My mind saw his cowboy hat and western bolo ties hanging on the wall; I felt his withering hands. With every inhale, I exhaled another memory.

         Florida Living was different than the nursing home my grandpa stayed in. This one felt more like a hospital than a home. It was eerie. The stiff air and linoleum floors did not hide that for most of the residents, this was their end. But the woman I had come to meet here painted herself as a pastel sky amid painfully empty walls.

I shyly introduced myself to Wonda.

         Days later, I introduced myself to her again. And again.

I watched as her grandson, Ethan, had done similarly. She knew who he was, but barely. Each time she re-met me, Ethan would mention I was his girlfriend, and I would softly say hello paired with a smile, masking that we had done this before.

         I liked the days I met Wonda. I liked when Ethan's dad, Mr. Shane, would pick us up from school to see her. I liked when Ethan and I would walk inside, always holding hands, embarrassed to be fifteen and in our school uniforms. I liked seeing a relieved Wonda when she saw her son, forgetting she had seen him yesterday. I liked when she told me I was beautiful. A commune of blood would rush to my cheeks, and my hand would instinctively cover the double row of braces. I liked when moments later, she'd tell me I was beautiful again. That comment never tired to the ears of a teenage girl that wished she looked differently, that skipped meals and secretly cut her own hair.

         I liked when, on these days, Mr. Shane brought her gifts. One time she opened a package of floral dresses from him. Though, they could've been plaid. She was lying flat on a hospital bed when we walked in. A beam of incoherence radiated the room as she stared at the ceiling. I remember wondering why hospitals beds were made to look so puritanical, like you were meant to feel sick on them. Shane didn't notice the sad bed, but the sad woman atop it, shivering because the thin blanket the nurses gave her had fallen to the floor. I knew he was upset after hearing a few curse words pass under his breath, but he composed himself enough to wrap her in the pathetic nature of the blanket, kiss his mother's forehead, and show her each one of her new dresses. Her eyes had a particular glimmer staring at the floral patterns she'd forget would be in her wardrobe tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

         Ethan and I met in our freshman year of high school. We clung together like angsty magnets, listening to Oasis during lunch breaks, talking about movies when we were supposed to be balancing algebraic equations, discussing our deep existential crises that wracked our brains in private-Christian school.

         It didn't take long to fall in love with him. I felt it at the movie theater when a fiery pulse bit my heart as we inched our pinkie fingers enough to skim. With a quarter left of the film, Ethan clasped onto my hand. Me and my sweaty palm became a warm, glowing bulb.

         I felt it clearly again on February second. Maybe it was February third. We were on the Nemo ride at Disney World, sitting alone in a clam shell. As the ride moved through the makeshift ocean, he scouted the moments when we were clear of his mom's view in the adjacent shell. He left the ride begging his family for round two. Curious expressions were directed at Ethan, even from me, but nevertheless we sat in the clams again.

         I had a warm, staticky feeling buried in the stomach, anticipating what I knew would happen (weeks earlier, he asked permission to one day kiss me). Ethan cradled my chin between his thumb and pointer, and gently pushed his lips on mine. The innocent kiss quickly grew into a heavy make-out for the duration of the children's ride. Though the location seemed immature—perhaps inappropriate—for a pair of fifteen-year old's, under the sea, I felt the sweetness of my organs swelling. I was dizzy and lovesick, and so was he.

I liked the days we saw Wonda because afterwards, Ethan and I would go to his dad's house—the only place we could shut the door to Ethan's room without getting reprimanded. There was days Ethan would play his guitar and I'd stare at him like he had wings and a halo. Most days we'd lay on our sides—noses lightly touching, eyes sincerely staring—and talk for hours.

~ ~ ~

         Mr. Shane left Ethan and me in the empty dining room with Wonda. He drove to the nearest McDonalds to retrieve a half decent meal for her. She was tired of eating single-flavored, skeptically textured food served at the nursing home. When it was just the three of us, the interactions were scattered and short. There were periods of awkward staring followed by awkward smiling. That day, however, she drowned me in compliments of my beauty. They surged my ears what seemed like every few minutes. I liked that. I told her she was beautiful too. But I might have only thought it.

         The single picture I'd seen of her youth, I saw nothing short of a prepossessing woman written in the nostalgic language of film. In her speeding age, the sphere of what we consider beautiful broke into a puffy, wrinkled face, thinned hair, and blurred muscle lines. But I wasn't lying when I repaid her ocean of compliments. To me, her dazed disposition was beautiful. At the time, I related my habit of rumination to Wonda's internal battle between her and her memory. She lived in the thick of a daily fog camouflaged by her extensive smiles. I lived in my own world where I violently dwelled on distressed scripts of adolescence, which I covered with good manners. Wonda was quiet, like me, and suffered in silence, like me.

         I never met her before the dementia began eating at her cognition, but what I did meet was the psyche of a woman who found comfort in the face of her lineage when chaos was eroding her brain. I met a version of Wonda that talked highly of the grandson she was in the process of forgetting; her and I both agreed on the length of his beauty too.

         When Mr. Shane came back with a big, yellow M in hand, I met a woman who loved apple pie. With every scoop of the warm aroma of cinnamon, Wonda melted with ecstasy. Something about her health made her lips droopy, so with each limp bite, flakes of crust would float to the table. Her hooded eyes didn't hide the mental transportation through worlds of bliss she was moving through. The overcast of pleasure from simplicity took shape in what was once the barren land of four white walls; now there was a pastel sunset eating apple pie.

~ ~ ~

         Ethan and I were seventeen and beginning to understand that love and war were opposite in nature, but similar in obsession. I didn't want to drive home alone and was unwilling to lose the fight we were having. It was the first season of arguments, tears, confusion.

         The discourse in this particular moment was the same as I was: tired and stubborn. I wanted him to stay on the phone with me while I drove home. My reasoning, "What if I fall asleep at the wheel? What if my eyes rest for one second, and in the next I'm dead?" We both knew I wasn't going to fall asleep. I'm not sure I was even truly tired. What was true was that I didn't want to hear the hum of the tires or the vacant lyrics on the radio. I wanted to hear him. I didn't want to hear the stream thoughts rampaging from corner to corner in the screaming organ within my head. I wanted to hear him, even if it was to continue fighting.

         His family was in town for the weekend, and he told me he wanted to get back to their company quickly. Perhaps I gave a disappointed gaze or a phrase of empty understanding or silence. Whatever I offered turned into a coded puzzle of guilt that I wanted to see him piece together. He didn't.

Instead, in the time it would've taken me to drive home, unlock the door, and sneak past my sleeping father, we shared something short of a screaming match. Maybe it was quiet, but in my memory, it felt like screaming. With guilt as our sharpened weapons, we worked to pierce and dig through each other's delicate surfaces.

~ ~ ~

         My memory of Wonda faded months after the first time I met her. The index of my memory doesn't have a final image of her. Her memory had no image of me.

         I remember watching her eat soup at a birthday party. I think it was somewhat difficult to keep the broth in her mouth. But it could have been spaghetti. I know we were at Café Positano, an Italian restaurant, which means she might have been eating some pasta dish. I know she struggled to eat it, and I asked Ethan if she forgot how to eat. I think that's when my memory softens.

         I know we went on many ventures to the walking paths at the nursing home together. I don't remember which walk was our last. I do remember when she'd point out the beauty of the flowers we passed; she liked to make note of beauty. I remember laughing when Mr. Shane would make Ethan push her wheelchair. But I might not have laughed. I could have only thought it was funny because I saw his muscles tensing past comfort each time we went uphill. I know Wonda liked going outside. It was spring in Florida, perfect weather to push a wheelchair out of the stiff air.

~ ~ ~

         Sewn in the human brain is bows of recollection. Deep within its mass, the hippocampus mothers a person's memories. In Wonda's brain, the tracks of communication between neurons were shrinking and dying, making it a battle for her wilting hippocampus to remember her grandson. In my brain, the neuron connections flourish. The health of my organ means that, when I smell a nursing home, signals from the olfactory bulb in the front of my brain are pushed to the hippocampus where pictures of my grandpa are ignited. Reels of his voice, his wiry beard, his cowboy boots, motion like a whirlwind in my brain. The winds of his remembered presence blow enough to lite my brain's amygdala, where every emotion related to my grandpa expresses itself in a quiet teardrop.

         I was twelve when he died. He was a good grandpa. I remember his love of watching me dance. My mind's eye can still see him in the audience at my performances. I remember the pop songs he'd repeatedly sing to make me laugh. He was a tall, thin man. In my memory, there's a picture of him and my dad sitting on the couch, eating pizza, and screaming wildly at the TV during football season. I remember he had a dog named Buster; one time, at midnight, I woke up to the sound of his dog urinating inches from my face. I remember grandpa feeding Buster entire cheeseburgers. Grandpa loved animals. I remember him giving me hugs. He loved me too. I was devastated when he left my sphere.

         Fast forward to right now, and he's once again squeezing his way through my writing. Since he's died, I've dedicated impressive intervals of time to ruminating about his character. I learned there was more to my grandpa than the caring man he was to me. He was abusive, dishonest, an alcoholic. He branded his children and his wife with thick wounds. And he cultivated even thicker scars. I shame myself now for still grieving his death.

         Many nights when I find it hard to sleep, I'll crawl through my memory, trying to map the locations of his lies and liquor. I know they were there, but I rarely find them. I try to recall details of the arguments between him and my dad, but they're hard to discover. I search my memory for the aversion on my grandma's face when she saw her ex-husband at Thanksgiving. My child-self knew my grandma disliked him, but my memory claims I didn't understand why.

In the brain, the limbic system is a survival tool that processes emotion and memory. Mine is sharp. I remember feelings of deep comfort and joy when grandpa would sing to me, when he'd dance with me in the living room. The limbic system can be triggered by scent. That's why blazing neurons travel through my brain with every inhale in a nursing home. I smell my grandpa. I smell his kind-looking eyes. But I cannot smell the abuse and addiction my memory has forgotten.

~ ~ ~

         I remember being sixteen when I didn't see Wonda. Not the day, but the interval of time when I heard she cut her foot. Or fell. 1 know she obtained some injury. I don't know why I never saw her again. Perhaps Ethan and I were preoccupied with earning our driver's license and sneaking out of study halls; we must have been too lost in our youth to remember to visit Wonda. I remember hearing She was doing better. Then she was at the beach. Except she wasn't at the beach like you'd want her to be. She was at the hospital. Or hospice. I don't remember how long she was there. She was at hospice by the beach, minutes from where Mr. Shane lived.

         I remember hearing Wonda wasn't doing well, then she was dying. Dying meant the process of wondering when the last beat of her pastel heart would happen. Was it from the fall? Or had she cut her foot? Did her health finally begin to rot her respiratory system? I think she was dying for weeks.

         I think it was a slow death until the desperation to be free of pain became a scheduled date. I remember Ethan updating me of Wonda's declining health in several texts.

         On this day, I was sitting by the pool in Orlando with my cousin who came from out west to visit me. Ethan was at the beach. I remember Ethan texting me something about Mr. Shane having to sign papers that would finalize the dimming of Wonda's cognition. I think she was taken off a ventilator.

~ ~ ~

         "You never called me after my grandma died."

         I stared at Ethan as the words fired amid our fight, penetrating the pit of my stomach. Wonda died a year earlier. I know this. I remember Ethan describing the pain he felt sitting in another room of four white walls, another room with a cold smell, watching Mr. Shane weep as Wonda exhaled her last memories. I don't know when or through what line of communication he told me that.

         I remember staying in the hotel with my cousin when Ethan told me that Wonda was dead. I didn't leave to visit Ethan's grief until days later when my cousin flew back west. My memory holds that I called him (because why would I have not?). But I don't remember when.

         I remember a week after—maybe two or three—I gave Mr.

Shane a cheap bouquet of flowers. I think he cried later as he told me how much he missed his mom.

         The sting of my lacerated realization festered into tears. I was ashamed of what I didn't remember and complexed by its unanswerable truth. As I scraped the indents of my memory, it only led me to white space and an image of Wonda eating soup or spaghetti: the last time I saw her.

I never called him after Wonda died. I never called him after Wonda died? That night I used the depths of my lungs to unkindly say goodbye. I drove home, wracking my guilt-ridden brain for the truth.

~ ~ ~

         I'm nineteen now. Two weeks ago, I mentioned Wonda when Ethan and I were curled up in my twin-sized bed. I told him I’ve been searching for any digital artifact that might prove my innocence. I found nothing.

         What I understand today is that I remember more details of the fight that exposed me to shame more than I remember what happened after Wonda died. I know now that buried in the back of Ethan's phone case is the hospital bracelet he wore when she was at the beach. Now I understand that, even if I had called him, I waited too long to be a body of comfort. I'm two years older than I was in my car, still ruminating, still apologizing, and sick with the realization that memory is consumed by the fog of seasons.

         My perceptions of Wonda and what I never knew I failed to do after her death is a small version of the bigger picture: my memory was deteriorating next to hers. It continues to. Except my degeneration isn't a medical condition, it's the unavoidable fist that grinds memories into fragments and scatters them across my temporal lobe. It's what makes me unreliable. It makes you wonder if anything I've written thus far is true.

         Per my request, Ethan read the infant draft of this essay to check its truth. He told me a story that happened when she was eating soup or spaghetti:

         "We were in Café Positano, and my dad got my grandma a beer. After her second or third drink, she said, 'Why am I not getting buzzed?' Turned out my dad had been buying her nonalcoholic beer the whole time."

         I don't remember this. In my memory, this never happened.

         The truth lives in fragments. It's the impression that Wonda loved apple pie; or is it the brutalizing effort of eating that made her hate the dessert? It's the belief that she was quiet; or is it that she had been talking and I had been daydreaming? It's the few shards of memory that ignite when I smell a nursing home and see my grandpa's western decor; or is it the shot of whiskey hidden behind the alcoholic's picture frame? A stable truth of the past is fictional; it's an abyss of possibilities, minor and major details that's been scrubbed out of the membrane.

The days I met Wonda, she asked when we had last seen her atop the sad bed. She asked questions to make sense of the past's truths. I wonder if Wonda knew her memory was sick. Or did she forget that too? I suppose she would have traded my slowly stagnating lobe for hers because it was beautiful.

Published in Brushing Art & Literary Journal