Red Hands and Hospital Beds

I have it on repeat.

Tonight my friend introduced me to a song called Red Hands by Walk Off the Earth. If you click here you can actually watch the video for it that she worked on.

For some reason, not even because of the lyrics, but this song is just fitting my mood right now. I don’t know why. This beat is just running through my head like a freight. It’s loud.

“That gun is loaded.”

I am. I am loaded, the safety off and at any minute now… I could go off.

I’m not angry. Not mad, or depressed. I’m good. I’m more than great. I lose my breath sometimes when I think about how at peace I am. I’m busy, but I’ve waited all my life to be this busy. I went to college for four years, just to not have time. I like having places to be and people to meet. I love that at any moment, I could expose myself to another path in my life. With every step I take, another door is opening on the left and the right.

For every move I make, I reflect on the ones before.

I think that is what this blog is becoming. It’s a glimpse into my future, and stroll through my present, and a reflection of my past.

Presently my grandmother is in the hospital. (Remember that my mother’s real mother passed away hen she was two. The grandparents I refer to are my mother’s oldest brother and his wife.) She’s the one I spoke of in previous posts who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She ignored my grandfather’s advice and drove herself to the doctor. On her way home from lunch afterwards, she had a wreck.

After she was admitted into the hospital the doctor noticed that she was bleeding internally. It had nothing to do with the wreck. She is anemic, and they cant figure out where the blood is coming from.

I’m sure you’re wondering how my life is so great considering my grandmother isn’t well, but here is my reasoning. I do what I can, from where I am. I trust the Doctor’s and my mom. I love my grandmother from afar, and help her through a difficult time. I stay positive.

She has been in the hospital for three days now. I called her this morning. Her voice was hoarse, but she cheered up immediately.

“Hello Darlin.” I said to her.

“Darlin’ isn’t doing so well Sugar.” was her response.

She spoke briefly about her nurse, and the horrible food, and then took a deep breath.

“I’m gonna give you back to your Mama. I love you baby.”

“Love you too, Granny.”

My mother took the phone. She stepped out into the hallway, and I asked about my grandmothers condition. Her vitals. Everything was stable.

“I talked to your Papaw today.”

My mother refers to her brother as papaw when she speaks to me.

“What did he have to say?”

This sparked one of the most intriguing conversations that I’ve had with my mother in a while. Sometimes I forget that my mother had a life before me. She went on to say that during her conversation my grandfather talked about how much he disliked that hospital.

It’s the hospital where he found out his mother had cancer. It’s the hospital where his father went before he died. It’s the hospital where his wife laid in labor for 48 hours, because the idiot doctor was convinced her baby was a still born. He was wrong. When my cousin was finally born, he was over 24 hours late. The lack of Oxygen to his brain, and being inside of her for too long caused permanent brain damage. He was born mentally handicapped.

My mother said she remembered the night that he walked in to their house. It was the only night she had ever seen him cry. He looked at his father and grabbed him by the hands.

“I’m going to lose them both, Dad.”

His father held him, and the two of them prayed. He wasn’t a religious man, but he found God that night.

My grandmother survived, and so did the baby. My grandfather worshipped the ground she walked on from that day forward. My grandmother is still to this day the most loved woman I’ve ever met.

He ran into God around fifteen years later on that same tiled-concrete floor. 

My mother was asleep in the hospital bed. She had been in Labor for well over twenty-four hours, and it wasn’t looking good. My grandmother and grandfather sat quietly next to the bed. It felt all too familiar. My mother had hoped for a natural birth, but the vital signs dropped, and next thing they knew the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around my throat. The doctor ordered an emergency c-section. Unconscious, my mother remembered nothing of what was to come.

Despite being brother and sister, the two of them weren’t close. There was a sixteen year age gap, and my mom was wild in her younger years. Her brother didn’t appreciate that about her. Regardless of their differences, when she went into labor, there he was.

My own father had walked out at that point, and the next few hours, my grandfather relived his worst nightmare. The one he experienced in real life years before.

The oxygen wasn’t getting to my brain. The complications were slowly dropping my Mothers vitals, and before they realized what was happening we both started slipping away. My grandmother collapsed into my grandfather’s arms. She had fainted. Chaos all around him, he prayed again.

The doctor cut centimeters into my then soft head trying to deliver me with God’s speed, but I pulled through. Face blue. The umbilical cord was removed, and within minutes I began to breathe. After sewing up my head (where I still have a scar to this day), I was taken to my “Grandparents”. Papaw told my mother “She was beautiful. Just like you.”

I don’t know what it is about that man and Jesus, but somehow we survived. Mom awoke and took me into her arms. I suppose I’ve been there ever since.

We’re close. I often forget that Mom didn’t have that with her parents. The fact that she is becoming so close to her brother now is beautiful to me. I’m getting to see into her heart, and her life in a way I never have before.

In her I see myself. Struggling. Clinging. Searching for acceptance, and finding it in the arms of a loved one. It scares me as well, because he is sick. Emphysema has taken over his lungs, and he has been wheelchair bound for around 4 years now. He is slowly slipping away from her. Every time he tells her a story, I want to sit there between them with a recorder. I want to save these memories for her. I want to give her something, even close to the love and happiness she has given me. Maybe it’s the same reason I write about her so often.

I hope to be like her one day. In a lot of ways, I already am.

Side note.

I finally started “dating” again. Nothing serious, but I met someone I consider to be very interesting. I’m not saying it will or won’t go anywhere, but I am saying I have finally opened myself back up to the idea.

She is sweet. We spent our first date just walking around West Hollywood. We talked for three and a half hours that night. I saw her again last Friday, and she had built a fort in her living room floor. There were candles sitting next to it on the floor, and a stack of DVD’s next to the laptop. We laid in the floor and watched a movie. She held my hand voluntarily as we did. It was interesting to have someone make that much effort for me. It hasn’t happened very often.

Gosh. Here I go. Gushing. WHO AM I LATELY?

I hope that all of you take a moment tomorrow to experience something. Happiness. Sadness. Fear. Anxiety.

The good and the bad. Feel it. Process it. These emotions are beautiful. Every single one. They let you be apart of this incredible moment we call life.

I am nervous. I’m scared. I’m happy. I’m intrigued.

I am alive.

Remember me,

Tennessee