So Far...

White Couches

May 5, 2007

Five months. Elsie has been ‘in’ hospice for five months. She has caregivers living with her for five months. She is broken over Pops’ death not even a year now. She is broken over Uncle Art’s death even shorter than Pops’.

May 22, 2006

I walked home from school like any gorgeous day in May. Marty’s death was still prowling my head look for an excuse to vent itself. I taught myself to bottle things up at a young age because my brother always does whatever he can to prick and stab that older brother stereotype that he feels he needs to fulfill.

We took our usual stop at the 7-11 to get Slurpees before parting ways at the rec center. I arrived at my house my spidey sense went off. Something was not right. I dropped my backpack on the floor in front of the coat hangers behind the last chair of the kitchen table. In a voice I had only heard one other time, my father asked me to come and sit down on the couch in the living room.

It used to be a great big snow white couch. It was embroidered with the most glorious flowers and designs that used to mesmerize me, thinking how one person had such talent. It had a nonchalant firmness that would keep you only wanting to stay there sitting perpendicular to the grand window in our living room. Now only just a dirty couch, stained to an eggshell, still covered with dog hair from Marty, and Legos hidden under the cushion, I was asked to take a seat being looked at by the unusually empty cold eyes of Dave and Sheryl Rosenfeld.

My mother breaks a akward silence that was maybe only twenty-two seconds with “Joe, Popa passed away today.”

May 5, 2007

I don’t really like going to nana’s apartment. It always seems cold, empty, and dark with her cancer out of remission and Popa gone.

August 29, 2006

My mom’s been in Maryland at her brother’s bedside while he takes in his last few days. Pancreatic Cancer a.k.a. death notice. I went to bed thinking nothing of it.

August 30, 2006

I woke up to be called down stairs to the white couch I the living room. Sitting in chronological order, My older brother to my left, younger sister to the right, and me stuck in the middle, right in my father’s view.

Uncle Art died at around 12:05 am, east coast time.