Blooms

That blue velvet wingback was my grandfather’s favorite chair.  See how the seat pillow sinks in the middle and rises along the edges?  It’s as if he sits in it still, although, when he died at 91 he couldn’t have weighed more than that same number of pounds.  I never sit in that chair, but I do address it, the thin mist of my paternal ancestor keeping me company.  He hears it all -- my joys and dreams, regrets and sorrows –- without judgment.

I often reminisce with Grandfather about, Joseph, drowned forty-two years ago in a flash flood outside Big Bend National Park.  The canoe trip was an eighteenth birthday gift from our grandfather.  Joseph’s broad shoulders and strong legs couldn't win over the Rio Grande when it screamed into that Texas arroyo.  While my twin fought for breath, I read War and Peace in Grandfather’s library, sickly with pneumonia and pleurisy.   There was a moment, however, when the air left my lungs involuntarily and the library whirlpooled into space.  Then it was over and I lost myself in Tolstoy’s grip.

I hear my daughter clattering about in the kitchen making cucumber and sweet butter sandwiches. No crusts.  She sets the kettle to boil.  Gathers china cups and saucers.  She’ll place a flower bud in my cup.  Perhaps today it will be a marigold.  Yesterday a burgundy nasturtium unfolded as she poured hot water over it.  It’s a trick she learned as a child in India.  Whenever I try, the flower buds collapse and die.  She says the secret can be learned only by the innocent.  I believe her.

Iris is here to discuss my death.  She doesn’t agree my life should end on my sixtieth birthday.  I’ll listen to her argument then do as I please.  Next Tuesday I’ll assemble the pills, crush them into a tumbler of orange juice and Cointreau and drink it down.  Cancer wins.  It’s time to go.

She lowers a tea tray onto the table next to Grandfather’s chair and places a marigold bud in my teacup.   Slowly covers it with hot water.

The nascent flower tightens and collapses.