mistergardner

4/25/13

Rewrite for Deathbed

I'd never seen a deathbed before.

It looked like any other kind of bed, I guess,

except for the sterile green hospital sheets.

I'd seen plenty of them, too - just none with

my grandmother on top, laying on her left side

because the shattered remains of her right hip

couldn't support her weight. 

she was a bag of broken glass and whispers,

When we talked, I had to kneel down right

next to her face -

her ribs had punctured her lungs, and it made it hard to speak;

She fell trying to change the channel on the television,

never could figure out that damn remote -  her old

bones had simply said: "enough."

At First we laughed about it, she said "Baby bear,

I told you, that TV is evil!"  Then, her laughing

turned to fits of coughing, her face got dark red

and stern and she said "I'm sick."

I said "I know, Grandma."

  

and she said, "Be true, it's worth it."

I said "what?"

and she said "I love you."

I'll be damned if I ever really knew what those words meant

before they were her last utterances to me.

and I'll be damned if I ever really meant those words before

I echoed them back to her.

she closed her eyes, lay back,

her brow smoothing like ripples dissipating

in a pond, and that was it.

I didn't know it, but she'd never speak again. 

and as I left the hospital room, I wasn't thinking of her broken body,

no.  Her words began to weave themselves into melody, the melody rhythmically telling me

things I should have already known.

If it takes death to release these feelings then something's gotta give - so it might as well be me to interpret the words my grandmother deserves to have spoken, her half broken body forgotten when you're lost in the sounds.

C'mon now people got to live for the moment can't you speak every word like it was your last breath.

C'mon now people got to live for the moment can't you speak every word like it was your last breath.

and what would you say if you knew your time was

limited to simply minutes

would you spit a few definitive sentences

or begin some sentimental sentiments full of derivative bullshhhhhhhhhh

or would you just lie silent, and pass on

or pass on

truth, knowledge, history, religion, tales, hell just say something

cause I got the ghosts of million people behind me who have never been heard... some were

never given voices but of those that were: 

nobody listened. But my grandmother christened me permissively with her last words

passwords into my soul where they live as legacy egging me on & making me stronger

with every poem.

See this is an oral tradition, these words keep us from being alone,

I will join voices with my grandmother and those singing from the marrow in our bones 

standing on roof tops shouting down the unknown, 

I will grow my own garden from the seeds she has sewn

My lungs are her instrument, this chest is her home:

So we say:

Come on now people got to live for the moment cant you speak every word like it was your last breath