Remembering, once removed

-- For Mam maw and Pap paw Fite

I remember you telling me
Pap paw wanted to buy a ladder
when he came home from the hospital
just two weeks before he died
and somehow that made sense to me.
Like he wanted to get a head start on his ascension
like he wanted to get back to work
sharpening chainsaws
and building houses.

I remember dancing with Mam maw
to a song on a Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys record
in her living room and
how much it meant to me
that it meant so much to her
and how she remembered that about me
even later
after you and I divorced.

I remember the ice storm over Christmas
and covering Pap paw with my body
against the falling branch
that just missed us
falling next to us onto his driveway instead.

I remember the dream he had
when he was in a coma
(the coma your parents called sleep
so you wouldn’t worry about him),
the dream where he was trying
to take a nap on a dock --
a dock on a lake somewhere
he knew as a boy maybe --
and these guys wouldn’t leave him alone.
They kept pushing and pulling at him --
for the week or nine days he was in the coma –
and then finally he woke up,
and those guys were probably the doctors.

And the nap he wanted to take
Was probably the same nap
Mam maw had been trying to take
Ever since Pap paw finished with the ladder.
But your dad and your aunt --
and your mom and you and your brothers
and your cousins and your neighbors --
kept keeping her awake
because they couldn’t bear to lose her, too.
But she finally
managed to sneak off somewhere quiet
where she could relax just long enough …
You tell me the reason
Pap paw lived so long
in the hospital before he died
was that his heart and lungs were so strong
and that your kidneys and your liver can fail
and you can keep living --
but your heart or your lungs have to fail
before you can die.

And as I think of Mam maw
and about her breathing slowing down
like you described to me --
the way the breathing slows down as you are dying --
I can only imagine
that her lungs quit working first
because I remember how strong her heart was.

And your dad still has the ladder
that is now -- exactly, to the day -- a year and a half old.
And the house next door
that it leans against
is now -- exactly -- just a house.
And all these memories that we’ve threaded to each other
are twisting and waving in the breeze
and the ends of some of them
are now buried in the ground
and sometimes they pull on us to lull us to sleep
and sometimes they push on us to keep us awake --
and we aren’t sure why we need that ladder
or what song it was that we were dancing to
or exactly why the branches on our family trees
are falling or bent or broken in the ways they are --
but we always end up knowing something more
about someone else’s kidneys or their liver or their lungs
and maybe something, too, about our own heart.

(special thanks to heidi fite for her contribution and editing)