I am nervous in the morning taking off to my little village to see her. I know what she currently looks like. I know retirement homes, their smell and their lines of inert corpses in wheelchairs in the hallways, put there so that they can enjoy some sunlight and watch people move. That\u2019s better, more human than TV.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s summer rain and heavy, warm weather.<\/p>\n
I am nervous in the car with my half sister, half cousin who never left the area and who\u2019s been taking care of her the most in the past few years. I know it\u2019s going to be hard. It\u2019s Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
We quietly walk into her room. She\u2019s watching TV. Her kind of hard stare, the one you get once you\u2019re in a retirement home, half mad, half understanding, slowly gets mellower the closer I get to her. She instantly recognizes me, her first and only black kid. Her dry eyes are slowly filling up with liquid as I softly take her hand in mine and give her a couple kisses on the cheeks.<\/p>\n
She then proceeds to never shut up for the next hour, which is a sign of very high activity. The last times they had come to see her, she wouldn\u2019t say a word. I brought her a patisserie and she\u2019s eating some and then goes back and forth between saying that she can\u2019t eat it while having spoons of it and putting it on the side for later. She talks about how she was going to her parents\u2019 house (both long gone) last month, she talks about how someone stole her dog (a plush) probably over five times, I stopped counting after that.<\/p>\n
At some point, I clearly see her brain trying to make sense of the fact that I\u2019m with her, here in France, which means that I should be with her in her house, but that she herself cannot remember when the last time she was there (almost a year now) was. I can see the darkness in her mind, the clouds making her frown. Trying to understand and explain what is going on and how I can be here while she cannot say where she is. I think she kind of still thinks she\u2019s temporarily in the hospital. It is painful to watch.<\/p>\n
Then the very racist diatribe happens. I knew it could, not because she\u2019s mean, but because she has no filters anymore. And she says those things to somehow protect me. Prevent me from becoming a negro except that I am one. Again, I see her brain trying to make sense of the situation, what she said and what she knows. It\u2019s all slowly heartbreaking.<\/p>\n
Her voice is as strong as ever. She says things only she says those things that way. It\u2019s about the cadence and humor. She still hears very well, even when we try to whisper. We\u2019re three generations sitting on chairs around her. She would like to walk but her muscles are atrophied because she\u2019s not moving because last times she tried, she fell, again. So nurses put her in a chair almost 24\/7, and that\u2019s it. She has a giant scar across the forehead and her arms are all flabby now. Her butt hurts from all that sitting.<\/p>\n
After a bit over a hour, we leave. I hold her hand again, give her kisses, tell her to take good care of herself. She replies \u201csure will, I\u2019m not trying anything else!\u201d<\/em> I cannot tell how she is actually doing.<\/p>\n I just know it\u2019s getting closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am nervous in the morning taking off to my little village to see her. I know what she currently looks like. I know retirement homes, their smell and their lines of inert corpses in wheelchairs in the hallways, put there so that they can enjoy some sunlight and watch people move. That\u2019s better, more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5413,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions\/5413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}