Sunlight withers into shades of night.

Flowers fading in the shadows.

Your hand in mine, gripped so tight.

Drowning in the shallows.

Inspiration:

When I was young, it was just my mother and me. I never felt left out because I didn’t have a father. A little different? Yes, but only because I was a weird child. A weird child that grew into a weirder adult.

Because it was just my mother and me, my mother had to work a lot harder and much longer. When she worked I was lucky enough to get to spend time with my grandma.

My grandma is ageless. She has old fashioned habits, and a flower child attitude.

I can close my eyes and be transported to sunshine days in the park. I can feel the warmth of her hand in mine and smell the life saver mints she always has in he pockets, next to her tissues.

She taught me to sew, crochet, and how to make the best pancakes in the world. We would bake cookies, and she never said no when I wanted to watch Gone with the Wind. Poor woman, she’s probably seen that movie twenty times by now.

About a year and a half ago I got married. It was a beautiful snowy day. Not everything went according to plan, but that’s what made it perfect.

But, I knew something wasn’t right. My grandmother looked tired.

All those years and I have never seen her look so tired. I remember asking her if she was okay, and her telling me it was just a stomach bug. She’d have it looked at when she got home to Minnesota.

It would be a month before I found out what came of that appointment.

Cancer. Stage 4. 4 – 6 months time.

She’s too young. She’s always taken such good care of herself. How did the doctors not catch it sooner, aren’t they supposed to look for these things?

Why her?

Cancer is neutral. It eats everything in it’s path. Good, bad, it doesn’t care. It has no feeling one way or another. All it wants is to feed.

Despite all this she is still alive. Still fighting.

I want to go see her so bad. I want her to be able to hold her great grand daughter, her first great grandchild, while there is still time.

In this time of fear and sickness this is what I hold on to. This is why I do what they say and stay home. I do what I can to help lessen the spread. To give the people working on treatments and vaccines time to do what they do best. So that hopefully my grandmother will get to hold her great grand daughter.