On the edge of everything

Part 1

I heard my first eulogy when I was eight years old. I was sitting in the second row of my grandma's church, one hand in my sister's, the other resting on my dark, tulle skirt. As my mom spoke, I heard the tough edge of her voice disappear. She has always had this roughness to her sound- something indescribable that happens despite the kind words she says. It's as if she wants me to understand what she is saying so intensely that it all comes out harsher than intended.

At that podium, ten feet in front of a statue of Jesus that was far too white to be a man from Israel, that intensity melted in the rare April sun that persisted outside of the stained-glass windows. All I heard as she spoke of her father, recently having departed the earth, was the smooth quality of her tone that matched her round, rosy-cheeked appearance. I liked that sweet sound— I hardly realized the small tears that rolled down beside her nose; I was too busy admiring the colors that burst through the stained glass from such a glaring sun. I have never been one to despise going to church, but I've never looked forward to it either. Well, that's not true; I have always been enticed by two things: the music and the colors. Those colors from the glass and the colors of the clothes that everyone sports as their Sunday best. Those colors make the cavernous room interesting and beautiful.

At that church though, there were very few colors. I wasn't allowed to wear the bright dress that I longed to. Rather, I wore the dark colors of winter despite the luminous sun outside. That's when I learned that death isn't colorful, despite the bright heaven they all talk about. Death is dark and guarded and sad.

My mom's dad— my grandpa— died of Alzheimer's. As he was in the long process of dying, all I understood was that he was sometimes confused and that he mumbled a lot. I didn't think much of it— I sometimes forgot what my sister's name was or what ketchup was called or where my left sneaker was. But I didn't usually forget who my family was; I never thought that they were strangers. That was when I noticed that something was different. He looked at me with an odd expression when I went to visit and hugged him like always. He smelled like sawdust though he stopped being a carpenter when I was four. The smell may have lingered on his clothes or maybe it just stayed in the back of my mind from our early days as grandpa and Mila.

One day, 2 days after my 8th birthday, me and my sister went to visit grandpa. He was living in this beautiful, large mansion with a huge yard and lots of wide paths because some of his friends needed wheelchairs to get around. My mom was running errands, so she dropped Lacey and I off with a stern reminder to be our lovely and kind selves. My sister was thirteen and a half— old enough, in my mom's opinion, to watch over me.

The thin, tall lady at the desk, wearing a white outfit as usual, told us that grandpa was in the living room. This large room with a ceiling as tall as my house, held a great big chandelier that caused little flashes of light to dance around the room. As I walked through the doorway, I spotted grandpa across the room with many wheel chairs and couches scattered across the carpeted floor. Lacey was holding my hand as we walked towards him. I was too focused on the light to see where I was going. I was staring up at the ceiling, where the most beautiful of the lights bounced, when something hard jabbed me in my stomach.

"Ouch!" I exclaimed, my hand automatically rushing to the place that ached. Before it could reach my shirt, however, I felt a rough palm wrap itself around my thin wrist. It shook my arm, and squeezed tighter than my mom ever let Lacey grab me.

"What are you doing, girl? Has anyone ever told you to look where you're going?" My grandpa stared at me with eyes wide open, his smile turned down in a way uncharacteristic of such a jolly old man. I used to always think he looked like a rather thin Santa Claus, but at that moment, he seemed more like an angry Scrooge.