a different type of glory

The responsorial psalm today was taken from psalm 19: "All the heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord". In my mind I was thinking of that Sufjan song, Casimir Pulaski Day.


On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window

In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing

Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes

**
when katie called to ask if i was alone and if i could please go to a private place, i already knew something was wrong. so when she said in a strained voice, "lola's brain dead" , all i could say in an small empty displaced voice was "okay". a confession: the moment i put down the phone i went back to watching tv, you know that stupid show where anne heche is a dj in some hick town. by the time the hour was spent, my head hurt from trying too hard to laugh at jokes that weren't funny in the least. so i called mom, who said that lola's heart stubbornly kept beating. "your lola's heart is strong", she said, and i knew she was trying her best to smile (poor mom i wish i could go to her) but i think we both knew it was the end. a few hours later my lola's strong heart stopped beating, and mine broke once again (is that possible? how many times can it be broken? i asked colleen and she told me the heart can only be truly broken once--collectively, ours were broken at the same time and it's almost been ten years oh my god-- the hurt one feels, as sharp as it was the first time around, is just a reminder of the damage that cannot be undone ). the heart. i swear sometimes we overestimate its resilience.

my mind tells me to make a eulogy of some sort, and tell you stories of my grandmother, about how she was so good at cards that she gambled each week to bring in extra money, how she sewed dolls made out of cloth for her daughters, how she would always sneak in treats from her sari sari store( bazooka and judge and piatos) in my bag every time i left cagayan, how she looked forward to watching boxing matches on the television, how she and my father used to play scrabble, how my favorite pastime as a child was watching her as she went through her ritual of preparing betel nut leaves which she would chew and eventually spit out into a tin can, how she insisted on speaking english to the doctor from manila who operated on her eyes, how the only time i saw her cry like a child was when my grandfather died but the stories are too many, and my words fail to bring her back. she was -is! the heart insists, offended by the past tense - wonderful and fascinating and strong and my heart, as damaged as it is, is with her.