7.

I should’ve known seeing you that afternoon wasa sign of the times to come. Like a bird’s wispy sermons at the peak of dawn.

You made my day.

Your hugs, always lukewarm; your hands caressing my back with a tenderness that spoke of unspoken love and overbearing loss. In your arms, infinity felt infinitesimal, thoughts blank. In your arms, I felt like I could breathe again.

You made my day.

I still remember.

Weathered asphalt, permeating with the smell of fresh rain; somehow, the light would glint off the road, and rainbows always coalesce along one of the walkways in its direct intersection. Devoutly, I saw it as a reminder that nature sprouts its roots to even the most gravelly, rugged places, like a rose rising betwixt the crevasses of man's cementation.

Head east, and every step past that led to steep, brick stairs in triplet, before leading to the apartment complex's main door. I used to tell my father all the time - I didn't know how to speak what was on my mind at the time - "the floor looks kinda old", to which he'd explain you'd been living here for over 20 years... It was only when I grew up did I observe & absorb enough to know almost every complex is built out of brick & concrete. Insipid. Yet, the patterns from the brick layering were always able to swaddle my eyes from the other things going on around the block. Nonetheless.

Ringing your bell and hearing your voice leap with a gaiety I could never get used to... I loved it. I loved every moment.

You used to tell me there was something different about me from the rest of the family, that I was special, level-headed, and cerebral. That you believed there was more to me than I let others see. You were the first to tell me to strive for a legacy, to leave something behind when my fleeting trial in this world had run its course. I hold that lesson close to my heart to this day. You were as selfless as you were strong and independent. And it sicks me that it was only after I saw you on that hospital bed, with the gurney disheveled and your eyes so red they seemed to cry blood, did I realize all those years I spent falling to my knees in defeat should have been spent uplifting you in your time of peril.

Your last hug was a glacial reminder of my own inadequacy. I was too weak. I've always been afraid that I'd never become the man evoked in phantasmagoria. That "Golden Child"; the one to uplift millions doing what I love best, all while nesting a future family. And, honestly, I'm far from it. A caricature, if anything. Yet, Grandma, without you, I wouldn't have learned the value of taking every day one step at a time, and speaking to souls one breath at a time.

Losing you tears at my soul every single day.

But I know your love for me was as certain as it was unconditional. A son should never have to bury his mother. A son's son should never have to watch his father replace the moon at the hilltop as he picks up a shovel at the brink of night. It should never be that way. But a face can tell the tragic novella of one's life better than words can... as can an autopsy.

So I always think back to that afternoon, where, after almost three years of purgatory, I got to see you again. Your last words, once bringing a smile to my face, now only sending a rush down my spine and a churning my stomach.

You made my day.

You made my day.

You made my day.