mother's mother

I ate breakfast at a bar next to a Buddhist temple on the day my grandmother died

She was in a wheelchair most of her life because of polio

She was a genius and not in the way people throw that word around on IMs

She was a genius

I barely knew her

But toward the end if her life she comforted me after my mother threatened to kill me

As she was dying she comforted me
She comforted me
As
She
Was dying

Because she was stronger than me even when she was crippled a second time by cancer

She was steel
She was cold
She was a reed standing against the gale force
She had to be
She never wanted us to feel sorry for her and it was
kindly cruel to every child's
scraped knee and
every tear for something
not so important

This morning I responded to an email from my mother for the first time in two years

I don't plan on corresponding with her again but

She said my grandmother was never her mother and I understand what she means

What she's feeling now is what I will feel when she dies and
it is to be so


~O~