volume one hundred and thirty-one
gordy
📍Written from Kabi Kabi and Jinibara land (otherwise known as Sippy Downs) with my oldest four-legged friend at my feet, laying just close enough that his back rests on my foot. With less of a sense of hearing than the last time I saw him, he knows he will feel it when I get up and can follow me back inside.
My Poppy, Gordy, used to be a main character in these volumes. The comments section used to be filled with love for him, and rightfully so.
My days used to be filled with a lot more of him, too. As he slips away from us, so does the memory of him being here every day. It’s an unknown kind of strange to feel you have lost someone when they are very much still alive. He is very much still someone I can make laugh, and who can always make me laugh. He is still very much someone who will never say no to sweet treats, or to a hello to a bird, or to a kiss on the cheek.
Now, when I am spending so many of my days without him, my activities allow me to return to him. They bring him back to me.
Whenever a thunderstorm arrives, I think about all the years spent living in another country craving them, missing them, and longing for the fear and beauty they brought along with them. I also think about Poppy.
A huge storm hits. The house is shaking with every clap of thunder and a second later the lightning outside illuminates the street for moments at a time, taking pitch black to broad daylight over and over like a slow strobe light. One second, if that, between the clap and the flash tells me the storm is right upon us. It was only moments before we were saying “Three seconds! It is three kilometres away!”.
Poppy wanders out of his bedroom and through the kitchen, Dad and I ask if he is okay. He heads straight to the room where Nan has not long gone to bed. She is scared of storms and has chosen to cuddle herself up until it passes.
He knocks and lets himself in, I hear him ask her if she is okay. He comforts her until she is calm, pats his hand on her back and heads back to his room quietly.
She is scared of storms and he remembered.
When I pack my backpack, ready to head to another destination it is all just a part of the process of my on-the-move lifestyle now. When I place it at my feet on a train or a plane or in a taxi, I think of Poppy.
I feel immense relief for Nanny and an immense sense of loss for Poppy. I hope he is having a good time, meeting new people, creating fun things, laughing and smiling and not feeling trapped or bored.
I cannot keep the image from my mind from this morning. It is right there and no matter how hard I try it won’t go away. I start to cry every time the memory of him getting into that cab — backpack at his feet, so fragile, so unsure, slightly excited, mostly confused — takes over whatever I am doing.
It’s so hard being with him, but it’s so hard to send him away too. I pray and I pray and I pray that this is the best for everyone.
I wish I could remember more clearly what Poppy was like before all this — before he disappeared and that version of him started to replace the one I knew for so long. I wish I was smart enough to have documented more time with him.
When I spend all day at my computer working, making no time for walks or sun or writing or creating or pausing or drawing or napping or watching the world or chatting with a loved one, I think of that one afternoon that could have — should have — changed everything for me. I hope it can, soon. In fact, I am counting on it.
I am sitting at the makeshift desk (a chair pulled up to the floral bedspread-covered double) working yet another hour on hour on hour helping someone else pursue their dream, at the cost of me pursuing my own. Poppy calls me out and in an instant, I am there. Of course I am. Despite working all these hours I am always free to make the banana on toast he used to make me, or a cup of tea that calls for more and more sugar every day or just to make sure he is still in the house and has not run away again.
He says he wants to show me something outside and I follow him out to the front yard. I wonder if its more leaves in the gutter he wants to sweep and I will need to I trick him again, saying someone else is on their way to do it and he should get off the busy road.
It is a spot in the sun. The garden that lines the sides of the house is held there with a cement wall around it, painted perfectly to match the house. It is the exact right height for sitting. This is what he wants to show me.
“This is nice isn’t it? This is what I have been doing all day. You work so hard. Take a break, love”.
We sit and soak up the warm rays and chat and wave to passers-by. We cuddle, I cry. I don’t know what time it is and I do not care.
His dementia tells me where he has hidden all of his diamonds and all of his money and I play along, promising not to tell anyone else where they are. Then his dementia tells me he is telling Nanny that they're leaving the house to me when they die, something I know not to be true nor have I ever wanted it to be. It is not mine and he will move on from that thought soon enough.
“I don't want your house, it's only home with you in it. Can we make a deal, how about you keep the house and instead, you live forever?”
He tells me he will try.
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me is there something that helps remind you of precious memories?
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here is something i struggled with this week:
🔮 Putting away my crystal ball.
here is a blessing from this week:
💗 Being an aunty.
here is a goal for the coming week:
✌️ Accepting the things I cannot change.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to get ready for some solitude and catch up with myself.
So so moving! Thank you for sharing this with us!
I love when you write of your Poppy. I know how sad it is to be losing him, but I love that you can share the love of him with us.
Growing up, my Granny and Grandad were my favourites. I lost them both years ago. Grandad to cancer, he died before his senility could truly take hold, though it was beginning.
My Granny though, she lived long enough to lose herself to dementia. She lived her last few years in a home, often doing and saying things she would never have done.
The last time I saw her alive, she thought I was her niece and the friend who'd driven me was my boyfriend, and introduced us to everyone who came past that way. There was no point correcting her, and fortunately my friend knew that too.
With 2 siblings, we used to have to take turns with our visits to them. But they grew up and stopped, and I never did til I moved away.
When I came out as a lesbian, they were always there for me. Even against my parents. My Grandad in particular, I think, cos when their son, my uncle, came out, he treated him badly, was glad for a chance to make up for it. But they were both supportive and loving, as they always were for me. The only ones who were.
They weren't the best parents. My mum has attempted on more than one occasion to sully my memories of them. So has my dad. Funny, really, considering she and my dad weren't good parents either, not to me anyway (though they'd never admit that ofc), but seem to manage to be good grandparents. From both sides of the family the only people who I knew I could count on were Granny and Grandad.
They never got to meet trans me tho. Grandad died way before. Granny didn't, but...well see above about thinking I was her niece. That was after I came out. There was never any point. She already didn't know me. I didn't even get to introduce Cuddles to her, except when it was too late. She had a massive stroke, and I went to see her in the hospital, just to say goodbye - she never regained consciousness after it - and I introduced them then. It was all I could do.
Without them, I'd have no memories of anyone who I knew - just deep down knew - loved me, growing up.
They taught me about being kind, just because. About making friends out of everyone. About when to speak my mind, and that it's ok to do so even if it might upset someone. About the precious gift that is time with someone you love.
I miss them. But they're still here.