Birth and Death

So my grandma is very close to dying right now, either today or tomorrow. It is such an odd thing for me, to have this new life growing inside me and preparing for that, and then knowing that my grandma's life is about to come to an end.

Today the baby is moving a lot, his little feet and elbows and hands constantly pushing out from my side. He is getting so big. My stomach feels stretched, like I can hardly contain all this life growing inside me. And he will never know my grandma, which makes me sad.

I wrote a poem about her. Last night most of her kids and some of her grandkids slept on the floor around her bed, and the power of that image struck me. How fortunate she is, to die surrounded by people who love her.

Here's the poem:

Imminent

This will be Grandma’s last day in this house.
The men come with the hospital bed
to set up in her living room, and a nurse
presses cold fingers to the weakened pulse,
shakes her head, and says it is imminent.
Today or tomorrow, she says. A blessing,
so quick and in her own home.

They came to the small cinderblock house
after their Nebraska crops failed the last time.
She was a young woman then, baby on hip,
sharp green eyes that took in California
as a place she could reckon with, plant her kids
like garden rosebushes, to flourish under the sun.

They have lived here fifty-three years.
Lately the neighborhood has grown weedy,
the friends next door retired, gone, dead,
dogs barking behind fences, pounding music,
a police helicopter casting light on their yard.

For months she has been making sure to tell
each friend, each child and grandchild how
she loves them, her voice warm as honey,
her squeeze gentle as I lean down to her ear.

Now as night falls on this last day,
we gather around her like the center
of time’s wheel, we watch her eyes close.

We close our eyes too, we listen to each breath,
we lay at her feet on the floor, we fall

asleep together one last time in her house.