As the Yellow Rose Wilts
by TH Lights
Image by Sindy Strife
We knew that being heroes
might come with a mask.
But we never dreamt it would have come
With people having to ask:
What did you say?
I can’t hear you.
Do I know you? I can’t tell.
We never thought that being heroes
Meant retreating into our shells.
We call my grandmother Memere, because we are descended from French Canadians, and it’s a French thing — or so I’m told. Memere likes plain chocolate ice cream, kittens, and putting up decorations in her new house. She likes crepes and going on drives with my grandfather, who we call Pepere. She is probably one of the most loving people I will ever know. She has always been happy to see us; especially me and my brother, her grandkids. She, and often Pepere too, would take me and my brother ice skating, sledding, or to the movies. Being with them was like being in a happy oasis where, for a short time, we didn’t have to worry about the real world. But soon enough, even our little oasis was infiltrated by the rot of reality.
A couple years ago, Memere was diagnosed with crohn’s disease. For a while, all that meant to me was that she had to go to the bathroom more frequently and sometimes got stomach aches. But then the doctors put her on medicine that seemed to make things worse. Her immune system was hit hard, and she was hospitalized a few times because she was in so much pain and didn’t know what to do.
Thankfully, my mom had some ideas. She suggested diet changes, but my grandmother didn’t want to try at first. But after getting sick enough, Memere finally gave in. These diet changes seemed to help, and she was doing much better once 2020 came around. By March of the same year, the coronavirus had planted its weeds in America, and began to change everything.
How do you balance wanting to be there for someone against wanting to keep them safe?
Due to the pandemic, like so many others, we had to make the difficult decision to step away when our hearts told us to keep close. Three days after my 20th birthday, Memere was admitted to the hospital on February 10th for severe stomach pain. Around noon the next day, I found myself eavesdropping from the bottom of the living room stairs, listening for the words that drifted out from the kitchen. A distant, unfamiliar voice remarked through the phone, “She has severe Colitis and Crohns.” We knew about the crohns, but I didn’t know what colitis was. I looked it up.
C-o-l-l-i-t-i-s. Search. Showing results for colitis.
“Colitis is a chronic digestive disease characterized by inflammation of the inner lining of the colon” (“Colitis.” George Washington University Hospital).
This news had made my heart drop like a wet stone inside my chest. I first tried to calm the moths in my stomach by convincing myself it wasn’t a big deal. After all, the last time my grandmother had been in the hospital hadn’t felt too serious. Same thing this time, right? But I knew better. This time was different, because she was weaker now in more ways than one.
It’s worse, because she’s already given up.
“She’s in a lot of pain, so we are going to run some more tests to try to figure out what’s going on,” the distant voice from the kitchen had continued. “We’re thinking a CT scan is a good idea.” It was tinny and artificial, like most things now.
“Okay,” my mom’s voice responded, closer, real. “Just keep us updated please.” There was a tinge of desperation there. What else was there to do nowadays except waiting around, feeling useless?
Today, it’s been a week since Memere was admitted to the hospital for severe stomach pain, and a couple of days since her emergency colostomy. They’re still not sure what exactly caused the perforation in her colon originally, and she is having trouble eating. We get through to speak to her over the phone, but she is too tired to talk for more than a minute and only talks to my mother. The hospital often leaves us out of the loop, though we call frequently.
Information about my grandmother has become a precious commodity, and it shouldn’t be that way.
Before her health started to dip so worryingly low, we would occasionally visit her and my grandfather, with our smiles smothered in fabric and hugs cut off by distance. But at least we could see them, and they could see us. However, Memere’s health dwindled as the pandemic spread, and so we limited our visits to the cold plastics and rare earth metals of technology.
Aside from my grandfather, Memere wasn’t able to see anyone in the last few weeks leading up to her hospitalization. Although Pepere tried to help, he works and is often out of the house. So my grandmother had sat at home, and when she was discouraged there was no one to lift her up.
One day, a week before the hospitalization, my mother asked over the phone, “How are you doing, Mom?”
“Oh, you know,” she responded, “tired.”
Tired had become my grandmother’s new normal, and I hated it. She seemed to waste away, growing thinner in the month before her hospitalization. I had the insatiable need to fix it, to do something. I wanted to go over and spend time with her doing whatever she wanted to do, anything to help her out of her own head. Talking, watching tv, cooking — it didn’t matter. It was almost as if her mind and body had reacted to the loss of physical contact with us, and shriveled like a rose left in the desert.
Thinking back on how her declining health mirrored her declining attitude, I can’t help but feel that the gradual disconnection from her friends and family must have contributed somehow. Connecting with loved ones reminds us why life is worth living, why we fight through the pain rather than let it drown our spirits. Without the light of human connection, my grandmother is wilting. The disease that is ravaging my country is siphoning my grandmother’s vitality, but not in the way any news article or medical report has prepared me for. And honestly?
I’m mad.
Livid.
Enraged by the disease that has the audacity to mess with someone I love. It’s bad enough the virus has dimmed many people’s lives with its weeds of suffocation and strife. Its very existence is like a dark, oppressive stormcloud that blocks the light with its humidity but refuses to release the rain.
They called it the coronavirus, then COVID, and now SARS-CoV-2.
But any variation of it’s name is too short to belong to something I hate with such vehemence. Because of this abomination, phrases like “masking up” and “flattening the curve” have become so commonplace and necessary that we no longer question their validity. We have become suspicious of our fellow humans, and I sometimes wonder if this pandemic is killing our humanity. We must mask up and distance ourselves from those we love in an attempt to protect them, like the stereotypical male superhero lead, filled with toxically masculinity and signifying nothing.
While the Australian bushfires were once splattered across the news, the only fires we know now are the ones we use to burn our bridges with friends and family. Once COVID came, no one seemed to care about the FBI’s release of UFO footage. Why would the possibility of extraterrestrial life interest anyone when there’s already a disease alienating us from one another? News about murder hornets similarly lost its allure, back when humans became our own invasive species.
But make no mistake: I hold no misconceptions that these precautions are unnecessary. Rather, perhaps there needs to be more discussion on the side effects to the social distance solution. Sometimes people need to see their loved ones to be reminded that life is worth living. With our fear of physical sickness, we seem to discount diseases of the heart, mind, and soul. We forget that connectivity is another vital part of survival.
We are failing at keeping our connections. We are failing at reminding people that they matter. And we are failing at showing others that we care, that there is still light in the world. Sometimes, with people like my grandmother, electronic communications are either impossible or inadequate. Though for many, it helps. But we are failing to keep our connections, because staying connected requires more work than it once did. And I know it’s difficult. Trust me, I know.
But please — Check in with your relatives and friends, meet with them once a week in some way. Professors, check in with your students. Students, check in on your teachers. Parents, check in with your children. With people who need physical connection, like Memere, I do not know the solution, nor the exact scale of which to use to balance physical and mental health. But I do know this: We must remember our humanity. Because if we do not, we are no better than the weeds that choke the roses: superheroes turned villains by fear.
Notes from a Galaxy Girl 