To say I love you is all that I can do
“Nana.” I find myself saying this aloud often, addressing the dining room table, a row of shoes, the shower door. It starts and ends at “Nana.” There’s no summoning, no conversation I’m hoping to have with her in heaven or in that box in Inglewood Cemetery or wherever else. I think I’m trying to remember how it sounded when I was a child, yelling, running from the car in the driveway, up the steps, onto the porch, to the front door - the door that never opened properly, even with the key, the door where my father realized that something wasn’t right. “Nana.” I don’t know anything about death. I know that it happens, that it’s affecting, that for everyone else life goes by in the shadow of it, and sometimes that shadow casts over absolutely everything, and other times it’s noon. So Eden sank to grief/So dawn goes down to day. That’s what I know and it feels like nothing at all. What does “Nana” sound like? Why can’t I remember?
Recounting all of this is embarrassing for someone whose eyes usually glaze over while reading anything about childhood, but here we are.
Thank you LADWP for the light bulbs. I see women on the train carrying the tote bag they came in and feel sad. The world's going to shit and my grandmother's dead but maybe LED bulbs and a reusable tote bag will help.