Spirit line

Every story in life worth holding on to has to have a spirit line.  You can call this hope or tomorrow or the “and then” of the narrative itself, but without it – without that bright, dissonant fact of the unknown, of what we cannot control – consciousness and everything with it would tumble inward and implode.

                ~ Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home

This is not the story I thought I would tell.  It feels like the story beneath the story.  The bass line as sure and steady as the drumming of my heart.

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A little over a week ago, my grandmother and I laughed until we cried.  We were wrapping up an hour-long conversation, and the bowl of our laughter filled the thousand miles between us.  

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that,” Dodie said, reaching for a tissue.  “Call me next week, and we’ll do it again.  I love you, babe.”

I clutch those words now, sliding each one along a ribbon of memory.  Remembering the easy assurance that there would be a next week, an entire calendar of conversations on the horizon.

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What comes next loses linearity.  The images slip and fold together in a kaleidoscope just out of reach.  Shards and shades of grief and disbelief. 

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Dodie in the hospital.  Animated delusions that took her back to Meridian Hills Lane and my grandfather, her mind a geode glittering with emotional touchstones. 

The hollowness of no response, her body shuttered and locked. 

My dad, weeping in a way I have not heard in eighteen years. 

Doctors discussing the beginning of the end.  But the end became a new beginning instead.   

Defying medical explanation, Dodie re-emerged.  The shock of laughter when she asked for a Coke from Steak ‘n’ Shake.

Her voice on the phone yesterday, a lullaby I thought I might not hear again:  “I love you, babe.”

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This is Dodie’s story, not mine.  I stand in witness and wonder, tracing the arc as she threads her spirit line again and again.