Three Generations

"Creative Nonfiction" from last year

Three generations gather around the entrance.
One stands, one sits, one is frozen between the two states.
Life goes on.

My grandmother came home late that night and surprisingly, she opened the door to our part of the house, with tears still streaking her face. My mother, over the past few days had tried to cut my grandparents out of our lives, again. Three days before my grandmother’s aforementioned entrance, my mother had gone into the oldies half of the house and yelled at them; she’d released all her loneliness, her depression, her anger and disappointments upon them. My mother had yelled for freedom but that was a hard thing to ask for when you lived under the same roof-line as your captors. My mother thought that my grandparents spied on us, tried to control us and restricted our ability to live independent lives- meaning restricting her ability to find a cure to loneliness. Some of those accusations could be seen as true but restricting our “freedom”- definitely not. But that didn’t matter- she went and told them to get out of our lives and she planned to buy a new house, separate from them, as soon as possible.
When my grandmother walked in she changed all that.
My grandpa was in the hospital and needed brain surgery.

The each walk into their separate rooms that night and sleep.
One in a king sized bed. One in a queen sized bed. One in a double bed.
It doesn’t matter the difference of ages, the difference of personality. Each lies there that night with only one side of the bed filled. In each of the three beds the other side lies empty desolate.

To one this emptiness is symbolic of the shock of previous hours and it enrages the fear of what could follow. The bed almost screams the destruction of life, the surprises in life, the incapability of people to control life.

My grandpa had always seemed indestructible. It’s a cliché that I can recognise now- to believe that one family member was stronger than the rest, but it was true then. In my lifetime he had never been hurt seriously- at least not that I could remember. Once in Kuala Lumpur he had supposedly tripped through a glass window and in our old house he had fallen off a ladder. But in both incidents nothing had happened to him and whenever he was sick he’d just dose up on garlic and good old vitamin d and be back in fighting shape.
My grandpa was the healthy one in our family at the very least compared to my grandma: who suffered from heart disease, my mother; who would run herself into the ground and often  turn to medication to fight off long bouts of depression, and me- the accident prone sportswomen who would through injury and sickness only the end up worse off, only to result in a career-in-sport ending spine injury. We had always taken for granted that my grandfather would remain the stalwart, the leaning post on, the scales of this family that would keep us upright.

To another the empty half is something they will never grow used to. It is lonely. It is depressing. She wishes that it could be filled again. Yet each time it is, the person that fills the other half is never quite right to her mind. Never what is needed, never the perfect find, only fillers. But in this life, is a filler better than nothing?

The third has never had the other half filled. Well, that’s not true; one night every now and again it would be filled but only for a few sparse hours. Each time it was filled it represented something deeper. At least  that was what it meant at the time. But as time went on each memory faded. Each person and the depth friendship they had matched had faded.  The one night was nothing but a memory of temporary happiness. One day maybe the other half will be filled by more than hope; by more than dreams.

That is the connection that shudders through the dark; each empty half states that temporariness of each person’s hopes, dreams and realities.

The shock doesn’t wear off the next day. There still seemed to be a huge space in the house, my grandfathers missing presence, the quiet that was so unnatural without his laugh, his missing German accent heard through my bedroom wall, the silence echoed.

Till they returned each half stays illuminated to each mind.
But the questions pester constantly underneath the surface, underneath the hope, anxiety starts to bloom:
Will they return?
Will life return to what it was?
Is the past we wish to return to the one that was breaking and tearing?
Or is it the peace that came before?

Three generations cried that first night.
One from fear. One from regret. One from shock.
But tears aren’t that simple. Tears never are.
Water invokes many emotions.
One cries in pain, in loss, in shock.
The second doesn’t cry beyond that first lot. The still harbor that longing for freedom, for air.
The third has to many tears. They must be restricted to that releasing that one emotion, all tears not assigned to it must be locked behind a dam, that initial shock is all that is allowed or else nothing would stop the inundation.

The news of my grandpa forced an uneasy truce between my mother and my grandparents. We all went to visit him the next day. The four of us in that room filled the air with tension- not just from the fighting but from not knowing, not being able to calculate, not being able to predict the outcome of the surgery yet to take place. The doctors told us that my grandfather would be in surgery as soon as possible, needed it before he stroked out. The small doomsday clock they had seen on their x-rays and MRIs was a subdural hematoma. That small clock counting, flashing, down they had seen got him rushed to a hospital bed. They said it was amazing that he hadn’t had a stroke already.

It was painful waiting- as I’m sure it is for everyone waiting in hospitals. We had originally been told he would go into surgery that first night, that night my grandma came home and opened our door so unexpectedly, around midnight.  But he didn’t. They didn’t feed him for more than 18 hours because they kept waiting for the operating theatre and surgeons to become free and they had no idea when everything would finally come together, when he would finally be operated on. I kept thinking that surely it would make him weaker, increase the odds of complications arising, the more he was starved of nutrition. But then again it was a weakness in his brain, in his mind, within the skull, that was the issue- the rest of his body (though maybe a bit on the heavy side) was full of strong muscle.

So we kept waiting with Fear our constant companion and Regret dropping by frequently.
Then a new clock came.

The generations stand at the gate.
One has returned with relief but dimness lingers: now nothing shall be overlooked.
One stands there with patience waiting for the previous depression to return after this moment of unity is destroyed by further enclosure.
One looks at the cat across the road as it runs after a mouse. Jealousy rises at that seemingly simple act depicting freedom and agency. She knows fear will rule her life. Family members who are now out later than planned, who take what seems too long on a simple walk around the block, fear that something terrible has stuck again but this time not in a doctor’s surgery will command all beneath surface thoughts.
They can’t look again with pure happiness. It will return in time; time always brings hate and annoyance back as its travelling companions. But till time does return with such gifts, happy darkness clouds all their visions.

But we have survived, through the initial trips to and from the hospital were made with awkward passing comments of no depth between my mother and grandmother, with me determinedly listening to my iPod, the day where we pretended to be unified slowly turned things around for the three of us. The more time we were together the more the tension eased, the more relaxed we became and the move my mother seemed sincere in her concern.
It seemed that our fear, our little disaster, mended wounds or at least shaded over them for the time being.
It was unlikely that it would permanently frighten my mother into resignation and acceptance with regards to our situation. She continues to search for freedom from the shared land and she still suffers from depression, though this has developed into a “mid-life crisis” now she’s reached an appropriate age for such things. But so far no major yelling spats have occurred, no lines were drawn that would split a family  so close in proximity to seem like they were on different sides of a continent. Never again has she stormed into their half of the house and accused them of ruining her life, her chances at happiness. Never again has she torn at my grandma’s heart.

Each generation’s shadow lengthens as they share as they share a superficial simile, a superficial moment. The three generations return to the cold inside. Waiting.
One waits with love. One waits with pessimistic hope.
One waits with few dreams of fulfilment.

Author's Note

Originally the part in italics was all i had written and it was meant as an abstract poem. But I drew on this poem for my creative non-fiction piece and melded it with a story.