Tomorrow

To Chase Away the Blue

Though it took a series of months, even years, to build up, it feels as though it all started and ended in merely one day. I can remember the many days like they had all happened in just one yesterday...

    It is Thanksgiving day. The entire families of both Robinsons and Sheridans sit at the same table and at the same time together give thanks. There are no arguments, just correlation among different people sharing similar thoughts. But there is a figure missing from the nearly full table, a voice being unheard, with a clean plate in place of their absence. My grandfather, the oldest Robinson, has deserted his seat. He'd finished precisely carving the golden flesh of the sacred Butterball turkey and was motionless in the chilly outside atmosphere on the deck, a worn corncob pipe in hand. Even inside, seated at the oak table, the repulsive scent of murky black smoke emerging from the pipe overpowers that of cranberry and pumpkin. The vast french door creaks and skids open as he coughs and, without saying a word, returns to the inside table. Each and every one of us sitting down put our conversations to a halt and our silverware down, all with the same question in mind, all with identical worry in our expressions. "I'm fine," he says to calm us down, his masculine voice like an authoritative fist.

    And we all believed him.

    It's now Christmas time, and the entire family gathers yet again to converse over a glorious feast and surround ourselves with an abundance of cheery tidings. The placement this time is within the green walls of my aunt's living room, the merry scent of nutmeg and pine a sensation to our nostrils. But the holiday medley of casual scents couldn't stand a chance against the the familiar smell of tobacco. The room falls into a deep silence as my grandfather yet again steps in through the frosted glass doors, the sound of crunching needles that had straggled away from the evergreen tree underneath his boots being the only and abrupt sound in the room. I approach him with a homemade card in my hand and he flashes me his white dentures in a warm smile, followed by a coughing fit that had been brewing for years. My eyes become weary, a question being asked simply by my expression, and he answers in a hoarse voice, "I'm fine."

    And I believed him.

    It's months past the holiday season, and flowers are beginning to bloom along the countryside roads of my grandparents' humble abode. A bright-red anvil is set in front of the baby-blue walls of the garage, supplying a vivid splash of color against an ocean of blue. "Papa," I ask, my young voice exploding with curiosity, "what's up with your half-ton chunk of... red?" I had no idea what an anvil was, nor did I exactly care at the time and was just seeking an excuse to hear my grandfather's wise, or sometimes humorous, words.

    "To chase away the blue," he answers. I didn't blame him because, after all, the entire house was that one simplicit, basic shade of sky blue. My grandmother had an obsession of some sort with it. The dated dinner bell rings, and I rush inside with pure eagerness in my eyes to give Papa his birthday present that my cousin and I had worked on for hours beforehand. The entire family gathers one last time around the polished oak table and the smell of burning wax fills the small room. The numbers "seven" and "two" are slowly melting atop the decadent chocolate cake. We wait in utter silence. A towering silhouette is seen at the window. The birthday-man sits down, reassuring his worried audience in a harsh, raspy voice that wasn't at all his, "I"m fine."

    Nearly half a year had passed as my mother, brother, and I stand silently in the room. The constant beeping of advanced medical machines draining fluid from my grandfather's lungs and the ticking of the center clock pound at my ears. Just five months ago from then, he'd fallen and shattered his ribs, and the doctor had discovered something more serious than broken bones in the x-ray. My eyes trail over to my brother, refusing the look at the figure lying in that bed. My brother, too, focuses on the wall, as if he could see something far off in the distance. My mother, anxious and enervated, fidgets with the golden ring on her finger. We'd been, at that time, visiting for a long while, and even then he seemed like a stranger. The man lying in that bed did not seem like the man that had gone fishing with me in the neighbor's pond. He did not resemble the man that had ventured to Antarctica and gotten penguins drunk and dazed as a Seabee. He didn't seem like the artisan who'd built elegant wooden furniture purely out of amusement...

As we stood there in the familiar atmosphere of the nursing home, we all knew that man was gone. He no longer could breath the lie we'd all made ourselves believe. Standing there, we finally accepted that he wasn't fine.

That night, my mother received a phone call from the administrator of nursing at the home. Her and I sat awake for hours, denying the obvious and inevitable truth. She had a hollow expression plastered onto her face that I'll never forget. I sat there on the springy mattress of the bed, fazed, as a broken child. My mother had that same expression on her face as the men in uniform performed "Taps" on their horns and folded the flag, and as the grand wreath was placed on the broken ground.

    It took a series of months to finally accept the cold truth, but it only felt like yesterday. And to this day, the bright-red anvil sits on my porch in front of a tan wall to chase away the blue.

Backstory

When I was younger, my grandfather fell ill and, in the end, died from lung cancer. This piece chronologically depicts what it was like to watch a beloved family member slowly waste away through the eyes of an innocent child. To this day, I still live by the lessons he'd taught me and the red anvil serves as his own way of saying, "don't mourn me forever. Move on, and do whatever you can to stay positive, i.e. 'chase away the blue.'"