milkweed

I’m sitting here in my small office, that tiny room of my own, staring out the window. The wind is scattering the fluff of milkweed across our lawn, and I know that next spring it will pop up everywhere, pushing through grass, undeterred by the mower, which will plow it down, again and again.

I want to thank you so much for your words of support, and for keeping me—and of course my grandpa—in your thoughts. He’s doing okay: not as bad as he was last Thursday, but not altogether better. And this bothers him, I know. He has never *not* gotten better.

Yesterday he handed me a medical book, which he had bought at a garage sale for 25¢, and asked me what I thought caused the fluid in his abdomen, his discomfort, and his inability to sleep.

I paged though the book, but even if it had a chapter on congestive heart failure, which it didn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to tell him. And really, it’s not my place. This is something his doctor should tell to him, a doctor trained in doling out disappointment and hope. (I’m not even sure which one is order here.)

“I don’t know,” I said slowly.

“Don’t tell me it’s because I’m old,” he said.

“Well, Grandpa,” I said. “You are one hundred.”

He snorted, disgusted with my lack of imagination.

The man has been healthy his whole life. He’s had a couple of surgeries on his knee. He’s had his gall bladder out, but he’s never taken a daily medication, not ever. And he’s not ready to die, or even to begin to die. He is undeterred, and he plans to be here in the spring.