Merry Christmas, everyone.

In the north they saw my upside
My excitable and optimistic spirit

In the south they saw my anger and my tears and my despair
They saw my moodswings

The surgery went okay. They got the main tumor out. But the doctors had said that her prognosis, with surgery, was three to six months.

Wednesday and Thursday she recovered. We all—my big extended Mexican family—we all took shifts watching her, staying with her in her hospital room.

On Friday the 13th—what, it was that date? I didn’t realize before. Anyway, on Friday I was getting ready to go to work, when suddenly the word came—Grandma’s coming home! She’s coming to stay with us. In two hours!

We flew into a frenzy of activity to get the house ready. We converted the dining room into a bedroom for her and Joe.

That’s how things are now.

Things have settled. And it’s easy to think things are fine. Yesterday we finished making 12 dozen tamales for Christmas.

I think—it’s not exactly that we’ve moved back into denial—but she seems to be doing so well, to be so cogent, that it’s once again hard to conceive that this might be the last Christmas we have with her.

I remember something she told me a while back, when Joe got sick and went into the hospital. She said, you finally learn how to live, and that’s when you die.

I’m trying—we’re all trying—to live the best we can, and push back death. To widen that space as much as possible, between learning how to live and learning how we will die.

The next few days are like a log in my mind. I was a little more disconnected than that first day. An effect of all the last-minute papers I had to write, the presentation I had to prepare. The things I had to do that my grandmother wanted me to do.

On Monday, the 9th, she was transferred to University. They did more tests. They did not do surgery. I got an A on my philosophy paper. I did okay, I hope, on the final. I didn’t seem to have a very confident knowledge regarding utilitarianism. I came home and tried to work on my paper for the next philosophy class. I signally failed.

On Tuesday, the 10th, I did not go to the final for my other philosophy class. My calculations indicated it didn’t matter; I was going to fail that class regardless. I visited my grandmother in her hospital room at University. She was scheduled to go into surgery. I thought I would go the the waiting room, to see my family first, to find out any news, but I couldn’t find the waiting room, and I ended up walking straight into my grandmother’s room. It was startling, actually, to just see her. I didn’t expect it. I just sat down and started talking to her. I told her I’d gotten an A on my paper. She was proud of me.

I asked her if she’d seen my mom, or anyone, she didn’t know where they were. I wandered out of her room, looked for my family, wandered back in and there, surprise, was my mom. We all talked for a little bit. I have no idea what about.

I had brought my laptop so I could do my last school work while being around the family. I just plugged in when my mom came to the waiting room and told us, she’s going into surgery now. We have to go downstairs while they’re operating.

We all filed into my grandma’s room and said our goodbyes. She said to me, I’ll see you in three hours. I said, it’s a date.

My dad had been at work. We called him when the news came that she was going into surgery. He had already left work, but was upset he hadn’t left earlier. I went and picked him up at Union Station. My dad and I both love the subway. I brought him back to the hospital, and left him with my mom. Four carolers in the hospital lobby were singing Feliz Navidad. My mom and I looked at each other and smiled at the incongruity of these Victorian-dressed carolers singing a Mexican Christmas song. It was funny. So whitewashed. But comforting to us, the way Spanish always seems to be. The language of some warm part of our soul. And good, to hear Feliz Navidad. The world was alright.

Driving my dad back from Union Station, he said that he’d been finding himself crying, spontaneously, the last two days. I told him how song lyrics kept detaching themselves from their songs, making me cry.

By now it was the afternoon, and I had only a few hours to write one last final paper and mark down some notes for an oral presentation, the last two assignments for my last class, Critical Thinking and Argumentation. I had to go. I punched In Utero into the tape deck of my jeep.

I came home and turned off the outside world. I wrote a good paper, but started running out of time. I called my teacher and told him I was going to be late. I gave him an emotionless account of what was happening. He said it was okay.

I marked down my notes for the presentation on a three by five card. I rushed to class, still listening to In Utero. I found that I had lost my card. I ran back and forth, from my class to my car—my card had fallen out of my pocket and under the driver’s side seat—I was yelling. I wondered if the universe was aligned against me, before I found the card. If the world was a cruel joke, trying to destroy me.

I gave my presentation, on legalizing drugs. I got a perfect score. I knew my grandma would be happy, even if, maybe, I would be sheepish about telling her what my topic was. I told someone, one of my classmates, after I left, that I wished I could have done my presentation on Why people we love shouldn’t fucking die. I had every point in my favor, I said, but I knew I would always lose the argument.

I have to write these entries in little chunks. Little heavy chunks. I thought the last one was the longest thing I’ve ever written, but looking at it I see it’s just a few paragraphs.

I keep losing my place. I keep having to find it again.

My dad said, if you’re worried about that, you should go see her tonight. Because we don’t know.

I nodded and left. I ironed a shirt, because I wanted my grandma to see me in a nice shirt– fuck, I’m crying– I wanted my grandma to see me in a nice shirt that night in case– dammit– in case she didn’t get to see me again. I wanted her to be proud of me. And it’s so stupid, it was such a stupid impulse. My grandma knows everything about me. She doesn’t need to see me in– but there you go– I wanted her to see me in a nice shirt.

I said, I’ll go down and visit her, and then I’ll come back to do my paper. She’d want me to get my paper done.

That’s what she said herself. I was the first one there. My mom is a nurse supervisor there at LAC USC’s emergency room, and she was pulling out all the stops, getting my grandmother checked out. My mom told me it wasn’t a bleed, that there was a mass in my grandma’s front right lobe. Then she had one of the other people there show me to my grandma’s little cubicle in the corner of the emergency room. I had about two minutes alone with her before Joe arrived.

We talked a little. I held her hand– maybe, really, she held mine. My grandma told me that there was something, maybe cancer, in her brain. I told her I knew, my mom had told me. I told her I loved her. She told me she loved me. I told her I came to visit her, but I couldn’t stay very long, because I had to do my final paper for philosophy class, and I knew she would want me to get it done and get a good grade. She said, very simply, yes.

We both said it didn’t make any sense, what was happening.

Then Joe was there, and, of course, I wanted to give them their time together. That phrasing, like time was mine to dispense with in whatever manner pleased me. I wandered over to my mom. I waited in the family room. More people showed up: my dad, my brother, Joe’s daughter Reesa and her son Highland. My mom came in with the results from my grandmother’s CT scan, and she showed us the mass, the incongruous white dot in the picture of my grandmother’s brain. It was the mass that was causing the swelling. They had started her on drugs to reduce the swelling. It might be cancer. They needed to do an MRI, but getting an MRI at LAC USC during the weekend took an act of God. Tomorrow she’ll be transferred to University Medical, but tonight there’s some strange insurance situation, and my mom is going to keep her in the emergency room, where she can keep an eye on her.

My mom was in nurse mode. Holding back the flood. She almost cracked when one of her friends, another nurse supervisor, came by to see how she was doing. I remember sitting there in the room, my mom is just outside the doorway, most of her just out of my view. Joy hugs her, and I can tell by just the sliver I can see of her that my mom is almost crying. But. Not. Quite.

This is where linearity breaks down for me. Things become a jumble in my mind for the next few days.

I’m not sure what I knew while I was driving to the hospital to visit her.

They thought, it’s a bleed. The bleed is causing swelling in her right lobe, which is putting pressure on her left lobe, and that’s what’s causing the slurred speech, the strange movement on her right hand side.

I must have known more than the bleed theory, because I remember talking to my dad about visiting her. They were talking about surgery, but how soon? Should I go down there tonight to see her or should I work on my paper that’s due tomorrow?

If I don’t, if I don’t see her tonight, is there a chance—is there a chance I won’t get to, tomorrow?

All I’m completely sure about was that I was driving down the ten freeway, listening to the Strokes, trying not to cry too much and failing. Someday was playing, and the lyrics didn’t make any sense in the situation, not in their own context, but I was singing along and crying anyway. I’m listening to it right now and starting to cry. It hurts to say, but I want you to stay. Grandma. Dammit.

Wiping away tears so I could see the road to drive. To see my grandma.

Sunday, December the 8th, my mom and dad visited my grandmother Elsie at her house in Santa Fe Springs.

They went because, the last time I had talked to her, my grandma sounded a little strange. Sedated, to me. So I’d called my mom on her cell phone and told her, faux-admonishingly, speak to your mother. She doesn’t sound right.

My mom did call, and agreed she sounded slow. But she and my dad were driving up to Oxnard for a Christmas party, so they couldn’t go and visit her immediately.

The next day, Sunday, December the 8th, my mom and dad visited my grandma at her house in Santa Fe Springs.

I saw them leave to go see her. Shortly thereafter, I left for the central library in downtown Los Angeles. I had to do some research for my final papers.

When I got back, I was surprised to see Joe, my grandmother’s husband, at our house. But not my grandma. I went to my parents’ room, and talked to my dad. Where’s mom and grandma?

Your mom took grandma to the hospital, he said. They think she might have had a stroke.

Writing anything is hard.

Reading is so much easier. Reading, watching, absorbing. Taking things in, hour after hour. Getting distracted from distractions from distractions.

Creation is difficult. Focus is difficult. Saying anything meaningful is hard, precisely because what you’re trying to say something that matters.

Pointless, self-referential entries flow out easily, unhindered by the weight of substantiveness.

Reading is killing me, minute by minute. Death by entertainment. Death by distraction.

Grandma, please, be okay.

I wanted to say, I apologize. I’m sorry for the lies I’ve told. I hope they haven’t hurt you. I hope you can forgive me. And… I’m trying real hard not to do it again.