Fatale Abstraction

Sad news for my family Friday. My father's mother is doing very badly. She is the grandmother with Alzheimer's I mentioned recently. She was taken to the hospital this morning. I grieve for her and for the awareness she's lost, but mostly I grieve for my father, who feels her loss most keenly of all, I believe.

I was working to get as much jewelry made as possible these past few days, and today I had to wrap it up and get ready to set up for the show, so late this afternoon I loaded everything into my chariot, and went in and took a shower and washed my hair. I felt tired, drained, and went out into the back in a robe to let my hair dry a bit in the windstorm that dragged the cool front in this afternoon. Though they bowed with the wind, the flowers held onto their petals, denying the wind its brutal prize of denuding them of color. I brought a book and sat in the sun by the pool, but I didn't read a word. I sat looking to the east, and waiting for the neighbor's giant trees to snap with the fury of the wind. I kept thinking of grandma, and what a brief glimmer of time on earth a life is. Beyond the edge of the roof I saw the moon sliding into view, that great rattle bead in our celestial hula-hoop. This moon was sentinel to her childhood, overseer of her life and its seasons. Will this be the last moon's sweep of my grandmother's life?