I Really Miss You, You Know

I really miss you, you know. 

I miss the way you'd say "Macy Jean, let me see your face," and take a pastel pink fingernailed hand and tuck a bundle of hair away. I'd groan and shake my head until the piece fell back to its rightful place; you'd sigh and smile down at my stubbornness, all three feet of it. You were where mom and dad would ship me off to whenever they were busy or had to work, and you were the spawning ground for my early success in all of the above. Always looking down at me with your tenderhearted baby blues and graying amber hair, and as I grew up, you only grew shorter. You stopped magically getting the knots out of my shoelaces and instead started dropping the "Jean" when you said my name. I was budding by the day, and so were you. 

But in the same way that you looked at me as a child, I began to look at you. I looked wherever you were laying, whether it was your chair in the living room or a hospital mattress or a sticky hospice bed. It wasn't some gradual thing, it started and then came all at once. All of the sudden you had cancer, and I was forced to muster up all of that moxie that you'd spoon-fed me since birth. I had to dip into this emotional college fund, borrow bravery for the moment and plan to give it back later. You knew you were going to die, in the same way that I knew. But no amount of that certainty could have rehearsed what to do when your sunken cheeks and swollen hands became lax. Was it wrong of me to want to keep a hold of your hand until rigor mortis set in, so that the funeral home couldn't pry our fingers apart and steal your body away? 

If there's an afterlife, you're probably serving everyone snacks. Maybe strawberry kool-aid and sliced apples. Without the skin, though. I mean, goodness, people choke on that stuff. 

I really miss you, you know.