vacant

it had been two years since i last saw him. my father had been telling me, but without laying eyes on him myself i pushed it all away as unfamiliar impossibilities. when i walked in, he sat at the dining room table in his blue pajama set, which my dad says he now lives in. the buttons of his shirt were done halfway, exposing the same huge, alabaster belly i used to pretend was a punching bag when i was a little girl and he'd prop me up on his lap. what little gray, wiry hair he has left atop his head was visibly disheveled and unbrushed and you could see straight through to his freckled scalp. breadcrumbs peeked from the corners of his mouth and traces of stained dirt showed from underneath his fingernails. i leaned over to hug him and immediately smelled the odor of someone who has resisted bathing for a few days. a task my dad also said he neglects lately. this is my grandfather. but he is not the same man i remember, that the small town of upper north carolina remembers, who owned the town's one and only car dealership. back then, he was always extremely polished right down to his wingtip shoes and blue blazers. always a blue blazer. and always an extended hand ready for any handshake as he talked up the men and women of the town, both old and young. he was mr. personality, mr. class. mr. davidson. he was not this unbathed, frail-minded man before me. so there he sat, serving as the reality check i've been missing that..god, oh god...life does go on. we grow, and we grow up. even more, we grow old. we start life as dependent entities and we end it in much the same way. and it's the reality that nothing in life stops in it's tracks for us to catch up to it. instead, it pulls us forth with speeds relative to a locomotive...only on this train there are no loud horns signaling each stop, just the scenery whizzing by in a blur.

looking down at his vacant eyes, the vacancy which flickered in and out of the story that day and i imagine does every day now, he smiled up at me the smile that told me i'm still his babygirl. still the first born grandchild he used to be so proud of, though his smile now was also more childlike itself than i'd ever seen it. for in that smile i saw more than just a man, more than a childhood, i saw everything i hope my life to be and the fragility it can all contain. but, god knows, i also saw plenty of love.