you’re stuck in my mind

I am a real life Drew Baylor. And my family is just like the one from the film. I really, honestly felt/feel that way about my last 50 or so hours spent on planes and with my family. In about a half hour I’ll be boarding a flight to Milwaukee. From there another flight to Kansas City. It was entertaining though, how I paralleled so much with that movie. The entire trip each and every person from my family commented on how I had come so far from Kansas. Which I always corrected by saying Missouri, however, it didn’t make much difference, it would be a replay in about 20 minutes.

Every thirty minutes I heard at least one comment about how much I’ve changed. How they all would have walked by me on the street. How no one liked my black hair. How I had gotten so many piercings and tattoos. I had this small hope that maybe, just maybe one of my cousins had went punk or gothic. But I was to be disappointed, every single one of them is just as innocent and normal as the last time I saw them. In fact, only Daniel is regarded as slightly off. Probably only because he’s an artist. Once while taking a nap I overheard someone telling another member of the family that I came home, “Amanda came, she’s sleeping right now. It doesn’t look like Amanda but we love her anyway.”

I’ll have to come back in a week or two for a funeral. I really hope that I can. I do truly love my gramma, she’s amazing, five kids, 12 grandkids and she’s still lucid enough to remember small details about us, she never stops telling us how much she loves us. We all just sit with her. Hold her increasingly decreasing figure in our arms. Feel her bones beneath that thinning layer of skin. Hear every breath in her lungs. She weighs 55 pounds. She won’t eat. In fact, my favorite moment of the entire trip was when I walked into the living room eating a banana, she remarked on how good it looked so I offered her one, to my (and everyone else in the room’s surprise) she accepted and ate almost an entire banana. This is shocking because the woman has been somehow surviving on maybe one spoonful of apple sauce a day for almost three weeks. She refuses food and barely drinks water. It was so delightful that she ate with me, it might be one of the last times that she does.

The incredibly hard thing is that she just thinks that she’s sick. That she has caught the flu. She leaned on my arm and told me that she really needed to get better. So we could go out, and do things. So she could go places with us. What else could I do but tell her that she would get better? And when I said goodbye she said she wanted me to come back for the holidays, I held her hand and told her that I would love to. That I would see her soon.

And to think that my gramma dying is just half of the family drama. My grandfather (same side) has been dating this woman for 12 years or so, and slowly but surely she’s been taking all of this money and possessions. There’s nothing left in the bank, the house is but a shell and his kids (my mom and her siblings) lost power of attorney years ago to her. She’s insane. And she tells him that he’s said things that he hasn’t, which I suppose is only possible because the poor man has dementia. As if the family doesn’t have enough to worry about, they have watch their father be swindled. It’s repulsive. Oh, but she saved all the family photos for the kids, she has no want of them. Only the money, not the memories.

And for me. This has been just bizarre. I haven’t been here since I was 14. Nine years since I’ve seen this place and these people. I got flown in on a whim, only to leave just a fast. I drove to get coffee yesterday, took the car and just figured I would find something if I drove far enough. It’s odd, my dad’s family and my mom’s live in the same town. It’s not terribly large, so I ended up close to my grandparents house without even realizing it. I drove past all these places and just had freak flashbacks. It was like being in a old dream that I had since forgotten, everything suddenly was real and in front of me. I went to the ice cream place that my grandparents always took me to. I visited them and raided the fridge downstairs at the wet bar (which, hilariously, is always fully stocked with chocolate and soda….not beer). I had breakfast at the table with my grandparents and we watched the news together like it was the most normal thing in the world…and it felt like it was.

And now I’m going home for two days, then to Omaha in two days for three days…or two…or four…I don’t know anymore. And I have a midterm tomorrow and a conference on Thursday….away we go.