by Jesse Ayers, San Quentin State Prison, CA
I stood in my grandmother’s kitchen watching her cry. I could have reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. All I had to do was step over to her and I could have put my arm around her. The idea of hugging her never crossed my mind at all.
Growing up in my house, I never saw anyone cry. There was hysterical laughter, annoying screeching and girls shrieking. Occasionally my dad would show-up and who knew what type of mood he would be in, when the roar of a lion would make his entrance.
I saw my brother sobbing silently once. I was around ten and my brother was around seven. He had just undergone his final foot surgery to correct an Achilles tendon issue he has had since birth. His foot was in a cast and there was a metal screw in the bottom of his foot. His foot was resting at the foot of the bed. A nurse entered the room and parked a cart up against the bed where his foot was, as the nurse turned, her hip bumped the cart and the wood cart bumped the screw in my brother’s foot. I heard him softly crying, barely a breath of a cry, so soft no one in the room moved, besides the nurse who left. She never realized the pain she inflicted.
My mother and father were not the type to hold you in their arms and say, “There, there, it’ll be alright.” I never saw my parents crying. They were silent, silly, serious, not really social at all. My parents never had friends at our house.
When I was around eight or nine years old, my grandpa died. He was my father’s dad. No one in my family cried. It was eerily silent in our home. We had just recently moved to another house. It seems like we moved every year. My grandfather helped us move during the middle of the night. I woke up in grandpa’s pick-up truck, on a dark street, with a cold Weiner Schnitzel Chili Dog in my lap wrapped up in greasy wax paper. Six months later, my grandpa died and no one at the funeral cried.
I am forty one now. My grandma passed away while I was in prison. My dad told me there are baby angels and roses in the clouds on her polished casket. My dad’s mother was a very special woman. I loved to make my grandma laugh. She would always have a cookie or a stick of gum for me.
At thirty years old, I stood in my grandma’s kitchen, talking to her like I always did, using my charm to praise her. As she washed the dishes, she stopped and hung her head, and she confessed how tired she was and how hard life was getting.
I said with a smile, “Come on grandma! You’re stronger than us all!”
She shook her head and said, “Not anymore Jesse, not since Curt died. I’m falling apart.”
My grandmother cried. Exhausted, heaving sobs in remembrance of her beloved son who had passed away. My uncle had died years ago, but only now was I seeing my grandmother beginning to crack. In a matter of years my grandmother would have a stroke and die paralyzed in a hospital bed in her home.