Passing rain and passing memories.

This past weekend my state got hammered by storms.  A town near here got pretty much wiped off the map.  Me, I slept through most of it.  The morning after it'd all blown through I took a walk through town.  This was at like 5 AM.  I'd been so busy sleeping through the storms that when I finally woke up it was about the time most people should be going to bed.  Everything was grey and wet outside.  It was also almost seventy degrees, so the slight fog amped up the moisture in the air that much more and I could feel my shirt starting to cling to me.  What was odd to me though was the smell.  There was that fresh clean air smell you always have after a rainstorm, but it was mixed with something else-- all the branches down, the puddles of mud.  It was vegetation and silt, and it brought me back to my grandparents' house back home.  They lived on the water, and the scent in the air that morning was the same as when I'd wander out onto the public pier next to their house.  It hit me then how long it's been since I've been home.  I haven't heard my grandmother's voice in five years, and the last time we spoke she didn't know who I was.  Fucking Alzheimer's.

I've always told myself I wanted to make it back and see her one more time before it was too late to say goodbye, but another part of me is wondering if the moment's already passed and maybe I'd be better off.  The last time I saw my grandfather was two weeks before he passed away, and it was a rare good day for him.  He was lively, he argued with Grandma, had a milkshake.  The spark was still in his eyes.  The night he passed he went into a deep coma, and when my mom asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital to see him and I just couldn't do it.  I wanted to remember him the way I'd seen him that day.  I don't even remember the last time I physically saw my grandmother.  I know it was probably a day or two before I left.  I know that we talked on the phone a few times; she yelled at me for not introducing her to the pretty girl I liked so much and kept asking when I was going to take a vacation and come visit her.  What I remember most though is the last phone call, on my lunch break at work, standing in the parking lot and listening to my grandmother tell me what a nice young gentleman I was to spend time talking to her.  

"Of course, I'm your grandson."  

"Are you?  I'm sorry.  Well, that's good!"

"Yeah, it is."

My mom tells me that physically Grandma's doing pretty well for someone pushing 90.  Mentally, it's hit or miss.  It's more a matter of lucid days vs quiet and staring off into space.  Part of me still wants to see her so bad, hold her hand, tell her I love her.  But again, I just don't know if I can do it.  

Despite all that, when I walked in the door after that walk I actually felt better than I had in days.  I don't know why.  Maybe it was just getting out after having been cooped up so long, or maybe it was that I was happy to have remembered that smell of the saltwater and all the good times that went along with it.  When I do eventually make it home, I'm going to drive down to the place where my grandparents' house stood.  I'm going to walk out on the pier, because I know it's still there.  I'm going to sit down, watch the waves roll in, and think about nothing but when I was a kid, running around with a water pistol and a crab net, not even knowing about the sorts of things that are weighing on me now.  I think Grandma would appreciate that I was finally taking a vacation.