In two weeks, my grandmother will turn 102 years old. I don’t think she’ll make it. She’s dying right now.

He face is a swirling drape of skin all sloping down to a drain that has replaced her mouth. It lies open always, a puttering vacuum that shakes with each attempt at suction. I could hear the morphine in her body, that thick low breath that comes with the stupor. I’ve heard it before, and I expect I’ll hear it again. As I neared the side of her bed, I picked up the sound of her mucus, bouncing around in her chest like globby pinballs.

Inout…………..Inout…………..Inout…………….

That’s the best I can do to visually describe to you this style of breathing, if you haven’t had the opportunity to hear it in the past.

The staff at the home that cares for her had called my mother yesterday at lunchtime.

“Come now,” they said. “Just come right now.”

My mother went right over. I showed up a few hours later, driving from near Sacramento to near San Francisco to get there. We were it. She’s two weeks from 102, after all. There aren’t many people left who know who she is.

I spent the night at my mother’s house. We had seven and sevens, talked about Grandma, joked about how tough she is, what a fighter she’d always been, how she’d probably be sitting up waiting for breakfast in the morning.

She wasn’t.

Inout…………..Inout…………..Inout…………….

She can’t be more than 80 pounds now, her skin just a hair thinner than the muscles that it covers. She has a thin brown pony-tail tied on the top of her head even though the wild eruptions of hair on her temples are as gray as ash. I can see more than just a vein or two behind the skin on her face.

She has achieved translucence.

After an early morning visit, breakfast in Burlingame, and another visit, my mother and I part ways in the parking lot to return to our respective jobs, the nurses ready to call should anything change in her condition. That was 9:30 AM. It’s 8:30 PM and no such call has come.

She’s still there, still here, still breathing. Amazing.

I was standing a moment ago in front of the kitchen window, looking out on our street, watching some leaves tumble by. I imagine her standing in front of the kitchen windows of her own long, varied life. So many people she’s known, so many friends and family and lovers. She’s outlived them all, watched the world go by, come back around the bend and go by again and again. Almost 102, after all.

I thought about pouring myself a seven and seven tonight, stirring the cocktail with my finger and lifting it in honor of her. But I couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t take my eyes off of the empty street in front of my house. Hayden’s asleep. Heidi’s out for a little while. It was just me in the quiet, watching out of the window, my body almost frozen, trying to freeze.

A dog barked faintly in the distance. A siren traversed nearby Gibson Road. The wind stopped troubling the leaves. I checked my jeans to make sure my phone was with me. I didn’t cry. Maybe I will in a little while.

Is that just the world moving by, Grandma?

Still plugging away at the book! I *was* two chapters away from completion, but it appears I’ve found two other chapters that need to be written. I’m not sure where they were hiding!

I’m up to 88,000 words, which is 8,000 more than my minimum. Even though I don’t want this to be a long book, I’m okay with going so wildly past my minimum. I’m certain there’s a lot to be cut during the editing phase.

Here’s a scene from Chapter 17. In it, Charlie recalls a conversation that happened in his adolescent bedroom between him and his friend. In it, he describes a vision he had to his friend. Of course, the entire episode is actually a vision of a memory of a vision. Right, and so…

I lay on my old bed, watching Jeff flip through my meager collection of cassette tapes, many of them purchased on his recommendations.

“Where’s that Slayer tape? The one Barney lent me? I’m sure I left it here.”

“Dunno. Check the deck.”

He opened the player and pulled out the transparent plastic cassette.

“Aha!” He rejoiced. “Now, where’s the fuckin’ case?”

“It’s not on top of the deck?”

“Don’t see it.”

“Hmm…” I rolled off of my bed and started pawing around under my bed. I pulled out a sock.

“Oh, man,” he said. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s just a sock.”

“Uh-huh.”

I reached under the bed again and pulled out the tape cover.

“Here!” I proudly announced.

“Cool. Give it over.”

I handed him the cover, and he opened it up, pulling out the liner notes and examining the microscopic print.

“Jeff?”

“Yeah, buddy.”

“Can I tell you about one?”

“Sure.”

“You were smoking a joint.”

“That was ten minutes ago, Charlie. You’re slipping.”

“No. We’re a lot older. You’re smoking a joint at my work, I think. But it’s just us, and we’re in the showroom.”

“So far, I’m failing to see the excitement.”

“You’re you, right at this moment. Same age, clothes, hair. But I’m not. I’m older, stronger, and I think my skin is different.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I’m looking at you, but you’re not really there.”

“Although you confuse me every day, Charlie, I always seem ask what the hell you mean.”

“I’m older, but you’re not. You’re smoking and I’m not. We’re at my work, but I’m pretty sure I’m not on the clock. And we’re just sitting there, not talking or moving or anything. But I can’t stop watching you, even though everything seems strange. It’s like you’re not really there, and neither am I.”

“Technically, neither of us is there.”

“I guess,” I acknowledge, playing with the frayed denim on my jeans.

He stopped examining the tape cover and pivoted his body so he faced me.

“We’re not really here, either,” he whispered. “If I die tonight, I’ll leave no evidence of my life. So it’s like I was never here, right?”

“Huh?”

“Think about it, Chuck. We’ve left no mark, probably never will. Not because I don’t want to, it’s just the reality of life.”

“You’ll leave a mark.”

“Maybe, maybe not. My point is that I haven’t, so technically, I’m not really here.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“See what has been and what the future sees,” he hissed, menacingly, and then burst into laughter.

“What does that mean?”

“The poetry of Slayer is a multi-layered beast, Charlie. To explain deeper meanings requires more cheeba.”

I collected my pipe and baggie from the nightstand and handed them to Jeff. He unscrewed the lid from the bowl and poked around in the ash.

“Another hit, maybe two,” he surveyed.

He fished Thorn from his pocket, rolled the striking wheel and held the flame carefully next to the bowl so that just the tip of the fire would be dragged over the lip and around the remaining nugget. The dark ball glowed orange as he inhaled.

He handed me the pipe, nodding for me to take my hit before the bowl died.

“Hurry,” he muttered through clenched lips.

I held the pipe to my lips but did not smoke. My mind fixed on the smoldering embers, and the room seemed to fill immediately with amber, trapping us in the resin. I could look around the room but no longer move. Jeff’s eyes darted around, yet he, too, remained completely still. We were glued into position, frozen for all eternity in this meaningless moment.

I shouted at him with my mind, yelled out my desire to break free, to move and never stop, but I could not say if Jeff heard me. His eyes stopped moving and seemed to relax, as if he’d resigned himself to this new, unfathomable fate.