To say I’m confused would be an understatement. It was a simple Sunday morning. We went to Waffle House (an odd choice for her), enjoyed a nice cup of tea and attended morning mass. I should have noticed something was off. Instead of accepting wine from the chalice, Meemaw pulled out a wine bag and ripped it while the priest slapped it and yelled “Emergency!” To make things stranger, when she sat back down, she looked at me and said, “You’re up next, pussy.”
So here I am, watching some Family Feud when my grandma pulls up to the living room. Without even making eye contact, she says, “I’ve got some Publix coupons for herbal tea and biscuits. I’ll be back later.” What confuses me is why she is bringing pit vipers and a beer bong to Publix. She’d been acting differently since her second dose of the vaccine. Suddenly, Scrabble nights can only begin with her shotgunning a Busch Light. She can only enjoy the vacuum infomercials with two 6mg Zyn in her lip. I’ve rarely seen anyone get as excited as her to inject insulin. Why she heats it in a spoon, I’ll never know. Lately, she’s been questioning me about where I put her pods. I don’t understand why she would need a Keurig before going to Cracker Barrel??
It has been two days since she left. Like any normal person, I check Facebook. There lay the answers to my questions. Meemaw was in Panama City Beach, and apparently with the entire shuffleboard club too. It seems Holiday Inn advertised a vacation special on the Infomercial Channel. I can’t blame her. With plane flights bewilderingly cheap, her whole squad vaccinated and with enough pension money to buy a Tesla, she made the choice that any rational 20-year-old would make.
She did 4g of shrooms on the bus ride there. Normally, I wouldn’t be worried; she survived the Cold War. But she was the one driving the bus. That doesn’t even begin to cover her shenanigans. There was a MySpace post of her Bill’s Mafia-ing a pong table. Apparently, metal hip implants cut right through plastic. She gambled her entire Social Security check on UCLA covering the spread. At this point, I’m just concerned about her health. How a 75-year-old can survive on a strict diet of nicotine and Wendy’s 4-for-4s is a modern miracle.
However, being stuck in a nursing home doesn’t make me any less worried about her. To ease my anxiety, I’ve been playing bingo, knitting and feeding the outdoor cats. The horror of my old spring breaks still haunts me to this day, like a socially awkward sleep paralysis demon too afraid to leave the corner. I much prefer my current vegetative state revolving around watching Steve Harvey’s succulent stache twitch on TV. It would be bliss if the AC wasn’t always chilly.
Maybe the tables have turned. Maybe it’s my time to live vicariously through her social media.