by Bojana Stojcic
“Let me help you, Grandfather,” said a voice to the old man as he stumbled walking away from the table. Grandpa nodded back, put on his hat he wore with style and, with a profound mistrust of anything new, left the room, unsure about where they had met.
“Even elephants forget,” Grandpa joked. What he didn’t see at the time was that you never forget an elephant.
He eventually put a name to a face – that was a man of pronounced views he liked to air. So unlike a gentleman (!) to put stones on people’s limbs, push and trip them when they’re not looking.
My Grandpa got to know Mr. Parkinson well but Mr. Parkinson never got to know Grandpa.
Every day he would lose a movement or two the way we lose our car keys but kept shuffling through the fallen leaves with a stoop and the lips turned up at the corners, alongside a man who stuck with him like a tape running in a continuous loop, repeating the same songs over and over. Words dangled from the tip of his tongue, struggling to find their way out of his mouth, turning from slow to slower until they became too limp and finally gave in though, truth be told, Grandpa had never been much of a fan of anything fast-paced and rash.
I can still see him, clean-shaven in his recliner, his head tilted to one side, always playing his radio too loud, the seam of his shirt straight, the stitches tight and regular, communication sparse, and predictions spot-on.
And I see me, kissing his ice-cold forehead before he’s lowered to the ground.
My Grandpa didn’t die from Mr. Parkinson. He died with him.
Bojana Stojcic teaches, bitches, writes, bites and tries to breathe in between. Her poetry and prose have appeared in over 30 publications, Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, The Opiate, The Blue Nib, Burning House Press, Mojave Heart Review, Okay Donkey, Spillwords, and X-R-A-Y, among others. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to go. She is @BoyaETC on Twitter.