So last year I finally understood winter. The metaphors and literary uses of it, the way your body feels when it finally ends, all the lyrics about snow and ice and bare tree branches and silence. It was something I could never know living in Los Angeles my whole life. It was something I needed to experience to prove to myself that I could survive.
This year I get to understand death. The way a person who is dying turns their head to face the sunlight, and pulls and plucks at their clothing preparing for an exit. The unrecognizable sight of such a thin, frail, gasping body. “This isn’t him,” I told the nurse. “We’re in the wrong room.” My mother looked at me, shook her head, “it’s just that you haven’t been here for a few months.”
We sang his favorite George Gershwin and Cole Porter songs at his bedside, Someone to Watch Over Me, Young at Heart, and my grandma sang The Man I Love. She put her hands on his cheeks. My prince, my prince, she cried, Have you ever seen such a beautiful man?
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