fingers

Today I was driving to the grocery store and I started slowing down for a yellow light. I ended up beside a car with an older woman. I couldn't see her face at first, but just her fingers on the steering wheel and for a split second I thought they were my grandma's hands.

They were dark brown and some of the fingers a bit crooked, wrinkled, but still smooth.

I pulled up and kept staring at the woman's hands until I'm sure I made her quite uncomfortable and she waved. I smiled, nodded, and waved back.

I remember how my grandma would use her fingers to work vaseline and oil through my hair, parting my hair and smoothing it down. Sometimes she'd take just her pinky finger and use it to point to a place in your head where you either needed more grease or were using too much. I remember her fingers making sandwhices, trimming the edges off the bread, smashing the sandwhich down so it'd be almost flat. Or how she'd slide her glasses back on her face; she would use her thumb and ring finger and cup the classes and slide them back on her nose. When I was younger, much younger, she would paint her fingernails, usually a dark red deep purple, but she was always particular about the color looking just right.

My last memories of her fingers and hands were of her in the hospital, she was sick, so sick, and laying in that big bed, so small. I showed her pictures of babe and she said she was so beautiful, "like a doll." I couldn't stand to see her like that, the room was warm, and I felt hot. Family was around, piled up in the room like how we always are, and I looked at everyone's faces. I could see that we were all wearing masks, but I couldn't do it any longer. So I grabbed gradma's hand, or either she grabbed mine, I don't remember now, and it was so warm. So warm and so soft.

Its been 7 months now since her death and in some ways I feel even worse, different things catch me like what happened today. It might be a smell, or a song, or something small, but it pulls me back in this tidal wave of emotion.