Orchid Resounding

There are purple orchids on the desk, silently rotting in a wide-mouthed vase.  I hate the smell of them, the frank inevitability.  I shift away and breathe shallowly, but the fragrance is overpowering, wafting over on soft currents of air conditioning.  I think of my grandmother's funeral, of the head-sized orchid clusters peering into the casket. .They were everywhere, sitting on tables, stretched out on the floor, nestled into the soft satin around my grandmother's face. Orchids were her favorite. 

The classroom in front of me fades, washed clean by memory, and I am in the funeral home again.  I see the people at the wake, the empty space they leave around the casket.  A blast radius.  They speak of broken down cars, the price of real estate, their kids' grades, little league baseball.  Only occasionally do they speak of her, and no one speaks of the last five years of her life, of her eyes dulled with cataracts and her mind cloudy with dementia.  I don't blame them.  I step out into the lobby for a breath of fresh air: the orchids are oppressing.  Beautiful, waxy.  They, too, could be dead and embalmed, and no one would know the difference.  I feel lightheaded, and the vision fades for a moment.

After I returned to the viewing room, I followed everyone else's lead, making small talk, weaving among different groups, deliberately avoiding the casket. 

I finally did look.  I was transfixed for a long moment, confused by the forgery.  They should have left her alone.  She would have disapproved of the coral lipstick they'd smeared across the thin line of her lips, the matte, opaque makeup, the matching coral blush powdered across her sunken cheeks.  I imagined she was uncomfortable underneath that makeup, a bone set permanently the wrong way.  She never looked like that in life.

Even that was better than the decay of dementia.  No one wanted to see the matted, thinning hair, the gray, withered skin, the lost look on her face.  That expression was the worst of all-- she was the kind of woman who would beam at every last stranger on the street.  She had exhausted that smile too soon, used it up. 

I think of the last time I saw her, of her hands knotted around the edges of a fleece anorak. I had watched as a nurse pulled it over her shoulders, threading her wasted arms through the powder-blue sleeves.  I didn't offer to help, hadn't wanted to touch those mottled hands.  Even at the time I was embarrassed of myself.  If only I'd had the strength to hold her shaking hands and bury them into my own, flowers pressed in a book, preserved. 

Instead, I looked down at the speckled linoleum, hands in my pockets.  I stood there awkwardly for a few minutes, shifting my weight in time to the rattling ceiling fan.  I didn't even know if she remembered my name, my face, my voice. 

I sat down on the bed next to her and held an album on her lap, turning the pages slowly, hoping for a spark of realization.  Maybe, I hoped, the photos would jolt her mind back from wherever it had gone, snap her back like a rubber band released.  Her eyes followed my hands, studying the self-conscious curve of my fingers, my cropped fingernails.  She didn't look at the photos.  She didn't smile. 

Hours after I'd left the hospice, I still smelled of lysol and urine, of alzheimers and dementia. I couldn't tell whether or not it was in my head, but I could still smell it even after I showered.  It was like a song stuck in my head, and it wouldn't go away. It smelled vaguely like orchids.