Caution: Fiction

The Gray Wall

            A cool breeze gently rustled her tattered brown skirts as Annabelle settled upon the hard wooden bench. She watched as the station boy deposited her portmanteau onto the wooden platform and disappeared amongst the crowd. Men in top hats and overcoats strolled past her, avoiding her gaze. Little children dressed in their Sunday best stopped and gawked at her frayed white linen shirt and wrinkled red coat until their mothers would shoo them away. Annabelle, however, never wavered. She remained sitting and kept her head raised. Under her straw brim hat, her hazel eyes lingered on the ruin beyond the tracks.

Crumbling stones lay beside the battered gray wall; holes from bombs punctured through it. Once it had been the pride of Charlottesville, protection for their beautiful city. It had been created to keep out the Indians and wild-men in the rolling hills of Northern Virginia. It was supposed to protect them from anything.

            But it had not. The war had ravaged through the small town of Charlottesville and left behind its marks. The wall was a prime example of this. Like the rest of the town, it showed the marks of aggression. It reflected the hardship of a lost war, martial law and the ever increasing poverty of its people. It mirrored the decay of the South.

            To Annabelle, life had always been like this. The wall had always been decrepit. The town had always been suffering from the presence of the ambitious and greedy Northerners or carpetbaggers. Her mama, papa and two younger sisters, Lily and Rose Anne, had always been working in the tobacco fields. She had always been helping Mama mending clothes, or the young’uns scrape for food.  Although never discussed, the war had always been lost. The absence of a brother and uncle had always been due to northern aggression. The North had always been the blame.

            A low Yankee voice disrupted her stillness. “Annabelle, I did not know if I would find you here.”
            She craned her neck to see her handsome young gentleman approach. Seeing him in his dark brown overcoat and trousers made her heart beat faster. She smiled.

            “Dylan, I thank th’ Lord that ye survived the night despite ‘em burning crosses.”

            Dylan grimaced, and his face darkened. “As much as they would like, I refuse to give way. I still want to help this town modernize. Even if I am forced to do it from a distance.”

            Annabelle silently nodded. She knew that he did not want to leave this town. Before Dylan, she would never have understood that. She had always believed any Northerner “modernizing” the South meant taking advantage of the South’s misfortunes. But Dylan was not this way. With his youthful good looks and bright ideas, he had marched into Charlottesville two years ago, determined to help the town. He had set about helping the children gain a better education, the farmers grow their crops more efficiently and rebuilding the town’s streets and railroad systems.

            It was in that time she had first met and fallen for him. She remembered looking into his clear blue eyes framed against his black hair as he conversed with her father. She had just stood there and absently nodded, not understanding anything he said. She had only known that she was supposed to stay away from the “likes of him.” That Northerners were never to be trusted.

            Time had told differently, however. Every week over those two years he had come to her plantation. At first she would remain in the distance, silently observing. Eventually she had gained enough confidence to address him, even without her father. As she had rambled, he had listened. His eyes had held her hazel ones. He even had smiled. He had given her time. Before him, she had never known a gentleman that would do that. She had never known someone so caring. 

            “Annabelle, are you alright?” She felt his hand against her back. She winced away in pain.

            “I’ll be fine again, soon. Thank ye,” she whispered in her delicate drawl. She forcefully smiled.

            A look of concern flickered across his face. His eyes searched hers. “Yes, it looks like your bruises are healing.” He gently brushed an auburn curl from her eyes, avoiding contact with her purple and blue skin. He took her hand in his and pressed it against his lips.

“I am so sorry, Annabelle. I blame myself entirely for what happened. I never thought my help could bring so much opposition and hatred. I never thought it would injure another, especially you. I still do not know how they found out about us . . .” He squeezed her hands. “I promise, though, that I will never let it happen to you, again.”

            “You cannot blame yourself, Dylan.” Truthfully, how was he to blame? He had just been trying to help. It was not his fault that others had not wanted his assistance. It was not his fault that the Klan had come after them, because he was a Northerner and she was courting an “outsider.” Despite the threats and burning crosses, they had thought that it would subside. Neither of them had predicted this outcome.

            Annabelle shook her head. Tears pricked from her eyes. She had tried to stay strong for too long. “Dylan, ye saved me life. I shudder to think what may have happened if ye had not been passing . . .” her voice faded.

 Images of that night flashed in front of her. She saw the burning flames and their terrifying expressions in white hoods. She felt their rough hands against her, violently pushing her to the ground. She felt their legs trampling upon her. Harsh words echoed in her ear, whispering that she was betraying her ancestors. She sensed their hatred and disgust.

            Suddenly she felt Dylan’s protective arm wrap around her and envelope her. She rested her head against his shoulder. His warmth comforted her.

            “It will be alright. Everything will be fine. Soon we will be far away from here. Soon you will be safe,” he whispered in her ear.

            She closed her eyes. His words soothed her. He was right. Only leaving Charlottesville ensured her a life. Soon she would not have to worry about anything, especially the Klan. She would be safe. She would have monetary security, enough to send some to Papa and Mama. Most importantly, she would have Dylan. She would have someone who had given up his dreams for her. She would have someone who loved her and would always care for her. She would have the chance to spend her life with that.

            As she heard the whistle of the train, she pulled away from him. She smiled. “You are right. This train is our calling from God. Everything shall be fine now.”

            She smoothed her dress and adjusted her ring. With his help, she rose from the bench. She raised her head and confidently glided toward the train. She ignored the stares from the other passengers. She did not care what they thought; they did not understand her situation.

            Dylan quickly boarded the train in front of her. Her heart began to race as he held out his hand. She looked around at the station. This was it. This was the moment when she should feel the most excited and liberated, but all she felt was uneasiness.

In the distance she saw the rolling hills of her home, illuminated with the bright orange and yellow leaves. Soon her family would begin harvesting. She could imagine Papa in his dirty breeches and ragged mud-colored shirt bending over the plants. Sweat would be dripping from his brim, and by the end of the day, he would be out of breathe. Only with extra pairs of hands would they meet their quota for that fall. In the evening, she would help Mama mend the clothes, turning her gowns into smaller dresses for Lily and Rose Anne. As Mama would sternly lecture the girls on the proper technique of sewing, she would watch as Lily would quietly pester Rose Anne.  In the other room, she would hear the loud voices of Papa and Dylan conversing on new farmer techniques.

Her heart glowed at the thought. As much as her family needed her, she needed her family’s love. Plus as much as Dylan wanted to help the town, it needed him. Without him, the town would continue suffering. It would continue to deal with the conquest of the Northerners and opposition of the Southerners. The town would try to rebuild but remain broken. The wall would remain a ruin.

Annabelle’s eyes widened as she turned back to Dylan. She shook her head and walked away from the train. Despite the Klan, she would never be able to leave her home. With Dylan behind her, she watched as the train pulled away from the station, and her chance for complete safety disappeared. Rather behind it, the gray wall remained.

Science in Progress Final Draft

The Love of Mitochondria

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.

Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.

He touches my hand.

Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials produce premature heart palpitations.

My heart beats rapidly.  

Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sarcomere of a muscle. Actin and myosin can now interact with one another, producing a muscle contraction.

My hand reaches for his.

ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.

My hand relaxes in his.

The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet, the massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

~

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. We need love to live as 1 Corinithians 13:2 says, “if I . . . understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” There has always been a need for a union of two.  It was only through marriage of Adam and Eve that God created us in his image. We need another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

~

Compatibility was not what I had at all thought about when I came to college. I was too busy, too focused on my goal to get a double major, do well in school. I needed to focus on my studies; I did not need a guy to be a distraction. And while I did sincerely believe in Christianity, I was sick of the idea of relationships . .  . women being submissive? Eve always getting the blame for the fall of mankind? Really? Didn’t they both eat the apple? Did they not both fall? Were they not both tempted? I went to bible study but kept my tongue when relationship issues sprang up or a guy went about submission of women. That was the last thing I needed – a guy telling me what to do.

That is not what I found with Tyler. We both lived on the second floor of Perkins that year; both were biology students and Christians. He was a part of the group of friends that I began hanging out with. He was the brother of a fellow trombone in the Marching 110. We met in Shively when I had been looking for a place to seat and eat after band practice – both Sarah and Sara, who I usually ate with, had meetings that day – and he offered me a chair. Soon we began studying together for the exams.

Over winter break, he started sending me texts. Before, I received the normal group text, “Hey, dinner in 10 minutes? Meet in the lobby,” but now it was the genuine, “How’s your break going?” or the more intimate, “Do you like Mannheim Steamroller? I could get tickets for us to go? . . .You could call it an early Christmas present.” Unfortunately, that never happened – I had to leave to play in the New Orleans Bowl.

I still remember the evening in December when the lunar eclipse happened. We had been talking about it for days and developed this plan that we were both going to watch it at the same time. So around 2 am, I stealthily snuck out of my room and down the stairs, grabbed my phone and camera, and made my way outside. The snow was wet and cold against my fleece pjs until came up with the brilliant idea to sit upon another winter coat. There I talked to Tyler on the phone for about an hour while watching the lunar eclipse. Most of the time it was silence or non-sense talking or giggling or shivering. And while Columbus had been cloudy that night and he really did not see anything, still we shared that experience together.

~

Humans seek each other for stability. We follow the elements that make us. Unless the element is an unreactive, very stable noble gas, such as Neon or Argon, most elements can only find stability in another. They react so that they become more stable, more complete.

Biology furthers this need for relationships in the idea of procreation. A life form must be able to grow, metabolize, respond to stimuli, adapt and reproduce. – It was one of the reasons why it was so controversial whether a virus is living or nonliving; it does reproduce but relies on the host to be able to do that. – It is the idea of reproduction and diversifying the gene pool for better survival that underlies attraction. We are attracted to a person that will better pass on your genes and through pheromones, we find this compatible individual. It was also this idea that led my Evolution professor to conclude that the lack of pheromones, covered by deodorants and perfumes led to the higher rates of divorce and break-up.

~

Tyler and I would grin and roll our eyes at each other when our professor would go on with this theory of attraction or his insistent belief that individuals should not shave, wear deodorants or really anything that civilization had forced upon us. Not wear deodorant? Not bathe? Eek! Not shave my legs . . . .okay, that is all good for winter months, but even then . . . it becomes too prickly and dry. Ugh.

Three months had passed since our first date and five since that lunar eclipse. We could now laugh at the awkwardness of that day in February. The day that he had brought me a huge velveteen Valentine’s heart filled with at least 50 Hershey chocolates. I shyly had blushed and given him his birthday gift – it fell on Valentine’s Day – of books from his favorite mystery author Agatha Christie. Then as if nothing had happened, we had gone back to doing homework. We were both logical and should not let emotion be shown. We kept with our normal routine; Ashley, the girl who had a huge crush on Tyler and followed him around like a puppy dog, still came over to study and Tyler still walked her back to her dorm around midnight. Or how on that day, I had broken down crying to Sarah, wondering that because Tyler walked Ashley home every single night, he must like her and how he could give me chocolate. (I swear I am not that stupid.) Or how that day, Sarah consequentially yelled at him, and he came clamoring over to my room with the confused “What did I do” expression. Or how that day finally ended at 1 am with,

“Well, do we want to be more than friends? Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Our friendship grew. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. I was the first person he would text to let me know about good or bad news. I was the first person that he would come to bounce an idea off on school, or a dilemma. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.

~

Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself and our body. Our muscles could use that to contract and move. Our heart can use that energy to beat. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.

~

We need love. 1 Corinthians 13 dictates that “Love is patient; love is kind . . .  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Song of Solomon 8:6-7 states that “love is strong as death . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” No matter how frustrated I could get with Tyler’s obliviousness, I still loved him. No matter how much I frustrated him with my long “soliloques,” he must have still cared for me.

~

I still had not told Tyler that I loved him. A year had passed since we had first started dating. I had been thinking about saying it for about three or four months, but I was not sure how to do it. I wasn’t even sure how he would react. Was he supposed to say it first? Was this how a guy felt on asking out a girl? The anxiousness of rejection but hope for acceptance? All I knew was that I wanted it to be special. Maybe when we were walking in Hocking Hills? Maybe a night at Emeritus Park? Under the cherry blossoms during April? Sure I could wait another two months . .

 Instead, it had just slipped out. We were cuddling on my paisley teal and white bedspread, watching a movie, but I could not remember the movie at all. I usually fell asleep, especially if it was that horrible movie “SSSSSSS” or “Snakes on a Plane.” I would let Tyler pick and tried to stay awake, but normally fell asleep. Anyway, all I remember is waking up. The movie had already ended, and he was snoozing beside me. I then ruined it with, whispering in his ear, “I love you.”

“What?” He opened eyes, but I am still not sure if he heard it.

I looked at the bed spread. “Nothing.”

“Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)

~

But we did love each other, I think. We endured the good and bad times together. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He offered his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I helped him with problems of dealing with an insecure ex-girlfriend. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for one another as two individuals in love or in symbiosis.

~

            In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

~

The words reverberate as we sit on the teal bedspread a couple of feet away from one another.

I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way too busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

~

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS? Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body aged too quickly? Degraded too soon?

~

I walk him out of the front door, down the grey/white stairs and to his car. We hug. The  freezer soon finds me: strawberry ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate. My roommate Siri turns on the light. I see the disgusting concoction. I see her worried eyes. I am sad. I am anger. . . . I am . . .  relieved?

~

            It is times like these that it is hard to have faith. Some days I felt lost or confused about where I was going. Would I be able to call Tyler a friend?  As Christians, we are called to love everyone, including friends or acquaintances or ex-boyfriends. We must love those that we are still trying to not to be angry at, forget and forgive. Yet it is times like these that we must love. We must have faith.

As much as 1 Corinthians 13 dictates about the consistency of love, it also states, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It shows that we do not know what will happen. It shows that each experience has a purpose that we may not understand, but we must have faith. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not.

~

Science also offers strength.

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or that maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . That it could have lived without the cell, it could have been independent and strong, remained single. In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

~

He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the months since October that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were in love. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH.

No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent. That just happen to live in symbiosis.

Science in Progress - Proposed Research

Preface: 

This work is not in its complete format, but just some prewriting/brainstorming for my final essay in this class. Overall, I want to look at relationships through a scientific and possibly religious lens, and below contains a selection of that. Enjoy and please let me know what you think and what I can do to improve this! Thanks! 

Caution: Below contains the information of controversial dangers: love and relationships. 

 

Hydrogen and Mitochondria 

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.
Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.
He touches my hand.
Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials cause the heart to contract more frequently, producing premature heart palpitations. Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sacromere, which binds to the troponin on an actin filament. Actin binds to the myosin head and through a powerstroke, contracts. Over several sacromeres, the entire muscle contracts.
My hand reaches for his.
ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.
My hand relaxes in his.
The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet. The massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. Since the beginning of civilization, marriage has been an upheld institution. But even before that in Genesis, there has been a need for a union of two. It was only through marriage of two individuals that God created us in his image. Since the days of Eden, we have needed another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

 I want to say that T and I had that perfect compatibility. We both needed companionship and both enjoyed the company of each other. Both biology nerds - I mean, majors - we could revel in the biology jokes or nerdy pick-up lines like, "If I were an enzyme, I would be DNA helicase so that I could unzip your genes" . . . haha, it is funny, right? Anyway, we would laugh at that.

We could complain in the hardships of our anatomy lab, dissecting the pig that he had named after the king in One Thousand and One Nights. We studied physiology, evolution and chemistry together. We suffered through organic chemistry together, through the good and bad days and exams. We borrowed each other's books: micro, cell bio, genetics, physics. We both discussed and agreed on religion together as he was Catholic and I Protestant.

We both supported one another. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He let me cry on his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.
   
Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. In many aspects it acts like a bacteria or prokaryotic cell, existing in our own eukaryotic cells - a fancy name for complex cells with organelles, organization and which typically exist in multi-cellular organisms like us -. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself. It converted pyruvate into acetyl CoA to be generated into the Citric Acid Cycle to make coenzymes. These coenzymes NADH and FADH2 supply the protons pumped through the inner membrane of the mitochondria and generate electrons through the Electron Transport Chain. This proton gradient forces the creation of ATP. Hence, it creates energy. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.
 
 In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

The words echo through my head. I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way to busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS?

Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me and make me a faulty mitochondria, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body age too quickly? Degrade too quickly?

Religion helps perpetuate the societal ideal for the perfect companion. It speaks against adultery. It mentions that the husband must love the wife and the wife the husband. It upholds the purity before marriage, that marriage is sacred. But it does not dictate on how to know how many people you will go through to find that "perfect someone?" It does not give a magical rule that you will "date seven people, marry, have two children, a dog . . .

And it is not supposed to. Rather it gives strength. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will yield. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not. Maybe you will be the ideal mitochondria, or maybe hydrogen . . . 

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or maybe a faulty mitochondria . . .

But maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . Could it have lived without the cell? Could it have been independent and strong, remained single? In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

 He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the weeks that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH. No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent.

That just happen to live in symbiosis.

****Note: Since this is a work in progress and just a flushing out of ideas, I apologize for any choppiness. Please let me know what I can do to improve it!!! : ) Let me know if there is any scientific terms I need to clarify, or if this is just too much! Or there is something else you feel that I need to address! Thanks! Also note, I don't want this to be too depressing - T and I are really good friends.

Warning: Sad Side-effects

Preface

This is my revised version of the second essay. It focuses on Dementia and my observations of it through my grandma. I hoped to replicate the gradual progression of the disease. This is extra; so do not feel obliged to read it, but if you do, I would love to hear feedback on it! Thanks! Hope you have a lovely day and weekend! : )

 Declining Dementia

            Her attentive bright brown eyes gaze straight into mine. Her smile exposes laugh wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Her short wavy white hair frames her face against her cleanly pressed white shirt and navy blue capris. She stands in front of the lighted red brick fireplace. One hand by her side, the other embraces the hand of her husband, who grins his rare smile straight ahead. She rests her head against his arm. The camera flashes.

            It had been September of my freshman year of high school. My parents and grandparents were throwing a farewell party for my sister, who was leaving for Cameroon in the Peace Corps. In the kitchen my grandma helped assemble appetizers with my mom as Jessica answered the questions about Africa that Granddad asked, and I talked to Grandma about English and high school.

            “How’s your crocheting going?”

            “Good.”

            “Jessica, how’s English going? Do you like your teacher? What books are you reading?”

            “It’s fine. . . . He’s fine. . . . We’re discussing To Kill a Mockingbird.”

            My dad called us over to the family room with camera in hand. We were going to remember this day. We would be able to send pictures with her and maybe use this as the family photo for Christmas cards. We lined the four of us together, took one with my grandparents and my sister, and then one with just my grandparents.

The photo sat on the table across from her white bed. The windows were decorated with shamrocks, and Valentine’s Day cards lay on the windowsill. I closed the door and returned to my grandparents and parents at the end of the hall. In the wheelchair, Grandma’s brown eyes appeared tired and glassy, the way a child’s eyes are when sick with the flu. Her wrinkled white top stained with brown food and wet drool matched her disheveled white hair. She mumbled non-coherent words and kept her head down against her shoulder.

For a couple months before that fall of my freshman year of high school, my parents had suspected that Grandma had dementia. This was not the first time that she had confused me for Jessica or forgotten small little things: her favorite books, birthdays of her grandchildren, dates of main holidays or even how to crochet. She had always been very astute, the constant teacher and observer. For her to forget something was not normal. Initially we ignored it, assuming it came from some stress that we didn’t know about. That it was just our imagination.

Still her memory dwindled. Every Sunday we drove to their house in Stow, Ohio. My mom and I would listen to her teach us about how the Writer’s Cup for Golf was really a reunion of international writers. We would watch her read underlined passages from her favorite books like Rebecca or The President’s Wife, or her magazine about Ireland. We would watch her struggle over words or phrases. We would see her constantly washing the dishes, stuffing buckeyes into her pockets, or hide pens in her favorite drawer. We heard her forget my cousins’ names. We saw her not recognize me, my mom, or my dad.

Sometimes she would merely confuse my mom and me for each other. Often we became relatives that she knew growing up in Plymouth, Ohio. She would share how her mother was doing, or how she had run that day and hid in the fields to read a book. We were her college friends, hearing the new gossip from a night of bridge. Or about her new beau, Ken, and how she did not know what to think of him, an engineer, her brother’s friend, just so tall with the Scandinavian  blonde hair and blue eyes. We were her concerned friends in Akron, visiting her after the delivery of her fourth child Christopher while her husband was in Africa for work. She would laugh as she related her fear in the hospital or the expressions that she received from the nurses as a woman without her husband, giving birth to a child. We were her colleagues in BPW, Business and Professional Women, and she would recount how her English students were doing at Stow High School. We were the nurses or some friendly strangers, and she would lie about how her husband was not taking care of her. She bemoaned about how she needed to leave this place, how he didn’t understand her.

Good days would follow bad ones. Some days she would correct the grammar of an article. Or she would write in the margins of a book, “Good job! That was a great point.” Or she would sit down next to me, pull out her yarn and begin teaching me a stitch. Those days, she recognized who I was. She would ask about Jessica in Africa. She would turn to my Dad,

            “Chris, what is happening? What was your father saying?”

            It was those days that made the bad ones seem like nothing. To catch a glimpse of Grandma, the way she had been, made us laugh at her mistakes on the bad days. They made us forget about her dementia. They convinced Granddad that she was not losing her memory, that she could get better.

            As those four years progressed however, the bad days outnumbered the good ones. She would frequently stumble on passages, angrily closing the book half way through reading. She would come downstairs, wearing capris in the winter or Halloween clothing during December. She would cry more often and complain about Granddad more. It was hard to not ignore this decline; yet, Granddad desperately did. He hung onto anything that he believed would bring back his beautiful bean chéile.  

            He had set up a St. Patrick’s day dinner my senior year of high school for that exact purpose. For years Grandma had celebrated St. Patty’s day with a huge family dinner; she normally made the traditional corned beef, cabbage and soda bread. She always wanted to remind us of our Irish heritage, something that Granddad desperately desired to prompt Grandma to now remember. So my mom followed the family recipe for the food; we set the table and decorated the house with green shamrocks. We dressed Grandma in green and white with her favorite Celtic cross. We gathered around the table and after prayer, began eating. Everything seemed normal; everyone was cheerful. Grandma was complacently there, quietly eating the food that my dad spooned onto her plate.

Soon, however, she became upset as her hearing aid squealed. She winced in pain and cried out. My dad and Granddad tried to console her but to no avail. Dinner was interrupted. My mom and I led Grandma to the next room, hoping that new surroundings would distract her from her present distraught. Somehow, eventually, she did calm down, but we did not continue dinner. We left that night, realizing that she would have to move into a nursing home.

Granddad, however, did not agree. It wasn’t until she fell and ended up in the hospital that he was forced to comply. I was a freshman in college when my parents told me the news. That winter break as the heavy snow flakes fell onto the windshield, we made our jaunt to Briarwood Nursing Home. They warned me what to expect, but I will never forget the stale stench of dry urine that infiltrated the nose as stagnate air stifled the body. The insistent beeping of the door that sounded, complementing the ever present wailing and screaming. The bright fluorescent lights. The twenty elderly patients in wheelchairs, all lined up in a row with their backs against the white-washed wall and in front of the hospital-like reception desk. How their white balding heads sagged, leaning against their shoulders.  How some eyes were shut and mouths open as they snoozed; how others stared straight ahead, their eyes glazed over. How at the end of the wheelchairs, Grandma joined them.  

As my parents nonchalantly discussed the week with Granddad, I kept fidgeting, crossing my legs and uncrossing them that day. The coach seemed rigid and uncomfortable; its red upholstery looked old and torn against the putrid pink wall. Across from us, Grandma continued to gaze downward, isolated from the outside world. She seemed inhumane, lifeless, too drugged to even move due to her list of medications. Meanwhile, the nurses would stop and chat to one another. They did not inquire after her or even greet Granddad, who came every day. They were too busy to care. It was the modern version of an insane asylum, except rather than electroshock therapy, they had resorted to medication. That day I left angry and frustrated, determined to not journey back to that nursing home every again. Back at school, I tried desperately to forget the horrid conditions in which my grandma was living.

Spring Break, I found myself staring out the ugly nursing home windows onto the garden’s bare frozen ground. I was pushing Grandma’s wheelchair around the circular hallway so my parents could peacefully converse with Granddad. Her head drooped onto her shoulder as we rolled past the peaceful and happy pictures of pasture land and hills.  Nonchalantly I chatted about college, my biology classes, my boyfriend, anything that I thought she would have liked to know about in the past. Rather, she placed her feet down on the floor.

“Grandma?” I knelt down to face her. “We need to keep going.”

For minutes she ignored me, and we stood there in the middle of the hallway. Patients obliviously passed. It was not until my dad came around to check on us that we began to move again. Unsure how to really react, I settled Grandma next to Granddad and took my place in the middle of my parents. The rest of the visit continued in that awkward fashion.

I left feeling a sense of freedom. Fresh air. The cold froze my senses, numbing my emotions and pain. As my parents and I walked toward the car, the snow/rain mix fell to the ground, washing the hideous building. It attempted to hide the grotesque truth behind a blank slate, the clean beginning. It allowed us to forget the reality of the situation.  It acted like a new tradition from an old foundation: an insane asylum for the elderly. It took care of Grandma, because we could not.

Yet it could not hide that history forever. That Spring, Grandma contracted a series of illnesses, including pneumonia. In the hospital room beside Granddad, I watched her small frail body that disappeared behind the white sheets live through oxygen tanks, feeding IVs and who knows what else.  Her combed white hair fell against the pillow and her shoulder, and her eyes peacefully remained shut. About two months later on June 5, 2011, she passed away.

Whenever I meet anyone that knew my grandma, they gently pass their condolences and reassure me that she is in a better place. They sympathize with the family, understand how awful her conditions were, and how she is not suffering anymore. For months, my parents convinced me that I needed to accept the conditions – the nursing home and hospital – that she had lived in, accept her death, and accept her disease. Acceptance is hard, though. For a while, the only way to accept that was to picture her before the disease.  To remember her before dementia engulfed her, and she lost her memory.

If I do not remember her during the disease, is it possible to properly mourn her death? Yet if I depict her during dementia, is that properly remembering her life?

 On June 12, 2011 – what would have been her 82^nd birthday – a wake was held in honor of her. The next day the coffin lay under a white tent, above the lush green grass and beside the huge dark hole. The sun in the beautiful blue sky with fluffy white clouds baked down on us as we in black made our way toward it. As I touched the dark brown box, I remembered her brown eyes, her brightening smile and her beautiful white hair.

I remember her that September day in high school and Easter in the hospital. I remember her as the intelligent, constant teacher; I remember her as the declining child-like patient. I remember her as the person that encouraged Jessica and me to read, love our heritage and history. I remember her teaching me to crochet. I remember her forgetting what to say. I remember her not knowing who I am. I remember her as someone whom I loved.