I’ve always felt an inherent closeness to the one member of my family who keeps the most distance: my mom’s dad, Ran, my grandfather, Grampy. In the past few years of his serious disease, I’ve witnessed collapse—of identity, secrets, and pretense. But I’ve also witnessed a blossoming of truth. This collection of poems will explore the complexity of a family’s condition in a time of prolonged illness—how perception of the past and present warp in the face of death, survival, and the desire to move on. Through my own memories, those of my relatives, and the words in a forgotten book of poems, I will attempt to capture the conflicting experience of watching my grandfather’s simultaneous fight for survival and self-isolation, and the glimpses of unmediated truth that slip through the cracks between these battling processes.
