Blair Golden
Narrative Storytelling
Thursday, 3:30
May 9th 2008


A Polaroid of clouds.


The last full day I spent with her still stains my memory. Just like a Polaroid, they fade in softly until I‘m left with a series of fragile images, soft and precious.
I had gone with her to the hospital in Hollywood where she had a consultation for gastric bypass surgery. She was more mild now then she usually was, her gray eyes shining and alert, blue moons held captive in a stark, open sky. I skipped school that day to keep her from falling apart, someone as fragile as her couldn’t be left alone. Her mind was already lost in a wave of stormy emotion, and she was drowning. She drowned a little more everyday.
“You really didn’t have to take time off school,“ she said cautious. I just smiled and hugged her soft, warm cookie dough skin.
She was agitated and concerned, though she’d never let it show. That was just like her, even in her current state, she was glamorous. We lived in Woodland Hills, in the Los Angeles valley, an affluent community with a lot of hospitals near by. But Cyndi wanted the hospital in Hollywood.
The Santa Ana’s blew in soft that day, like a still dream that wraps you up and makes your skin more fragile and aware. It was a hot winter in Southern California and while the rest of the world was bundled up, we were glad to finally have a breeze at all.
“Most people don’t even realize that a great portion of California is desert: hot, dry, and dead.” Cyndi said as we backed her dirty Ford Expedition out of the narrow drive way.
We had left at around eleven and Cyndi insisted on driving. She always wanted to drive. Maybe it was some way of always having control since she couldn’t control much in her life anymore. I cant say I blame her. She hadn’t always been as she was then. She worked as a playboy bunny and was one of Hugh Hefner’s favorite girls back in the late ‘70s, she had been a singer, a stunt woman for feature films and then a private detective and a mother of five.
And now she was a shell of it all. Hallowed out by life. She had been diagnosed with a plethora of debilitating dieases. Lupus and diabetes invaded her like acid, burning her alive from the inside out, slowly, painfully, steadfastly. A fantastic life deteriorating like alcasesor. Even her children were gone. They were out of the house and out of her life emotionally. They seemed blind the her pain. And so she confided in me.
The sky was unblemished except for a few specks of clouds nestled near the mountains. I noticed because I liked to take polaroids of the sky. Something about the clouds floating above me, leaving shadows in its wake, moving slowly so that it was as if they never moved at all made me feel eternal. Earlier that day, I had taken a photo of the sky and given it to Cyndi. A good luck charm of sorts. She had put it on her windshield right in front of the wheel, as if trying to get to a place, nestled comfortable in the say, but it was somehow always just out of reach.

As we drove to Hollywood with the widows down, her stringy, dyed brown hair flew weightlessly in the wind, curving softly then whipping back randomly as the breeze beat violently against her pale freckled skin.
We filled the time with small chit chat, trying to muffle her nerves, but after ten minutes or so, the nerves got the best of us and we both fell silent. We drove against a thick atmosphere for a while. And then she took a breath.
“Life is like a movie,” she said as a matter-of-factly, quoting Doug Stanhope, “if you’ve sat through more than half of it and its sucked every second so far, it probably isn’t going to get great at the end and make it all worth while. None should blame you for walking out early”
I sat uncomfortably for a while, taking it in, letting it sit for a while and soak. This had certainly taken me by surprise. Not the actual words that were said, or the bluntness of how they were uttered, but because they were coming from her mouth and not mine. She had always acted so positive and now her inner torment was beginning to surface, right here, on these hot beige leather seats, in the middle of the Hollywood freeway.
“Ya, I know what you mean,” is all I could say
It really wasn’t like she had never talked like this, but it was usually only in the midst of exhausted desperation. Usually past midnight while high on one of her medication cocktails. It was foggy and in haste and you could do nothing but hug her. Tell her she would be alright, even if you weren’t sure if she would, and wait for it to blow over.
It was never like this, never so straight forward or blunt.
When we reached the hospital, I helped her get to the office and waited for her patiently in the garish pink and green waiting room filled with devastatingly boring magazines. It was so bright, and it made it hard to think. Maybe that’s why they made ti so bright: to block out the pain
After almost an hour of staring at the severely outdated copies of Reader’s Digest and Computer Art magazine, and avoiding passing glances of a particularly curious behemoth man, Cyndi came out, calm, composed and with all the color set back in her cheeks.
When we got outside, the sun was high and the desiccated wind beat us softly as we found our way back to the car. Cyndi lit a cigarette as she turned on the ignition.
“ You know, you’re going to have to help me quit smoking,” she uttered between voracious puffs,“ they wont do the surgery if I smoke.”
“ Ya, definitely, but you’re getting off to a bad start.” I said playfully, trying to lighten the mood.
She laughed heartedly at the irony. “ I know.” she paused.
“I cant mess this up Charlie, I cant. This is really the last chance for me to make some sort of life for myself.” Her eyes stayed intensely welded to the road ahead. “ I am so fucking sick of sitting at home everyday, eating, growing fat and living off of disability. I used to be so beautiful, and I didn’t appreciate it. I thought I was so ugly compared to the other girls. And now look at me. I want to go back to school, and I don’t know, become a crime scene investigator, or psychiatrist. It really doesn’t matter. I just cant live in this shell. This fucking shell. This isn’t me.”
We got back to the valley and she dropped me off at home, then drove off to baby sit her granddaughter Emily for her son schad. I said goodbye, and that was the last time I ever saw her alive.
When you live with someone as unwell as she was, everything causes you anxiety when it comes to their mortality. Any time I heard something in the living room where she was, I ran out to check on her and it would end up just being the television or if I saw her sleep on the couch I stared for a bit to make sure her stomach moved. After a while, this all gets exhausting. You have to learn how to live with the fear of not knowing instead of being perturbed all the time about little sounds, just in order to function. That’s what I had teach myself to do. For my own sanity.
The next morning, I woke up to silence. The sort of silence that disorients you and breaks you down because its so thick. So silent I could hear every heavy breath, every shallow heartbeat. I went around the house to see if anyone was there. I looked around the kitchen, the living room, the dining room and met nothing but the aweful silence. It seemed to know exactly where I would be and always beat me there. I looked out in the back where she parked her car, it was still there, drenched in a flood of pink cherry blossoms blown from the tree that shaded it.
Panicked, I ran to her room and knocked on the door. no answer. I opened the door gradually and vigilantly; My breath held, my hands shaking.
And there she was.
She was wholly nude, sitting upright on her bed, her head laid limp against the stark and bitter wall. Her face was abhorrent and unsettling. Her eyes, lips and nose were a deep purple in contrast to the dead paleness of the surrounding skin. Her stomach was bloated and veiny and overlapped her groin, sufficate it as the area underneath was almost black. Her legs laid lifeless like a paraplegic. On the bed next to her were four bottles of pills laid carelessly on the bed. On the wall, right next to her head, she had hung the Polaroid id given her just the day before, the one of the clouds hiding behind the mountains. She had finally made it.
She had overdosed.
After I had called the police and the paramedics came along with her sons and daughter, we were all told she had died of an accidental overdose. Apparently, she had taken pills that caused her to sleep walk and in this dangerous state, she had accidentally taken more pills than the should have.
I over heard one of her sons say “Atleast she died happy.”
That’s when I realized how important I really had been in her life, and that she really only had me to confide in. Anyone who knew the extensive torment and pain in her heart would have known that this was no accident.
I couldn’t cry that day. It was such a surreal experience. Instead, I felt a sort of strange calm. Perhaps because I knew the truth, or maybe because I could sleep for once without worrying. Or maybe it was the fact that she finally took control over her own life. Just like the Polaroid of clouds I had given her the day efore, she was eternal. Shed feel no more pain, shed cry no more, sh woul be free from the lifeless shell she was forced to live in, everyday of her life. In a way I was almost jealous. I still have to live in my own shell. Deal with my own demons. Go to sleep every night afraid of waking up. But she wont. She finally had some peace. Although I will miss her more than I can ever express, im glad shes gone.

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