Zucchini Bread

My favorite memories were when I was young at my grandparents farm chasing the chickens, playing in the crick, and making zucchini bread with my grandmother. Those were the days of scooby doo fruit snacks and the Flinestones. The days of looking for cats and playing hide and go seek. My favorite part about your zucchini bread was how you froze it and thawed it before eating it. The cold used to remind me of the water as I let it run by my bare feet, but now it only reminds me of the cold I feel all the time. You used to cut it and serve it with butter, I ate so much of it and looking back now I wonder if I would have been bullied less had I not eaten so much then. I wonder if I’d still be the same fat person who gets called worthless almost daily. Would I have grown up to be the man who was sexually abused and told no one? Grandma, I loved it though. I know you can’t hear me, but when grandpa died I cried. I know you weren’t with me, but I know you cried too. When they told you you had Alzheimer’s I remember thinking, ok, she’s going to be fine, she has plenty of time. Grandma I know you don’t remember, but the day I asked you for your zucchini bread recipe and you couldn’t remeber it, a tear appeared in your eye to admit defeat. The day I brought you zucchini bread and you refused to eat it because you didn’t know what it was.... my heart broke. I felt the pieces fall into the empty pit of my stomach and realized that the end was near. All those memories that I shared with you belonged only to me and you no longer possessed them. I remeber the day that you forgot your son’s name and kept asking for your husband. I remeber the day you forgot everyone’s name, but mine and the day I cried myself to sleep. The last time we visited you, there was drool on your lip that told me you were gonna and the energy seemed to have left your body. I had to watch you slowly die and with it so many memories, but I think of you every time I make zucchini bread and I know that if you were here you would be to. I love you grandma.