The Heaviest Thing I’ve Carried
Amber Godin
WRTG A213: Writing and the Sciences
Dr. Iver Arnegard
Amber Godin is finishing her second year at Mat-Su College and working towards her bachelors of science in nursing. Amber spends her free time reading, tending her many chickens, writing articles for the Mat-Su Monitor, and enjoying God's creation of nature. You can often find her tending her garden, or wandering through the woods wondering how many leaves each tree has.
A Note to the Reader
For this assignment students were to choose from a set of topics to write a personal essay from. Each of the topics was drawn from themes in "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. The prompt the student chose was “What was the heaviest thing you have ever carried?” The student writes as follows: While the characters in Tim O’Brien’s book carried literal, physically heavy objects, their heaviest weights were the expectations placed upon them. Their heaviest weights were the emotional weight and expectations of those who loved them, something we can all relate to in one manner or another and something that I relate to myself. Amber presented via a PowerPoint and explained how "The Things They Carried" and the theme of societal pressure and expectations ties into day to day life, how it impacted me, how I overcame it, and how others can realize and overcome it as well. The weight of expectations of those we love and society are something we all face. By recognizing not only when we are placing unrealistic expectations on others, but as well as when unrealistic expectations are placed on us, we can help remove that weight from ourselves and those we love through setting boundaries.
The Heaviest Thing I’ve Carried
Throughout my lifetime I have carried many heavy things and many heavy things have carried me. The heaviest thing I’ve ever carried happened to involve an Arby’s bag containing two roast beef sandwiches and two sets of fries. Now you are most likely thinking “C’mon. Arby’s doesn’t put that much on their sandwiches.” Trust me, I know it is a common complaint that they skimp on roast beef. But rather than me continue to complain about Arby’s roast beef sandwiches I will continue on to tell my story.Grandma, what do you want to eat today? I typed out quickly in between shoveling spoonfuls of quinoa into my mouth.
Resigning myself to the sufficiency of this text message I tapped send as I shoveled another spoonful into my mouth.
Seventeen minutes until my lunch break ends, I thought to myself forlornly.
My phone buzzes across the lunch table. I slap my hand down on it, preventing it from clattering to the floor as I quickly swallow my last bite.
“Hello?” I answer
“I’m not really hungry today, I’ve been really tired. I think it would be best if you skip coming over after work today,” My grandma dejectedly proclaimed.
I simply sighed before replying “What. ARE. you. going. to. eat?”
“You didn’t eat yesterday. You are eating today.”
“Well..” my grandma trailed off. “I could maybe eat some Arby’s”
“Okay” my voice softened, “What would you like?”
“Two roast beef sandwich meals, I’ll pay you back.”
“Nonsense Grandma! Remember, I work in Vet Med and make LOTS of money.” I lied assuringly.
“Well alright Mrs. Made of Money.” She retorted.
“Okay, okay Grandma. I get off work at 6pm and I’ll swing by Arby’s and be right over. I love you grandma but I have to get back to work now.”
“See you later kiddo.” She said in that loving voice that only a grandma can.
Our conversation ended with a click. The clock stared down at me menacingly as it threatened to strike 1:30. I quickly shoved all my food into my lunch bag and jammed it in the fridge as I stumbled down the stairs where my first appointment of the afternoon awaited rooming. I quickly snatched the clipboard and gave it a glance over. Nine week old golden/retriever mix- first puppy vaccines, I read to myself.
I stood outside the room door as a tear pricked at the corner of my eye. Breathe in. Breathe out. And smile. I knocked on the door to the room before entering. “Awww. This must be Bella! She’s so cute! What is little Miss Bella here for today?”
Today was just another day. Sick animals, happy animals, baby animals. They all needed someone to be something else. At work, life is to wait for later, no matter how hard and draining that is. By now you might have an idea of what the heaviest thing I’ve carried is. Is it the weight of responsibilities? To answer that question I have another story.
***
"I don't think I can make the cake today. Well maybe tomorrow. Honestly.. we both know it won't be then either." My grandma chatted on.
I quietly nudged the front door open and gave a small wave. Grandma waved back and continued her conversation with no audible end in sight.
"Well it's only two ingredients you’d think I’d be able to do it... Yes yes only two.. Yeap just pineapple, flour, sugar, honey, and angel food cake."
I scrunched my face up.. only two ingredients.. Hmm..
Some days grandma did really well. And other days.. grandma did "really well." It always seemed to be something new with her. It was getting hard to keep track of and discern what was truly wrong with grandma. Some days her memory, motor skills, and just general awareness was great. She would pay her bills, cook food for her husband Tom, and do some house cleaning. And other days.. she would repay the bills she had already paid, explain to me an entire conspiracy involving bill companies and the mafia, forget she was in the middle of cooking and be so tired and weak she could hardly stand longer than two minutes. Some days were an absolute mess, and some were a mix of both complete sanity and the opposite. That was what made time with grandma all the harder, not knowing whether she was there that moment. From the sound of her phone conversation, today was starting as a bit of an off day.
I slid the backpack of cleaning supplies off my shoulder onto the black leather couch. They landed there with a dull thud.
Grandma shot me a glare and continued on.
"You are banned from my house and I will pass that on to Tom. No. You cannot come over. Tom and I cannot get sick. We can't help you."
I eyed my grandma's Christmas Cacti collection with pity and disdain. They were now a gray to pale green color, limp, and dying. Cause of death- lack of water. I shook the thought from my head and started off into the kitchen to search for a remedy to the problem. I cannot stand the look of her once well loved cacti collection in the throes of death... they had meant so much to her at one point in her life. I wonder when she started to no longer care about them. It wasn't just their death that bothered me. It was the death of so much more.
I snatched a mug off the counter top and filled it with water.
"I could put the cake on the hood of my truck and you could grab it off"
Please tell me she isn't still trying to drive... I thought fiercely.
"Excuse me a second Henry" Grandma pulled the phone away from her ear. "AMBER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?"
I had learned in such situations as these that if I wanted to accomplish something I had to occasionally ignore her. She strongly disapproves of me doing really anything for her. I continued filling my mug and walked it over to her cacti.
"Alright Henry. I better be going before she takes over my entire house." Grandma slammed the phone down on the hook.
"Now what do you think that you are doing?!"
I continued watering her cacti. "I'm watering your plants, grandma."
"No you're not. You don't do that. You will kill them"
"Grandma, they need water."
"Don't you do that. Now you listen here. This is my house and in my house I am the boss and you don't do that."
Nothing of what she said made a lick of sense but a threat hung in her voice. "My house."
It had taken me a great deal of time and manipulation to get myself into grandma's house. None of us had even known that grandma was ill or even declining. She had most always been in pristine health and in the soundest of mind until one day about a week ago when one of her tenants had seen her out on her porch, gaunt, pale, and half the weight she had originally been. Her tenant, who had not seen her in about a month, thought he had seen a ghost and was so shocked that he rushed over to a neighbor's house sobbing. And soon enough it reached my family, who ordained me as her savior. A 18 year old fresh out of high school.
So now then what do you think the heaviest thing I’ve carried may be? Is it the weight of my grandma’s life? The answer to that question is no.
Seconds felt like hours as eyes bored into my downcast face. I nervously shuffled my feet as the second hand of the clock slowly and deafeningly thundered on.
“So.. what should we do Amber?” My mom asked. Everyone awaited my decision as if my voice was the sole authority.
“Pull the plug.” I answered dejectedly.
“Okay.” The nurse replied quietly.
It was more than the decision of life or death that weighed upon me, yet it was not my grandma’s life that was the heaviest thing I carried. It was the failure to save her life. The failure to fulfill my designated job. The failure to do what everyone had expected I could as an eighteen year old. I could not cure cancer. I could not save my grandma’s life. I could not convince her to seek help. I could not be everything that everyone had expected me to be, and that was the heaviest weight I ever carried. The weight of unfulfilled expectations imposed by others upon me. I could clean her house. I could try to feed her. I could be encouraging and comforting to her as she neared the end of her time, but at the time that did not seem enough to me. Friends, family members, and friends of friends, they all expected me to be able to solve the problem. They expected me to make her eat more, to convince her to seek medical help or to drag her to the hospital kicking and screaming. None of these things I could have ever done, and I struggled a long time knowing that I hadn’t met these expectations. But at the end of the day what truly matters is being true to yourself and knowing that it is more than enough. And that is something I wish I had learned before I spent months agonizing over every thing I did not do.
You can succumb to the pressure of society, you can try to conform, and to be something that you are not. Or you can write your own story and make it the soul crushing, face blushing, embarrassing, head turning tale. You can be true to yourself, face society and push through the crowd. You can be brave, you can be courageous, you can be contrary. And at the end of the day when you collapse into your cozy rectangle of dreams you can smile at the ceiling and say to yourself, your ancestors, or your god “I did enough.” You can do your best and be at peace with being simply and wonderfully yourself.