“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” my uncle sang sweetly
through cracked vocals as the heart monitor beeped, counting down my
grandmother’s final moments.
“That saved a wretch like me.”
She was bloated, huge. We had pumped liters upon liters of
fluid into her body to save her life. Her face was swollen beyond recognition,
the color of her skin bruised and a yellowing jaundiced. In our innocent
attempt to save her life we had morphed her into someone physically none of us
recognized. Her mouth was gaped slightly open, her lips cracked and dry. The
tube down her throat and taped to her mouth provided a mechanical breathing
symphony as we all stood at her bedside, silent and still, listening. The heart
monitored wailed a slow and steady zero, indicating a heartbeat could no longer
be detected.
“She’s gone. That’s it,” my mother starred blankly at my
grandma’s body. Her bangs were greased to her forehead, her eyes red and heavy.
“She’s dead.”
I thought my mom would like some time with the body but
instead she insisted we leave the hospital as soon as possible. I quickly
grabbed our belongings that had piled up in the waiting room the last 36 hours.
My dad had his arm around my mother who was visibly losing control with each
step. As we came to the exit of the hospital, the automatic doors
slide open and a giant gust of December wind hit us in the face and left its
bitter sting on our cheeks.
As if triggered by the frigid air, my mother pushed away
from my father, turned to us and petitioned, “My mother is going to be outside
in this!” she motioned towards the air, the dark.
“She is going to be buried in the cold ground! She is going
to be so cold!” when we could offer no answer, no reason or words of
reassurance to this difficult truth, she collapsed to her knees, unable to
stand any longer.
I started to walk towards her when my dad stopped me. He
slowly shook his head and pulled me back.
“Just let her grieve,” He said.
“Here?” I said, embarrassed.
“Outside? In front of the hospital?” I looked around for confirmation that
she was making a scene and that people were watching and being traumatized, but
I was answered with the silent and empty blackness of the middle of the night.
It seemed so inappropriate, so impersonal. But grief isn’t
punctual or proper. It knows no manners and follows no rules. Sure it loves the
lonely of the night but it also strikes loud and unannounced in the busy of the
day, in movie theatres or business meetings or even in hospital parking lots
because that is when we least expect it. The three of us, my brother, my father
and myself, could do nothing but stand in a neat little row behind her,
watching as she angrily cried.
Since we were visiting from out of state, we were staying,
of all places, at my grandmother’s house. Surely there was a hotel or a friend
of the families that would take us in even at this ungodly hour of the night.
It seemed like a horrible idea, walking into her house, smelling her smell,
seeing her clothes, her dishes, her favorite chair. But my mother insisted.
Being in my grandmother’s house made me angry. In her
bedroom was her suitcase, half unpacked on the edge of the bed. You could
almost see her standing there, shirt in hand when she suddenly remembered she
needed milk for in the morning. She left to run an errand. Not die. She would
have never left dirty dishes in the sink or the sandwich bread on the counter. Who
was going to wash the dishes from the last meal my grandma ever ate? It all
became so real and so unfair. She wasn’t ready.
We weren’t ready.
There was still laundry in the washing machine.
My mom went around the house, weeping and acting like a
drunk lunatic. In the bedroom, she opened drawers, smelled socks, hugged
pillows, threw towels all the while being completely oblivious to anything but
her grief. That what grief does. It shreds you of all inhibitions and narrows
your thoughts so the only thing you can focus on is the pain in your chest, the
sickening feeling that this is it, you will never see them, hug them, kiss
them, laugh, cry, yell or have fun with them ever again. This is all that is
left, material things like a pink bathrobe. She curled herself up into a ball,
melting her body into my grandma’s blouses and pants. She sobbed quietly than
loudly. She opened up the closet door and fell into the clothes, dragging them
to the floor with her. She gripped my grandmother’s shirts and pressing them to
her nose, suffocating herself with her mother’s scent.
She suddenly looked at me and was quiet, like the hush
before the storm.
When our eyes met, I saw they were heavy and empty. She
wasn’t there; she was lost in anguish. I had never seen anyone act like this
and it scared me. I was worried about what she might say or what she might ask
of me. My throat was dry with nervousness of what I should say or do.
“Will you help me take a bath?” she whispered.
My mother sat in the bathtub, knees to chest rocking back
and forth. She splashed the steaming hot water over her breasts and on her
face. I placed the detachable showerhead over her worn frame and let the water
pour over her head, onto her back and over her face.
Something interesting happens overtime to a family. The role
of each member over time slowly begins to change. In almost every situation,
the roles slowly begin to reverse. In that moment, I was a child bathing her
mother.
As I knelt over the ceramic bathtub, she began to sob. She
begged and pleaded. To whom I wasn’t sure but she beat her first against her
head and cried, “I WANT MY MOMMA!”
My mother had morphed into a begging child. I felt useless.
The beating against the face became harder, the water hotter and the splashing
more violent.
“I WANT MY MOMMA!”
I felt weak. I squeezed the shampoo into my hand and washed
my mothers hair.
“I begged God, I begged him…”
I felt frightened. I began to cry. I cried because my mother
was in the most emotional pain I had ever seen. Her insides were breaking,
melting away with regret and her soul was filling up with the emptiness you
feel only when you miss someone. Her heart felt on fire with the realization
that she would never see her mother again. As humans we want to fix things and
make the pain of our loved ones go away with words. There were no words. All I
could do was sob right along beside her.
The day of the funeral I turned on the TV to find a happy
and smiling actress with a pearly white smile staring back at me, excited that
the Crest Whitening Toothpaste had worked in just enough time to impress her
first date. I had been so consumed with keeping my mom safe from herself that
seeing that commercial reminded me that no matter what happens the world keeps
going, the earth keeps spinning. Nothing stops and waits for us. There are
still commercials and sitcoms and weddings and graduations whether we are stuck
in our grief or not. All I could think of though was that I had just lost my
grandma and I was slowly losing my mom too. How could anyone care about
toothpaste?
The car pulled up to the burial site. Along with my cousins,
we carried my grandmother in her casket and placed her on the cloth strips that
would lower her into the ground. It’s an uncomfortable feeling carrying someone
you love to their grave. I was honored, yet horrified. I had to keep telling
myself she wasn’t in there. The grandmother I knew and loved, laughed and drank
latte’s with was not in that coffin. It was just her shell like how a butterfly
abandons its cocoon. Except this shell still looked like my grandma. It had her
smooth, winkled skin and painted red fingernails. An old cocoon never looks
like the butterfly.
It was cold. The wind blew with a bitter and angry revenge
and the entire earth seemed to be covered in a grey film, a fog, and a
desperate appearance of lifelessness. Death. I was freezing. I rocked back and
forth on my heels. I wanted to walk back to the car and sit on the leather
seats and shiver until the chill past. I felt selfish for being cold.
The pile of dirt that would be placed over my grandma’s
grave sat piled high about 15 yards from where I stood. It could be seen
perfectly from the burial site.
“That’s nice,” I sarcastically thought.
“They could have at least tried to cover it with a tarp or something.
I guess at least we know the grave is fresh.”
My mother sat in a chair inches from the casket. She had
taken a xanax or three to get through the service and cried appropriately,
though who is to say what is appropriate when you are burying your mother.
The service was short and after the final prayer ended,
everyone lingered unsure of what to do next, not really wanting it to truly be
over. My uncle Danny, a tall man with blue jeans and a tight leather jacket,
touched the casket with a tender hand, while the other remained in his coat
pocket. He paused a moment, then silently bent down and gently kissed the
casket. It was a humbling moment, watching a grown man showing respect. He was
alone and innocent in his act and didn’t know I saw him do it.
The next time we would be here, grass would be spouting up
over the dead ground and flowers in bloom would be placed on tombstones
throughout the graveyard. The sun would be warm and welcoming and we would
squat down and brush the leaves off of the tombstones where my grandma and
grandpa lay. But that was not today. Today the ground was cold and bare, the
wind cruel and mocking.
At the time I had no idea this was a season in my life I
would never forget. But that’s kind of how it goes. I’m pretty sure if we did
know, it would ruin the moment. We would position ourselves just so or try to
look a certain way and say certain things. Everything would be so dramatic, so
unnatural. But I guess it would have been nice to have been prepared.
Grief physically hurts. It squeezes your chest, making your
body nauseated and sick with no relief. It leaves you frail and apathetic and
drains you of anticipating anything enjoyable in life. Grief leaves you
painfully aware of a loved one’s absence when something unexpectedly reminds
you of them. Grief narrows our vision. It is the only thing we can see.
Everything else is blurred or distorted. (If we can even see anything else at
all.) To not be able to see anything outside of your present circumstance is to
be hopeless.
Time does not heal our wounds. Time creates distance. And
the further we travel away from our grief, the wider our field of vision
becomes. But it’s a long and harsh road that unfortunately never really ends,
just becomes more bearable. Some that pass through grief don’t survive and most
are never the same after walking through it. It’s a road that cannot be
traveled alone.
My job when I watched my mom crumble with grief was not to
fix the hurt but to be a presence, a hand to hold on the dark days, an ear to
listen or a voice to say, “I may not know how you feel or know the right words
to say. I’m not sure what will make you feel better, or if anything will. But
as long as you need me, you are not alone. I’m not going anywhere.”
My mother often asks me when she will stop missing her mom.
The honest answer is never. But with each passing day distance is created and
we are able to enjoy life again without guilt. We are able to feel things other
than sorrow. Laughter returns. We start to experience life’s simple pleasures
once more in the form of finishing a good book, a good meal. For my mother, it
was holding the new life of a grandchild against her chest; a baby sleeping
peacefully in her arms that made her feel life was worth living again. And
slowly, like how the first dandelion in spring fights its way through the
winters ground, hope returns.
