Grief.

“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.