Archives for August 2013

On Monday, I walked past a framed picture of my grandparents that sits on the etagere in my living room. I stopped, picked up the frame and inspected my grandpa’s photographed face. The picture was taken in June – so after his health had started declining but before the beginning of the end (which seems a morbid way of describing those last few weeks, but that is indeed what they were). Looking at that photograph, it occurred to me: I’ll never see his face in person again. No more hugs. No more conversations.

It seems obvious, but this is a realization that I keep having, in different ways.

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His funeral was well-attended, though it was not what I would have chosen, had anyone asked me for my opinion – too somber, too ritualistic, nearly completely ignoring the intricacies of his quirky and lovely personality. The mass left me gutted and sad and heart broken, but I found no comfort in the priest’s words, I found no familiarity in the hymns that had been chosen, and I all too distinctly remember the last time I sat in that church: I was a child,  I could hear my grandfather’s deep voice belting out the songs and he passed me a roll of LifeSavers to keep me entertained during a Sunday service. There were no LifeSavers and I couldn’t hear his voice.

At the private graveside service, we were encouraged to share memories but hardly anyone did and it seemed then that the moment for such sharing was gone and that by then, in the heat of a summer afternoon, we were all weary, full of church lady luncheon food, and ready to just stop feeling. I was grateful to those who did share kindnesses, wished more had.

I saw where his ashes would be interred. I was given a rose from the floral arrangement.

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My grandmother is lonely. My sister and I took my daughters to visit last night and my grandmother is lonely. “We had no happy memories of this place,” she told us. “He’s not here. I don’t feel him.”

I had never given much thought to her beliefs beyond the fact that she, like my grandfather was, is strongly rooted in her faith and that she believes in heaven and believed there would be something…more. I didn’t realize she was expecting his presence, or that she’d be so profoundly disappointed when his presence couldn’t be felt.

“He went back to the house,” she said, referring to the home she and my grandpa purchased what was probably light years ago for $10,000 and a mortgage payment of $75 a month. They raised four children in that house. Grandchildren spent time under that roof. That’s where the memories are and so, says my grandma, that is where grandpa is – his spirit is in the home he loved and not the nursing home he hated.

My mom says we need to tell her that she carries him in her heart always – that he’s there whether she can feel it or not.

Who am I to say?

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I was worried about how it’d look when I left town Friday afternoon after the funeral, as though I was fleeing for some umbrella-drink vacation where I would be kicking up my heels and celebrating and disrespecting so soon the loss that I have been feeling.

I am grateful, though, to have been taken away for the weekend. To be wrapped in hugs and warmth and love and to be shown peace and glimpses of normalcy away from the scene of such recent loss. To be in a place with no memories attached gave me a chance to let go of some of my grief for a few days – to breathe in air, to watch sunsets, to spy on deer playing in a field, to pet dogs, cook tacos, spend time on a lake with sun smiling on my face, drink wine from red Solo cups. I am glad that I didn’t surrender to the guilt telling me I shouldn’t go.

And when I came home and walked into my house, the sadness hit me in the face once more, still like a ton of bricks.

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I am loved. I love.

And those are things that are helpful to me when I am hurting.

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“I love you as much as he did, you know?” my grandma said last night.

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There are moments when I feel completely normal and I can lose myself in HGTV or lament the 80 degree weather with 90% humidity. Where I can watch my daughter touring middle school for the first time and meet teachers and try to remember to pick up dog food on the way home.

And it makes me sad but this is a new normal and this is how it will be and he’s not going to be here again and I’ll never hear his voice again and why didn’t we make video of him talking, why didn’t we? We could have, it’d have been so easy. And I don’t expect his presence, I can’t imagine a tangible feeling that he’s there, but I do carry him in my heart and I will always and it’s really an awful thing, grief. But I know he’d hate it.

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My cousin posted a picture on Facebook – a cabinet front and duct tape – “Grandpa approved!” he said. And I laughed, how I laughed. I need more of those moments, the moments of celebration. Joy in what was amazing will be what gets us all through this.

After I wrote this morning’s post, I received an email from my mother that hospice doesn’t think my grandpa will make it until his birthday. I was at work when I got her email, and tears instantly rushed into my eyes and my brain kind of went on auto-pilot sorting through the things I needed to do so I could be with my family. I checked with HR, do I have any PTO? Yes, they confirmed that I did.

I quickly went through my to-do list, completing urgent tasks, sending an email to the department letting them know I’d be out.

I hit the drive through of an atrocious fast food restaurant, picked up a bucket of diet Coke and went to the nursing home. I sat in the parking lot for over five minutes, steeling myself to walk in, to keep my face calm, to not cry.

My grandmother and I were in tears together within five minutes of my walking in the room.

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At first, it was just me and my grandmother. Then my aunt arrived. Then my sister and my niece. Then my mother. Later a neighbor. My uncle and cousin. My aunt. Another uncle. It was a full house.

We’ve cried a lot today. Grandpa’s done a lot of sleeping. I’m grateful that he woke up enough when the nurses moved him to a hospital bed in his living room to say my name and to respond, “Love you, too,” when I told him I love him.

We all want a piece of this, the recognition, the seeing him see us. We want more of it, because if it doesn’t happen now, how will we ever remember just what it was that he said when he spoke to us for the last time? It’s selfish, I know, and my dad said to me tonight, “Sarah, he’s tired. Let him sleep.” But the family – myself included – just want a glimpse of the man he was, the one who loves us, the one who sees us, the one we know.

My grandpa has always been the king of “I booped your nose” – touching a great-grandkid’s nose with his pointer finger. My niece, wrapped in my sister’s arms, leaned to touch my grandpa’s nose. “Boop!” she said. He lifted his hand, shaking and unprecise, eventually finding her nose with his finger to boop back.

And then he fell asleep and mostly stayed asleep. We encouraged grandma to sit by him – “But he won’t know I’m here!” she argued. He will, we said. And he did. Though he didn’t speak, you could see his face react when she spoke. She leaned closely, her forehead pressed to his, saying things we could not hear.

My heart is breaking, it is. All of us are having a hard time. We know his body is tired. We know, we know, we know. But we’re going to miss him so much that letting go feels impossible.

My grandpa’s birthday is on Sunday. I’ve been watching the calendar and watching the date come closer and have been wondering how, how we recognize this day. It is, most likely, going to be his last birthday.

I wonder how often it is that you know that everything is the “last” of something. As much as I hate it, as difficult as it is to see his health and mental facilities decline, I often feel that our family is lucky to know that this time is finite. We’re coming to an end. We need to embrace the time we have and do our best to make it special.

Some people don’t have that opportunity.

People walk out of their houses on seemingly normal days and get hit by buses and it’s over. They never see it coming. No one gets a chance to say goodbye. It’s just…over.

But we see it coming and I guess there’s something to be said for that, having the opportunity to brace ourselves.

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The other day, my dad was telling me about his mother’s death. She had lived in Florida and so I wasn’t close to her. My dad tells me that he’d read articles about hospice and the last days of the dying, and was grateful for how it prepared him to deal with things in my grandmother’s final days, things he’d have never expected and wouldn’t have known how to handle. He tells me we should read these articles.
Maybe we should.

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My grandmother is acting out, being quite awful to people. She’s scared and you can tell. I could see that fear when my grandpa got confused and insisted I was Kathleen, the nurse. After a few minutes that felt like hours he called me by my name. Was a relief to hear “Sarah.”

My aunt says that my grandmother is already grieving him as he slips away and that’s why she’s behaving this way. It’s taken her awhile to see this, though my sister and I have been telling our mom this for awhile. She’s SCARED. He’s NOT who he was. So, in a sense, she’s already grieving in anticipation, but she’s also grieving the parts of him that are gone already. He’s not the man she’s spent over sixty years of her life married to.

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On Sunday we will gather for my grandpa’s birthday in a two hour celebration on the patio of his nursing home. We will likely be eating Costco cake and I can’t imagine what the mood will be like. His nurse has said that he’s getting weaker, that he may not be able to sit through the entire two hours. I’m pretty sure they’re underestimating his determination – but we’ll see.

I don’t know what the day will be like, only that I hope if anything, he realizes just how loved he is. That we’re all grateful for all of his years with us and that his birthday, even in this sadness, is a celebration of the day that someone we love so much was born.