The lens of death

source: https://www.tumblr.com/rwf99

My grandma, my dad’s mom, is dying. She’s transitioning to hospice. I struggle, like always, to put into words how I feel.

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I sat with her for a few hours yesterday.

“She seems at peace with it as you can,” I told my aunt. “Which is a huge relief for the living.”

The Lord will call you home when he has a place for you. He’ll take you when he’s ready. Grandma always told me that, and I don’t know if I believe it, but I want to. The gesture of being called home, of reuniting with your dead husband, dead sons, sisters and brother, parents and friends, it comforts me. I am glad to know she is ready. I am not sure there is anything else we can hope for.

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There is guilt. There is the need to prove that I, too, was (am) a part of this family. She raised me, at least partially. She used to scoop warm bathwater in her big plastic cup to gently wash the shampoo from my hair. She would park across the fields and watch me run to her car after school. I would help her and my dad set the table. We’d say grace in unison: come lord Jesus, be my guest. May these gifts to us be blessed, amen. These memories are vivid through the acute lens of death.

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My other cousin shuffles into the hospital room, begins to speak with my aunt with a sense of ease. Nothing to prove, his last name is the same as mine but he carries it without weight. I sit there, an outsider. Picking up snippets of conversations, I try to piece together the lives that have carried on separate from mine. I discover the names of his children, that he works at the airport and his lunch break runs through the cemetery would weave past our grandfather’s grave.

A new couple walks in. No introduction is made. I have no clue who they are, but everyone else does. I continue to sit, masking this heavy feeling of displacement. It is as if I have been dropped into someone else’s dream: it all makes sense to everyone but me. Eventually, I discover this man is my dad’s cousin and my grandma’s nephew. The woman is his wife. I watch him speak. Aloud, he remembers nostalgically the hours he spent at my dad’s childhood home growing up. He states the address, clearly ingrained into his memory. Immediately, I open the notes app on my phone to type it in. My dad has been gone for four years, and my grandma is soon to be. This address is new to me, and I cherish it like I have been granted a way to see my dad again. To learn something new about him. About his family. His life. I refuse to ask his remaining siblings about their childhood, about the ongoings of their lives beyond small talk. I do not want to expose how little I know, how far removed I am.

Now, I search the address on Zillow. Looking through the photos, I imagine my grandma in the kitchen making a pot roast and peeling potatoes. I imagine their dog Peggy collecting apple cores from windowsills that the kids left behind for her. I imagine my dad, a boy running barefoot through the house, a teenager, lugging his hockey bag into the front entryway. I imagine him, young and living and maybe even happy.

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The anniversary of his death was this past week. It took me by surprise. I read a text from my friend who said she was thinking of me. For a moment, I didn’t understand why. I started crying before I realized what day it was. My body knew before my brain.

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With grandma dying, I feel like I am losing him all over again.