Dying
It’s not like I wanted to go but something was pulling at me and it wouldn’t disappear, it was bothering me during the day and invading my dreams at night. Just on the edge of my consciousness my promise was lurking. My first thought was that my grandmother was prodding me into action from somewhere in kayaayeen (heaven). She always had to get the last word in during the time we spent together and I was thinking this was her way of reaching beyond the grave to get my attention. Yes grandmother, I remember what I promised you that day. The promise doesn’t stray that far from my mind. She had passed away back in 2001 and it was now 2008. In my opinion, 7 years was more than enough time for her to rest easy and leave me alone but one of her final statements still echoed in the back of my mind and she never forgets.
She was laying there in a hospital room dying in small moments as she gathered strength from one breath to the next – she couldn’t let go she had to fight the pain and struggle to stay right here. Her feet and hands were beginning to turn blue as her heart fought to conserve energy and pulled blood from her legs and arms. The spring sun was warm and melting the snow – it was this sun that came in through the single window. It was a blaze of heat with a brilliant blue sky. The room smelled of hospital antiseptic and the small sounds of my grandmother struggling to live another moment – a deep rattle coming from her chest. A television far in the background selling sham-wow at an amazing price and conversations from the nursing station pushed their way into my grandmother’s last breath reminding me the world would still continue no matter who died. Why would the world stop for one old woman? It made me wonder why we struggle during those final moments to stay in the here and now. It was in this world, in her life there was laughter and a fair amount of pain. What was keeping her here? Thinking to myself at those final moments that maybe because the next step is such a huge unknown for us at the point of our own death and that fear strengthen our resolve to be here. Who knows what really happens to you? It’s not like there is a roadmap for all of us to follow. I don’t know the answer but like everyone I know I will face it one day.
One of the small mercies granted to my grandmother by the hospital is that they moved her into a private room so she could die in peace and not in the ward with 5 other people watching her and wondering if they were next. She was lying on that bed with many monitors and tubes going in and out of her, supporting her worn out body but what she really wanted was anyone to tell her she wasn’t going to die and when she asked me it was with an intense stare, she wanted me to deny it, that she would continue to live, eat and breath. I was at a loss for words – life just doesn’t prepare you for an answer at that moment. I didn’t want to lie to her but I didn’t know what to say either. My eyes met hers and I hugged her – that was what I was capable of in that moment. The best I could do which didn’t seem enough. She had been stricken with ovarian cancer over a year ago and someone had a very sick sense of humour because her belly had bloated to extreme proportions that unless your eyes traveled up and met her face and you knew she was 86 years old you would think she was pregnant. Her outline on the bed similar to woman ready to give birth. Her belly extended up through the blankets pushing obscenely into the room and capturing your attention when you walked in. You had to look at her cancer pregnancy because it dominated everything even though you realized you shouldn’t at that moment – you wanted to offer her even the smallest dignity because this was death. Further complications was that this massive cyst had pushed against her stomach and intestines meaning she couldn’t eat. Food couldn’t find its way through the disease. The cancer had crushed her upper intestines, stomach and kidneys. For the first week, when I first went to see her, she would beg me to go downstairs to the cafeteria and buy her a popsicle but the nurses had already warned me she would vomit up the popsicle as fast as it went down. The nurses were correct and for the first time in my life I cradled my grandmother in my arms as she was sick.
I stayed there in her room with her. Sitting uncomfortably on a plastic chair and most of the time just being there – silent. With the signs on the wall saying for oxygen plug in here or nitrogen down there, the harsh fluorescent lights, beeps coming softly out the equipment beside her and the white blinds on the window. There are reminders of my grandmother around the room. Intrusions into the hospital and out of place. Her teeth beside her in a glass, a cloth for cooling her face, cards, books and a small fan I had brought to cool her off. Sometimes the room was blistering hot or 40 below zero. Her body unable to regulate temperature anymore. These items sat silent beside her as she no longer need any of them. I am not sure who picked the colors for a hospital but it seems as if all hospitals have that ubiquitous green paint on everything. Stepping into the hospital every morning, everyone coming through the automated doors that slide open abnormally fast, everyone is solemn but it’s a serious business being here. People are talking in quiet whispers as I move through the hallway so has not to wake the sick and interrupt the routine in the hospital. People don’t say hello or meet your eyes, they are caught in their own tragedies and observing these niceties is no longer a priority which is fine by me because I couldn’t even manage a fake smile at that point as I stepped on the elevator and met other healthy people. We huddled together on that elevator pushing the white buttons, silent and engulfed by our own separate tragedies. The elevator is huge, large enough for 2 gurneys and another door on the back. This allowed us to have greater distance between ourselves. People were getting off floors with signs like surgery or post operative care or the more frightening critical care department. Were their misfortunes bigger than mine?
It’s interesting how your own world shrinks and focuses on the person dying. The calm and routine we have in lives taken away by this immediate crisis. Everything taken for granted or normal in your own life loses meaning when you are facing death with someone. Paying the cable bill, showing up for work or putting gas in your car is a mundane task and in front of the ultimate mystery everything else takes a back seat. The routine of getting up, shaving and showering, now replaced by the trip to the hospital with details crowding into your mind as your drive up to the hospital. Was she still alive? How did she sleep? Was there another tragedy waiting for me as I went into the hospital. I was exhausted at the end of every day with her. I would sit beside her bed and sometimes she was asleep as I entered quietly. Sometimes I stood there looking at her, trying to gather a picture about her in my mind that the years wouldn’t take away from me. I would spend 6 to 8 hours in that room with her, but it was like a marathon, my body and my brain were completely exhausted at the end of every day as I pointed myself home and on autopilot made it there. At that point I couldn’t tell you why I felt so drained at the end of my visits but later when I think about it, it’s the emotional support you offer, it’s unconditional and it’s 100 percent of who you are is invested in that moment and with that investment in love comes all your energy.
Sitting there watching them fight for life beside you, you want to say something; you want to offer them the great comfort and solace that those moments seem to demand from you. At least a single word of comfort for her but I had none. All the movies, and shows and programs always have that final sentence or statement that has significant meaning for everyone as they gather around the dying that seems to bring that certain comfort but this knowledge from all the movies and books flees you in the final days and it seems small and banal. This is death. This is not some distant news story from across the planet talking about a car bomb with reserved tones with video playing in the background, people running and screaming, holding people in their arms with grief so clearly etched on their faces while the new anchor brings you up to the minute details but you can change the channel to something better. You can’t change this channel nor can you escape. This isn’t someone who knew someone that was killed in a car crash relating this story to you over a coffee and you can nod in return not really connecting with them as you sip your warm, sweet coffee relaxing your body. This is a person, you know them, you have seen them laugh, you have seen them cry, you have seen them yell and now you get to be with them when they die. What you don’t realize is their dying will change you forever.
Sitting there beside her, her face worn and tired, blankets covering her up and around her until only her face was peeking out because even in the spring sun she was always cold. Her eyes still that brilliant blue you remember as a child looking down at you as you looked up and into them. There was no indication, no future premonition that you would do that for her one day. These are eyes that loved you and still do, but they are tired now. You are talking about everything with her because there is nothing left at that moment and the best you can do is distract her from death. She can say anything now about her memories or people or secrets long buried but not forgotten and not be afraid of hurting anyone because she will be gone before the emotions swing back from these people at her. I learned a lot in those small quiet conversations with some soap opera playing in the background. Someone was getting plastic surgery and it seemed highly ironic as I put my hand on my grandmother’s arm. My hand warm and strong and her arm soft and cold even under the blankets. It was more to reassure myself than her – I wanted to know that someone was still in there. Somewhere in her body besides the cancer she was in there, my grandmother. My grandmother talked about her life as a child and it dawned on me that she wasn’t always my grandmother but it was hard to think of her as a child herself.
Kindness
She was the first person in my life to be kind to me. This sounds horrific or maybe I am remembering it wrong but visits to her house still echo around me including the first visit. There was a peace in her house that enveloped you as you entered the door. There were aromas like canned peaches and waffles on Sundays – a normal life unlike the abnormal abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents. So alien in my limited experience. It smelled of furniture polish and of flowers. There was always the murmur of the television in the background but never loud except when she played bingo, the cards in front of her on the coffee table, a pen posed in one hand ready to record the numbers, the sound was turned up because she didn’t want to miss a call. A china cabinet in her dining room with expensive dishes that I had never seen used along one wall. The setting sun reflecting the brilliant white of the unblemished dishes behind glass – protected from the world. Black and white pictures of people dressed in clothes from the 50’s and 60’s smiling and fishing. These pictures are on end tables or on the fake mantel on the fireplace. I never did ask who these people were. It was as if she has a totally different life that I didn’t know about. I didn’t ask her because if she wanted me to know she would have told me.
The floor in the living room and dining room was covered with that heavy green shag carpet on the floor – a throwback from the seventies – the shag was long and dark green with light speckled green flicks throughout and this rug needed a good mow. It was very long and shaggy and sometimes caught your toes and made you trip. My grandmother was hard pressed to buy new carpet when the old was good enough. So this carpet survived well into the 80’s and bit of the 90’s with that polyester fibre. How many times had I played under the dining room table while they played cards above me? Talking and laughing above me as hands were won and last. It was those moments I felt safe in my life because my parents wouldn’t smack me around with my grandmother in my room, they would wait until we left – it was a kind of mercy. How many dinners had I sat there, around that table, eating the turkey or Salisbury steak served by my grandmother?
The bathroom was at the end of the hall. You walked through a hallway with wooden floors and bedrooms with doors closed around you. It was always quiet and cool in the back of her house even the floor didn’t squeak. My grandmother’s house was always neat and clean until the last weeks of her life when people routed through her house and tossed pictures, cushions and dressers around looking for something to sell. The bathroom had soft rugs that tickled my feet with their comfort and it always smelled clean and fresh, very different than the stink of shit and piss I was used to at home. Exploring the medicine cabinet and being very quiet because my grandmother had very sharp ears and she would come down the hall and knock on the door. But if I was very quiet in my exploration, I discovered many unusual things like Nitro-glycerine pills and denture adhesive cream placed neatly in the cabinet. This was a complete mystery to me as I looked into the pill bottle and saw many tiny little white pills in the bottom of that orange bottle.
We slept in the spare room on the floor and it was very exciting – a true adventure in my young mind. The room at night was always lit up from the streetlight bathing everything in yellow. When I woke up the morning light would filter down from the window with cars rolling by. Being raised in a far and remote town, this place was always so busy and where was everyone going to? There was the excitement of the day – we might go to a drive through and have pop – a new experience for me.
I was six years old sitting at her kitchen table with worn handed down pyjamas on me from my older brother, my legs swinging back and forth on the chair I was in. The kitchen had dark, warm wood cabinets, with a double sink and large counters. Many dinners and the canning of peaches, pickles and cabbage went on in that kitchen. I loved my grandmother’s peaches and I never found an adequate replacement after she stopped making them.
I was thin and pale and my clothes engulfed me making me even smaller as I looked up to her. I never spoke first to anyone, too afraid that I would get a good smack if I asked the wrong question. Almost every question was the wrong question. Other adults would assume that I was mentally incapacitated because sometimes no matter how hard they tired I wouldn’t say anything – too afraid of what they might do to me. She was asking me what I wanted for breakfast. I didn’t know what she meant. Why would she care about breakfast? For all my small years at that point, I got my own food, whatever I could reach in the fridge and feed myself, early in the morning. Standing there at the fridge on my tippy-toes finding pickles, cabbage and sometimes jam if I could reach it. It’s true that food might come later in the day but I was starving in the morning – my small belly grumbling and reminding me pulling my attention from the tv demanding that I do something. It was always a job finding something to eat and I was quite used to in my six years already. If I ate the wrong thing like a piece of apple pie or drank my father’s cool, sweet milk, my father would strike me until the tears rolled down my face and a large red mark would appear on my face the size of his hand. But her question didn’t connect within me because I didn’t understand the meaning behind the question. I thought all adults were the same at that point, they kept the best things for themselves and I was allowed to eat when they said and not when my belly told me I was hungry. I was waiting for my grandmother to leave so I could search for something to eat.
She asked me again and this time she opened her cupboard and pulled out some boxes. I realized I should pick something or I was sure to get a smack from her. I was afraid at that moment – past violent experiences were a great teacher. I pointed at the box of porridge. She picked out a package from the box and turned her back on me. I thought that was that and she would leave me alone and began wondering what I was going to eat. A few minutes later a bowl was placed in front of me. Warm porridge steamed up from the lake of milk in the middle. My tummy growled long and low which earned a laugh from my grandmother. I moved to get out of the chair, swinging my legs over the side of light brown vinyl on the chair. Someone was supposed to come and eat this and I was thinking it must be for my mom or dad because nobody has ever did this for me. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looking up at my grandmother I could see tears around her eyes as she told me this was for me – reassuring me. It was wonderful and new to me and I ate the porridge with huge gulping spoons afraid my mom would show up and start to scream at me for eating something that belonged to them. My grandmother was still watching me and her face was getting red and tears one at a time were coming down her face and wetting her cheeks. I finished the porridge as fast as possible and before I could do anything she picked up my bowl and refilled it and placed it front of me with the same result, it took 4 bowls of porridge that morning, I ate because I was afraid this would all disappear in the next moment but my grandmother kept feeding me until I was full – this was a new experience for a 6 year old. My belly was bursting. This was the first act of kindness in my life and it was a memory of my grandmother.
The Request
Now, she was there in front of me again, but there was something I could do I could offer that kindness in return. I knew she was dying, I realized the pain my grandmother was experiencing was not just physical but emotional – she had regrets. My grandmother had regrets and kept them for many years which took me by surprise. As she lay there dying I think it was the regrets that were demanding she had to stay here with all of us until it was resolved. I could see a question in her eyes so I leaned close to her because she had difficultly even keeping down water so her mouth was very dry. The request tumbled out of her, between cracked lips “I want to see my son before I die.” Her eyes met mine as the words came. Damn, why couldn’t she ask me anything else but that question. It would have been easier to get the Pope to visit her (actually I think my grandmother was Mormon but the Pope would probably forgive of this one small tragedy). It would have been easier to find Franklin’s ship in the Arctic or perhaps getting a job gluing tiles back on the space shuttle. Damn, why did she have to ask for that.
I don’t think that these two people didn’t love each other, my grandmother and my father; it’s just that they couldn’t stand one another in the same room. I believed in times such as this people would put aside their differences and do what is required of them. Here is someone dying and there won’t be a next time but I was wrong about that assumption. My father refused to come and see her. He was still in the North West Territories, retired now, sitting there in his chair watching television day and night slowly retreating from life and all the decisions he didn’t desire to make. As long as I known him, I thought he was the strong and silent type doing what was required. I admired him for this strength, he said little but when he did it always made sense to me. I thought he knew that – doing what was required of him and he would do it. He would turn off the LCD Television, get off his chair, pack a few things and come. His complete refusal did take me by surprise and it pissed me off at the same time. I lost what respect I had for him. I realized that it was all a sham all those years growing up and him presenting a pillar of strength – just a pile of crap with no significant strength behind it. Here came one of those tests, one of those things we face in our lives and he left me to do it and in the beginning I resented him for it. This was supposed to be his responsibility not mine and he lacked the internal strength and conviction to do what was right. He was supposed to offer comfort and compassion to his dying mother sharing stories and telling her it was okay. He was supposed to put the cool cloth on her forehead, close the drapes when the sun was too bright another. He was supposed to see her one last time and tell her it was all right. None of this was going to happen. My image of him changed forever in that moment.
What I was thinking about later after I shut off my cell phone and I was walking back to the hospital room is why did I approach this situation so differently than my own father? Was I not his son? The same DNA and build, I could be a younger version of him. But I stayed and faced the issue. I resented my father but my conviction of right and wrong and decency wouldn’t let me leave my dying grandmother, so I stayed in that uncomfortable chair, in the green room with my grandmother. But in the back of mind I was wondering what separated me from my father in this situation? Would I run away one day? Would I have enough of life and retreat as he did – finding a comfortable chair and watching tv and ignoring life?
2 days later my grandmother died without seeing her son. In my opinion it made her passing that much harder and if we could make the transition easier shouldn’t we? There was nothing I could do about her son’s decision except to tell her. To watch her absorb this knowledge, turn her head to the side as I stood beside her so I wouldn’t see her tears. Like earlier I didn’t have any words of comfort for her to help her get past this. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t come except maybe he was afraid of death and what it might mean for him.
Chicken shit – leaving me to do his job. I held on to that feeling way too long because we can’t change people but I felt justified in this feeling. No matter how angry I felt it wasn’t going to change what happened but there was one gift I received in return. I got to spend time with grandmother and help her move on with her life. I felt humbled by the moment and proud that I was allowed to be involved in those moments. Death changes you in ways you don’t imagine until it’s over.
I gave her one last kiss on her forehead. She was gone I could tell. I cried, up to that point, I kept my emotions in check for her but then I cried, for her, the pain and then finally the released. God I would miss her.
My grandmother’s last request or promise or what she had pulled from me when she could still talk and had not slipped into a coma was to keep the family together. Damn, when she asked me I already knew to enormity of the request but like I was going to say no – so sorry can’t do this, let’s get on with this dying business. This was all she wanted but she watched us disappear into our own lives. After the abuse at the hands of our parents we wanted as far away from them as we could get. Yes grandmother, I remember.
