No. And yes. It's always sudden.*
This is the Serious Post I mentioned I was writing. How serious of a post is this? It’s of a personal nature regarding the death of a close family member.
Clickety if you want, comment if you like.
I just felt it was high time I wrote this down.
Posts written at the time.
10 August 2007
15 August 2007
[3:50 pm] Saturday; January 12, 2008: Den Haag
I’m writing this in my diary - well, not my diary per se; actually it’s my sorely-ignored writing notebook because my purse can only fit so many books - then transcribing it to the internet. Here’s a few reason’s why: 1) I needed to get out of the house, 2) I’ve been ignoring my RL diary for too long, 3) some things need to be written down by hand first.
But first, a description to get back into the flow of writing, because apart from the Kitty Attack Challenge, it’s been over six months since my last confession I last wrote anything. I’m in a mall - where, apparently, you’re allowed to smoke;** and I thought the Dutch were progressive! - called Megastore, just a block from the HS train station. I’m on the ground floor at the other end of where I came in, next to a giant Christmas tree tastefully decorated in small white lights and large red and gold baubles. I’m sitting at the Hot ‘n Cold Coffee and Sandwich Café, which is where I got my E2.95 Ham en Kaas Tosti (Ham and Cheese grilled sandwich or croque monsieur). This, along with 2 mandarins and a banana, will be lunch, because I could hardly fit into my riding boots yesterday and something’s got to change. And since exercising regularly will be as likely as seeing the Invisible Pink Unicorn, god of atheists, I might as well ensure my caloric intake reflects my activity levels.
Things you would notice if you were here: I have a new coat and purse, c/o Ma’, meant to last forever because gods know when we’ll be spending money again.
(Mom’s convinced They’ll be sending Dad to Mexico this year, which means a drastic reduction in an income - which hasn’t once been raised in my whole life - via conversion from USD to Pesos. Yes, Dad gets paid in American money, despite living in Canada and working for Mexico. Let me tell you, this plays havoc on finances if you have to pay both in Canadian Dollars and Euros out of that income.)
Both articles are black and classical - the coat long, the purse rectangular - and give off an air of Competent and Responsible Adult, despite the wearer. I’ve also got black calf-high boots on, but that’s where the C&RA ends: old red sweater, old beige skirt, even older red scarf (must be going on 15 years now). The makeup - eyeliner, mascara, blush and enough concealer to make me look like a living person rather than a somewhat-awake dead - makes me look decent.
(Apparently, I’m looking much improved in general, as my Dutch teacher pointed out after my retake. I must’ve looked like shit near December’s end. Certainly felt like it.)
Oh, I’m also wearing tights, which on the first go only came up to my knees, then it took half an hour to get the crotch up to decent, non-waddle levels.*** Didn’t break ‘em, though, which I seem to do every time mom’s around.****
Also, I peel my mandarins in one go - leaving an S-shaped peel - with my left hand, despite being a rightie.
The reason I’m writing this here, where I write slower and can take the time to think, is because I feel it’s time to get some things down finally. I need to talk about what I wouldn’t last August.
My grandmother’s dead. My last remaining grandmother - grandparent - and the only one I’ve ever known.
(Dad’s parents died within three weeks of each other back in 2001. The last time I spoke to them I couldn’t have been more than 9, and never once did we see them whilst living in Mexico.
Mom’s dad died Dec. 27, 1987, when I was 4 and we were going to Lake Nakuru in Kenya to see the flamingos when the tire blew. Mom doesn’t talk about it, or him, ever at all. She hasn’t gotten over it either.)
This isn’t my first known-family-member death though, as two of my Great Aunts have died recently (2002 and 2005). And while I loved my Great Aunts, I’d already let go of one (senile dementia meant she didn’t know who I was) and wasn’t emotionally-invested in the other (I mean, I knew her, I'd visited, but we weren't close, but I was upset because it was Known Family Death #1).
Gran had colon cancer. She’d been diagnosed, and had a colonoscopy, in 2000 at the age of 77. In 2005, she got another tumour and complications and was on her deathbed with no hope from the doctors that September and October, being even moved from the ICU to die in a quieter room. I’d just moved to Spain a week prior at the end of August when they operated. Right about my birthday she got the whole Last Rites shebang. Neither her children nor present grandchildren (my cousin and myself) were ready or willing, but her last remaining sister made the call. But that time Gran pulled through - shocking the doctors along the way - and eventually made a full recovery. She was very weak at first, though. I remember holding her arm and helping her along as we walked around my older uncle’s flat.
She couldn’t be left alone after that, in her small and isolated village with barely 10 year-round residents. So the three siblings had to share her, which caused much strife and discussion. Mom particularly had the problem of no way in hell was she moving into the village house for 4 months in said graveyard of a village. Mom had already spent 9 months with Gran there, so she knew what she was talking about. "Being buried alive," that’s what she called it. And apparently the idea of Gran going to Toronto was considered ludicrous by Mom’s brothers.
That bridge was never quite crossed, as Gran started doing poorly in July. Her decline was very quick, and soon she was so weak that walking around the room was too much and she began to have trouble eating. Seeing how quick things were moving, Mom bought a plane ticket after hanging up the phone one weekend and flew over. I moved out of my Barcelona flat and into my Uncle’s, where I proceeded to pack my life away. Once my uncles were back from their travels, we went to Burgos to see Gran. By then, she’d just been confined to bed the day prior, and failing fast.
We got there Friday, August 10. She died Saturday, August 11, round about 10:30 pm at 83 years of age. She was lucid pretty much the whole time: when I got there, she asked where I’d be sleeping (she was in Uncle’s guest bed). I slept with Mom in Great Aunt’s house.
It was a shock seeing her. I hadn’t seen her in 6 or so months. She was horribly thin, except where she was equally horribly wasn’t. The cancer’d spread to her liver, and her whole abdomen was bloated. She said she wasn’t in pain - and we had morphine drops on hand - but then Gran was always very stubborn. If she complained of a "slight discomfort", then you knew it hurt bad. The house-call doctor was actually surprised to see Gran alive Saturday morning, she was that tough. (Gran wouldn’t have withstood a move to the hospital, and it wouldn’t have helped anyway.)
Things with the siblings weren’t going well at all, especially between Mom and her older brother, and I felt horrible for that because they ought to be helping each other, not being bitterly non-communicative.
I went out for a walk Saturday afternoon to clear my head - just sit on a bench by the river and not think of feel anything for a bit, be away from of it all. Walking back, I got a call on my cell from Ma, asking where I was and to hurry home: all signs pointed to Gran dying that evening.
So we all gathered around her bed - her sister, her three children, her granddaughter, her brother- and daughter-in-law. She was asleep or unconscious, and her hands were very, very cold and turning purple, as were her feet. The home-call doctor lady’d told us this was the first sign; she’d prepared us for the biology of the death. Gran was breathing pretty regular, if shallow, and very calm. That must have been around 7 pm. I held her hand a while, trying to keep it warm and caressing non-stop, just in case, sitting next to mom. We were all quiet and still, just watching and waiting.
Then, over an hour, as the sun went down, her breaths started getting slower, shallower, with long and heartbreaking pauses between each little rattle. Once, she all but stopped, and my younger uncles shook her, and she started up again, making him and me share a relieved smile; we weren’t ready just yet. And the breaths got shallower, the pauses longer, until the next just wouldn’t come.
And you sit there staring at her chest, wondering if it’s still moving or you’re just imagining it, waiting for the next breath because that’s really all you’ve been doing, and really, how long a pause is too long? When does a pause become a stop?
And mom kept wringing her mother’s cold, purple hand and crying, and my younger uncle, who sat across from me, too, cried a bit, and I just held onto mom for all I was worth, knowing my role was to be a, well, flying buttress of support, and comfort, and anything at all she needed. Mom stopped being "Mom" and because a daughter in my eyes, because her mother had just died and I can’t imagine a lonelier or worse moment.
(Thank gods I’m in public of I’d be crying.)
Things moved pretty quickly after that, with arrangements and their hassles blessedly distracting everyone from processing. Because people had to be called. (But, of course, who did you have to call right then, and who could wait till the morning? Or for the obituary? Who must you call if you call so-and-so?) The gurney people came and went, and the newspaper was gotten a hold of to write the obituary - slipping in the request just prior to midnight’s lockdown. My cousin was called, and said he’d be down from Galicia tomorrow, and I told my brother, vaguely floating on the surreality of my actually making such a phone call. "Grandma’s dead." There’s nothing else to say and no other way to say it, because why else would you be calling at that time with that little, slow voice? The ring itself says all you need to hear.
The wake was arranged for the very next day at some relative’s or acquaintance’s funeral home, starting in the afternoon. We were told that close family could be there in the morning, for that quiet moment when you sit and watch the hammer fall. Unfortunately, things worked out badly, and stressfully, due to general incompetence. When we arrived in the morning, they hadn’t gotten Gran ready yet (this after running around the empty funeral home looking for people).
The flower rings (coronas) had been ordered the night before, and that too was a show-and-tell of incompetence. We had to drive up to the funeral home, which is in the outskirts of the city, dragging a workboy near out when it certainly wasn’t his turn to work that night, and who most certainly didn’t have the keys to the showroom or access to the lights, so we couldn’t even see the flowers anyway and had to go back downtown and pick them out from a photo catalogue. We got three (“we” consisting of Great Aunt, Ma, and myself whilst older uncle and great-uncle-in-law waited outside) on behalf of Gran’s children, grandchildren, and sister. Deciding what to put on the ribbon was an odd detail to be concerned over.
New flowers from relatives were also a stressful addition during the wake on Sunday due to the abysmal spelling of a relation ("goddaughter"). They changed the ribbon, eventually, but the distress had already been caused. Really, a little more respect and attention to detail wouldn’t have been out of order.
The wake itself was exhausting, mainly because it was spent in the one room all day, meeting and greeting people, catching up. It felt like a very sombre family reunion. But it was also good, because there were quiet moments, and distracting ones. The style was an open casket behind glass in a chilly and humidity controlled room, mourners on the other side of the glass.
Monday was the funeral, and consisted of a procession from the funeral home to the edge of the village, whereupon the undertaker put the coronas onto the side of the car so’s people could see them and drove slowly up to church. The casket was carried in by my uncles and cousin - all horribly serious looking - and then we had mass for Gran.
The procession them took us to the cemetery, where the undertakers had taken off the marble cover of the joint tomb for Grandpa and Grandma (one beneath the other, I think is the layout). Then more mass, while Ma, Aunt and myself held heavy flower bases which made our arms shake. Then there was the lowering of the casket, the concreting, the wandering about and receiving of condolences, and finally the exiting of the cemetery. Ritual over. Processing can now begin.
Mom and I stayed with Great Aunt a week, trying to be a comfort to the last remaining sister. And I tried to be a comfort to insomniac Mom - we shared the guest bed, which had been the matrimonial bed - and held her tight at night and when she’d cry in the wee morning house.
We might have gotten two years’ grace, and a practice run, and thank gods it was quick and painless and her children were there, but it’s still hard, still messy, and I’ve seen my mom in many a bad state, but seeing her desolate hurt the most.
ETA: I've since had two dreams where Gran's alive, knowing she oughtn't be. One she was in her home, and Nella the dog was also alive, and it was a sort of undoing-of-death time. The second, Gran was in the hospital.
* The Body, BtVS 5x16
** Total tally of cigarettes whilst writing this: 16
*** I’m now afraid to go to the bathroom, least I never, ever, get the tights back on. Instruments of torture and meditation/patience exercises, I tell you!
**** Ironically, inevitably, they did break - or rather, burst - when I hunkered down a bit to check out a tiny statue of Ganesh. Damn you, the Eternally Compassionate!
Clickety if you want, comment if you like.
I just felt it was high time I wrote this down.
Posts written at the time.
10 August 2007
15 August 2007
[3:50 pm] Saturday; January 12, 2008: Den Haag
I’m writing this in my diary - well, not my diary per se; actually it’s my sorely-ignored writing notebook because my purse can only fit so many books - then transcribing it to the internet. Here’s a few reason’s why: 1) I needed to get out of the house, 2) I’ve been ignoring my RL diary for too long, 3) some things need to be written down by hand first.
But first, a description to get back into the flow of writing, because apart from the Kitty Attack Challenge, it’s been over six months since my last confession I last wrote anything. I’m in a mall - where, apparently, you’re allowed to smoke;** and I thought the Dutch were progressive! - called Megastore, just a block from the HS train station. I’m on the ground floor at the other end of where I came in, next to a giant Christmas tree tastefully decorated in small white lights and large red and gold baubles. I’m sitting at the Hot ‘n Cold Coffee and Sandwich Café, which is where I got my E2.95 Ham en Kaas Tosti (Ham and Cheese grilled sandwich or croque monsieur). This, along with 2 mandarins and a banana, will be lunch, because I could hardly fit into my riding boots yesterday and something’s got to change. And since exercising regularly will be as likely as seeing the Invisible Pink Unicorn, god of atheists, I might as well ensure my caloric intake reflects my activity levels.
Things you would notice if you were here: I have a new coat and purse, c/o Ma’, meant to last forever because gods know when we’ll be spending money again.
(Mom’s convinced They’ll be sending Dad to Mexico this year, which means a drastic reduction in an income - which hasn’t once been raised in my whole life - via conversion from USD to Pesos. Yes, Dad gets paid in American money, despite living in Canada and working for Mexico. Let me tell you, this plays havoc on finances if you have to pay both in Canadian Dollars and Euros out of that income.)
Both articles are black and classical - the coat long, the purse rectangular - and give off an air of Competent and Responsible Adult, despite the wearer. I’ve also got black calf-high boots on, but that’s where the C&RA ends: old red sweater, old beige skirt, even older red scarf (must be going on 15 years now). The makeup - eyeliner, mascara, blush and enough concealer to make me look like a living person rather than a somewhat-awake dead - makes me look decent.
(Apparently, I’m looking much improved in general, as my Dutch teacher pointed out after my retake. I must’ve looked like shit near December’s end. Certainly felt like it.)
Oh, I’m also wearing tights, which on the first go only came up to my knees, then it took half an hour to get the crotch up to decent, non-waddle levels.*** Didn’t break ‘em, though, which I seem to do every time mom’s around.****
Also, I peel my mandarins in one go - leaving an S-shaped peel - with my left hand, despite being a rightie.
The reason I’m writing this here, where I write slower and can take the time to think, is because I feel it’s time to get some things down finally. I need to talk about what I wouldn’t last August.
My grandmother’s dead. My last remaining grandmother - grandparent - and the only one I’ve ever known.
(Dad’s parents died within three weeks of each other back in 2001. The last time I spoke to them I couldn’t have been more than 9, and never once did we see them whilst living in Mexico.
Mom’s dad died Dec. 27, 1987, when I was 4 and we were going to Lake Nakuru in Kenya to see the flamingos when the tire blew. Mom doesn’t talk about it, or him, ever at all. She hasn’t gotten over it either.)
This isn’t my first known-family-member death though, as two of my Great Aunts have died recently (2002 and 2005). And while I loved my Great Aunts, I’d already let go of one (senile dementia meant she didn’t know who I was) and wasn’t emotionally-invested in the other (I mean, I knew her, I'd visited, but we weren't close, but I was upset because it was Known Family Death #1).
Gran had colon cancer. She’d been diagnosed, and had a colonoscopy, in 2000 at the age of 77. In 2005, she got another tumour and complications and was on her deathbed with no hope from the doctors that September and October, being even moved from the ICU to die in a quieter room. I’d just moved to Spain a week prior at the end of August when they operated. Right about my birthday she got the whole Last Rites shebang. Neither her children nor present grandchildren (my cousin and myself) were ready or willing, but her last remaining sister made the call. But that time Gran pulled through - shocking the doctors along the way - and eventually made a full recovery. She was very weak at first, though. I remember holding her arm and helping her along as we walked around my older uncle’s flat.
She couldn’t be left alone after that, in her small and isolated village with barely 10 year-round residents. So the three siblings had to share her, which caused much strife and discussion. Mom particularly had the problem of no way in hell was she moving into the village house for 4 months in said graveyard of a village. Mom had already spent 9 months with Gran there, so she knew what she was talking about. "Being buried alive," that’s what she called it. And apparently the idea of Gran going to Toronto was considered ludicrous by Mom’s brothers.
That bridge was never quite crossed, as Gran started doing poorly in July. Her decline was very quick, and soon she was so weak that walking around the room was too much and she began to have trouble eating. Seeing how quick things were moving, Mom bought a plane ticket after hanging up the phone one weekend and flew over. I moved out of my Barcelona flat and into my Uncle’s, where I proceeded to pack my life away. Once my uncles were back from their travels, we went to Burgos to see Gran. By then, she’d just been confined to bed the day prior, and failing fast.
We got there Friday, August 10. She died Saturday, August 11, round about 10:30 pm at 83 years of age. She was lucid pretty much the whole time: when I got there, she asked where I’d be sleeping (she was in Uncle’s guest bed). I slept with Mom in Great Aunt’s house.
It was a shock seeing her. I hadn’t seen her in 6 or so months. She was horribly thin, except where she was equally horribly wasn’t. The cancer’d spread to her liver, and her whole abdomen was bloated. She said she wasn’t in pain - and we had morphine drops on hand - but then Gran was always very stubborn. If she complained of a "slight discomfort", then you knew it hurt bad. The house-call doctor was actually surprised to see Gran alive Saturday morning, she was that tough. (Gran wouldn’t have withstood a move to the hospital, and it wouldn’t have helped anyway.)
Things with the siblings weren’t going well at all, especially between Mom and her older brother, and I felt horrible for that because they ought to be helping each other, not being bitterly non-communicative.
I went out for a walk Saturday afternoon to clear my head - just sit on a bench by the river and not think of feel anything for a bit, be away from of it all. Walking back, I got a call on my cell from Ma, asking where I was and to hurry home: all signs pointed to Gran dying that evening.
So we all gathered around her bed - her sister, her three children, her granddaughter, her brother- and daughter-in-law. She was asleep or unconscious, and her hands were very, very cold and turning purple, as were her feet. The home-call doctor lady’d told us this was the first sign; she’d prepared us for the biology of the death. Gran was breathing pretty regular, if shallow, and very calm. That must have been around 7 pm. I held her hand a while, trying to keep it warm and caressing non-stop, just in case, sitting next to mom. We were all quiet and still, just watching and waiting.
Then, over an hour, as the sun went down, her breaths started getting slower, shallower, with long and heartbreaking pauses between each little rattle. Once, she all but stopped, and my younger uncles shook her, and she started up again, making him and me share a relieved smile; we weren’t ready just yet. And the breaths got shallower, the pauses longer, until the next just wouldn’t come.
And you sit there staring at her chest, wondering if it’s still moving or you’re just imagining it, waiting for the next breath because that’s really all you’ve been doing, and really, how long a pause is too long? When does a pause become a stop?
And mom kept wringing her mother’s cold, purple hand and crying, and my younger uncle, who sat across from me, too, cried a bit, and I just held onto mom for all I was worth, knowing my role was to be a, well, flying buttress of support, and comfort, and anything at all she needed. Mom stopped being "Mom" and because a daughter in my eyes, because her mother had just died and I can’t imagine a lonelier or worse moment.
(Thank gods I’m in public of I’d be crying.)
Things moved pretty quickly after that, with arrangements and their hassles blessedly distracting everyone from processing. Because people had to be called. (But, of course, who did you have to call right then, and who could wait till the morning? Or for the obituary? Who must you call if you call so-and-so?) The gurney people came and went, and the newspaper was gotten a hold of to write the obituary - slipping in the request just prior to midnight’s lockdown. My cousin was called, and said he’d be down from Galicia tomorrow, and I told my brother, vaguely floating on the surreality of my actually making such a phone call. "Grandma’s dead." There’s nothing else to say and no other way to say it, because why else would you be calling at that time with that little, slow voice? The ring itself says all you need to hear.
The wake was arranged for the very next day at some relative’s or acquaintance’s funeral home, starting in the afternoon. We were told that close family could be there in the morning, for that quiet moment when you sit and watch the hammer fall. Unfortunately, things worked out badly, and stressfully, due to general incompetence. When we arrived in the morning, they hadn’t gotten Gran ready yet (this after running around the empty funeral home looking for people).
The flower rings (coronas) had been ordered the night before, and that too was a show-and-tell of incompetence. We had to drive up to the funeral home, which is in the outskirts of the city, dragging a workboy near out when it certainly wasn’t his turn to work that night, and who most certainly didn’t have the keys to the showroom or access to the lights, so we couldn’t even see the flowers anyway and had to go back downtown and pick them out from a photo catalogue. We got three (“we” consisting of Great Aunt, Ma, and myself whilst older uncle and great-uncle-in-law waited outside) on behalf of Gran’s children, grandchildren, and sister. Deciding what to put on the ribbon was an odd detail to be concerned over.
New flowers from relatives were also a stressful addition during the wake on Sunday due to the abysmal spelling of a relation ("goddaughter"). They changed the ribbon, eventually, but the distress had already been caused. Really, a little more respect and attention to detail wouldn’t have been out of order.
The wake itself was exhausting, mainly because it was spent in the one room all day, meeting and greeting people, catching up. It felt like a very sombre family reunion. But it was also good, because there were quiet moments, and distracting ones. The style was an open casket behind glass in a chilly and humidity controlled room, mourners on the other side of the glass.
Monday was the funeral, and consisted of a procession from the funeral home to the edge of the village, whereupon the undertaker put the coronas onto the side of the car so’s people could see them and drove slowly up to church. The casket was carried in by my uncles and cousin - all horribly serious looking - and then we had mass for Gran.
The procession them took us to the cemetery, where the undertakers had taken off the marble cover of the joint tomb for Grandpa and Grandma (one beneath the other, I think is the layout). Then more mass, while Ma, Aunt and myself held heavy flower bases which made our arms shake. Then there was the lowering of the casket, the concreting, the wandering about and receiving of condolences, and finally the exiting of the cemetery. Ritual over. Processing can now begin.
Mom and I stayed with Great Aunt a week, trying to be a comfort to the last remaining sister. And I tried to be a comfort to insomniac Mom - we shared the guest bed, which had been the matrimonial bed - and held her tight at night and when she’d cry in the wee morning house.
We might have gotten two years’ grace, and a practice run, and thank gods it was quick and painless and her children were there, but it’s still hard, still messy, and I’ve seen my mom in many a bad state, but seeing her desolate hurt the most.
ETA: I've since had two dreams where Gran's alive, knowing she oughtn't be. One she was in her home, and Nella the dog was also alive, and it was a sort of undoing-of-death time. The second, Gran was in the hospital.
* The Body, BtVS 5x16
** Total tally of cigarettes whilst writing this: 16
*** I’m now afraid to go to the bathroom, least I never, ever, get the tights back on. Instruments of torture and meditation/patience exercises, I tell you!
**** Ironically, inevitably, they did break - or rather, burst - when I hunkered down a bit to check out a tiny statue of Ganesh. Damn you, the Eternally Compassionate!