There'll be one child born in this world to carry on. . .
I had a hard time falling asleep last night. I was thinking about mi abuela, and about death in general.
I really don't have a lot of personal experience with death. I have know people here and there who died, or knew of them. . . but few close people.
When I was in high school my friend Greta was killed by a drunk driver who slammed his car into hers. She was 16 or 17 at the time. It was a weird feeling, because she had left school several months before, and I had not seen or talked to her in all that time. When you are that age, four or five months is an eternity - it could feel like 20 years have passed since you saw someone. She left our private boarding school because I think she never really fit in there (urban white girl from Cleveland with an attitude only I of our fellow students ever "got"), and while we were friends, I was too desperate to try to fit in myself to try to make it any easier for her. I still had that easy cruelty of childhood. The guilt of that weighed down on me for a long time - that thought that if I had been a better friend she might have stayed in school longer, that one difference might have changed the path of her life so she would not have been in that place at that time to die. But you really can't dwell on that kind of thing too long because that way lies madness. I was unable to go to her funeral.
When I was going to SUNY New Paltz, my girlfriend Linda's grandmother died. This was a woman I both knew and didn't know. I had spent part of the previous summer taking care of her and Linda's grandfather - but when I met her she had already lost her mind. She sat in front of the television all day, mumbling to herself and sometimes crying - especially if there was shooting or fighting on T.V. - She did not seem to be able to differentiate between the TV and what was happening around her anymore. The only clear thing I ever remeber her saying was that she was living in a house of "crazy people", and she was right - though perhaps not the kind of crazy she thought. The stories I heard about the fierce and frightening woman she had been even a couple of years before I met her were hard to believe when I saw that shriveled scared woman in diapers. When she died she was no longer living in their home, but at a nursing home - A place I went to once or twice that smelled of death, shit and antiseptic, filled with the lonely absent elderly. It was the kind of place that would make you shrivel up and die, if you were not already shriveling up and dying. Her's was the first funeral I ever went to, at the age of 25. It was a Catholic funeral, and a priest she never even knew made an inappropriate eulogy regarding the inevitability of her soul going to hell if she had not repented. It did nothing to comfort the family, and really upset Linda. Death and dying is hard enough without the fire and brimstone bullshit.
Recently, my friend Zooey's dad died, and I went to that funeral. But I've written about that already.
My mom had an old boyfriend, Jaime, who lived with us for years and years - like 10, or more. There was never much of a bond there between him and me or my siblings. Definitely no paternal feelings there. He had absolutely no authority over us. He was just a man that lived in our house. And the last few years, he and my mom hardly even talked. He once went back to Ecuador for what was supposed to be a few months - but instead was gone a year or more. I think that was the point that their relationship began to sour - as I think they spoke exactly once in that time - but even then they stayed together another six or seven years. It is pretty crazy to contemplate. Anyway, my mom finally asked him to leave when I was around 21. A few years ago, we got the word that he had died. He was 10 years older than my mom. They found him sitting up in bed with one sock on, and the other still clutched in his hand. He was getting up to go to work, and his heart just gave out. He must have died pretty immediately, based on the position he was in when found - and I can't help but think that must be the best way to go: As close to instantaneously as possible - in the process of your usual daily events.
The point of these examples, is that none of these experiences with death were as immediate and personal as what is happening now with the woman who used to take care of me some afternoons and sing to me little nonsense songs about how much she loved me, and I would make up lines to sing back. The woman I'd go spend summers with in Puerto Rico is lying in a bed right now in Lutheran Medical Center - a place she used to work before it was moved to its current location. The place I remember visiting her on Christmas Day the first year it opened at the present location because she was a patient there. I remember I had a Geronimo doll that had belonged to my older brother, and that I loved - but his hands popped out of the arm, and I used to pop them out occasionally - and doing so in the lobby of the hospital I lost one. From then on I used to have Geronimo say, "The white man took my hand."
Okay, now this post is all over the place. It is just that mostly the feeling I have regarding all of this is not sadness (though there is some of that), but restlessness. I keep coming back to this feeling of not knowing what to do with myself at any given point - as if part of me is tied by restraints to a hospital bed; as if my hands were tied into these mesh-covered pads to keep me from pulling out my hair or I.V. drip. She slams them together with unpredictable force, and then looks at me imploringly to remove them. But I can only stroke her hair and whisper that I cannot remove them for her. . . "Todavia no," I say. "Pronto. . . Pronto."
"¡Vete al carajo!" says the woman I never heard curse once in her whole life, and prayed to her rosary beads for an hour each night before going to bed.
She tries to untie the pads on her hands with her teeth, but she has no teeth. We gently pull her arms back down as my mother and sister talk to her with the nonsense tone used with children - that I hate when used with children, let alone a dying adult woman. I try to talk to her normally, as I always would - But it is hard to know what to say at all. My mother is terrible at comforting. She has never been very good with life's awkward emotional moments. I see my own cold and hardened heart in her - or at least a heart that is afraid to let itself go. Her advice all my life for any emotional turmoil has always been the same, and it has been the same the last week or so, "Try not to think about it too much. . ." I would be annoyed, if I didn't sense that somewhere inside my mother are the normal sensations of human emotions she does not ever let herself indulge in.
A woman visiting the mi abuela's roommate there in the hospital, offered to lead us in prayer and my family agreed. Even in her dementia and passing lucidity, mi abuela recognized the solemnity of prayer and calmed down for a few minutes, and I was happy for that - but I had to leave the room when the woman began to talk about Jesus' will and the miracles he can do to heal her. That it was all about His will, and not ours or hers. . . I stepped out of the room, not wanting to be rude, but I just could not listen to it. I don't care for Jesus' will. One of these days I need to write up a post about how I used to want to be a minister and about my current relationship to the spiritual - but today is not that day.
I am going back to see her this afternoon after work. I told her I would go see her on Saturday, but I forgot that I have plans to go out to the Jerze on Saturday, and right now I really want to spend some time with my "god-daughter" and revel in that baby happiness and love. I want to spend some time thinking about all the goods things she has in front of her, instead of all the ones that have past and shall never return. I want to forget about all the bad things I still have in front of me, if only for the day.
I really don't have a lot of personal experience with death. I have know people here and there who died, or knew of them. . . but few close people.
When I was in high school my friend Greta was killed by a drunk driver who slammed his car into hers. She was 16 or 17 at the time. It was a weird feeling, because she had left school several months before, and I had not seen or talked to her in all that time. When you are that age, four or five months is an eternity - it could feel like 20 years have passed since you saw someone. She left our private boarding school because I think she never really fit in there (urban white girl from Cleveland with an attitude only I of our fellow students ever "got"), and while we were friends, I was too desperate to try to fit in myself to try to make it any easier for her. I still had that easy cruelty of childhood. The guilt of that weighed down on me for a long time - that thought that if I had been a better friend she might have stayed in school longer, that one difference might have changed the path of her life so she would not have been in that place at that time to die. But you really can't dwell on that kind of thing too long because that way lies madness. I was unable to go to her funeral.
When I was going to SUNY New Paltz, my girlfriend Linda's grandmother died. This was a woman I both knew and didn't know. I had spent part of the previous summer taking care of her and Linda's grandfather - but when I met her she had already lost her mind. She sat in front of the television all day, mumbling to herself and sometimes crying - especially if there was shooting or fighting on T.V. - She did not seem to be able to differentiate between the TV and what was happening around her anymore. The only clear thing I ever remeber her saying was that she was living in a house of "crazy people", and she was right - though perhaps not the kind of crazy she thought. The stories I heard about the fierce and frightening woman she had been even a couple of years before I met her were hard to believe when I saw that shriveled scared woman in diapers. When she died she was no longer living in their home, but at a nursing home - A place I went to once or twice that smelled of death, shit and antiseptic, filled with the lonely absent elderly. It was the kind of place that would make you shrivel up and die, if you were not already shriveling up and dying. Her's was the first funeral I ever went to, at the age of 25. It was a Catholic funeral, and a priest she never even knew made an inappropriate eulogy regarding the inevitability of her soul going to hell if she had not repented. It did nothing to comfort the family, and really upset Linda. Death and dying is hard enough without the fire and brimstone bullshit.
Recently, my friend Zooey's dad died, and I went to that funeral. But I've written about that already.
My mom had an old boyfriend, Jaime, who lived with us for years and years - like 10, or more. There was never much of a bond there between him and me or my siblings. Definitely no paternal feelings there. He had absolutely no authority over us. He was just a man that lived in our house. And the last few years, he and my mom hardly even talked. He once went back to Ecuador for what was supposed to be a few months - but instead was gone a year or more. I think that was the point that their relationship began to sour - as I think they spoke exactly once in that time - but even then they stayed together another six or seven years. It is pretty crazy to contemplate. Anyway, my mom finally asked him to leave when I was around 21. A few years ago, we got the word that he had died. He was 10 years older than my mom. They found him sitting up in bed with one sock on, and the other still clutched in his hand. He was getting up to go to work, and his heart just gave out. He must have died pretty immediately, based on the position he was in when found - and I can't help but think that must be the best way to go: As close to instantaneously as possible - in the process of your usual daily events.
The point of these examples, is that none of these experiences with death were as immediate and personal as what is happening now with the woman who used to take care of me some afternoons and sing to me little nonsense songs about how much she loved me, and I would make up lines to sing back. The woman I'd go spend summers with in Puerto Rico is lying in a bed right now in Lutheran Medical Center - a place she used to work before it was moved to its current location. The place I remember visiting her on Christmas Day the first year it opened at the present location because she was a patient there. I remember I had a Geronimo doll that had belonged to my older brother, and that I loved - but his hands popped out of the arm, and I used to pop them out occasionally - and doing so in the lobby of the hospital I lost one. From then on I used to have Geronimo say, "The white man took my hand."
Okay, now this post is all over the place. It is just that mostly the feeling I have regarding all of this is not sadness (though there is some of that), but restlessness. I keep coming back to this feeling of not knowing what to do with myself at any given point - as if part of me is tied by restraints to a hospital bed; as if my hands were tied into these mesh-covered pads to keep me from pulling out my hair or I.V. drip. She slams them together with unpredictable force, and then looks at me imploringly to remove them. But I can only stroke her hair and whisper that I cannot remove them for her. . . "Todavia no," I say. "Pronto. . . Pronto."
"¡Vete al carajo!" says the woman I never heard curse once in her whole life, and prayed to her rosary beads for an hour each night before going to bed.
She tries to untie the pads on her hands with her teeth, but she has no teeth. We gently pull her arms back down as my mother and sister talk to her with the nonsense tone used with children - that I hate when used with children, let alone a dying adult woman. I try to talk to her normally, as I always would - But it is hard to know what to say at all. My mother is terrible at comforting. She has never been very good with life's awkward emotional moments. I see my own cold and hardened heart in her - or at least a heart that is afraid to let itself go. Her advice all my life for any emotional turmoil has always been the same, and it has been the same the last week or so, "Try not to think about it too much. . ." I would be annoyed, if I didn't sense that somewhere inside my mother are the normal sensations of human emotions she does not ever let herself indulge in.
A woman visiting the mi abuela's roommate there in the hospital, offered to lead us in prayer and my family agreed. Even in her dementia and passing lucidity, mi abuela recognized the solemnity of prayer and calmed down for a few minutes, and I was happy for that - but I had to leave the room when the woman began to talk about Jesus' will and the miracles he can do to heal her. That it was all about His will, and not ours or hers. . . I stepped out of the room, not wanting to be rude, but I just could not listen to it. I don't care for Jesus' will. One of these days I need to write up a post about how I used to want to be a minister and about my current relationship to the spiritual - but today is not that day.
I am going back to see her this afternoon after work. I told her I would go see her on Saturday, but I forgot that I have plans to go out to the Jerze on Saturday, and right now I really want to spend some time with my "god-daughter" and revel in that baby happiness and love. I want to spend some time thinking about all the goods things she has in front of her, instead of all the ones that have past and shall never return. I want to forget about all the bad things I still have in front of me, if only for the day.