Like any sunday, I'm watching some video on my computer, planning to never drink again while failing to plan tomorrows lesson when the phone rings. I knew that this would come at some point when I visited my grandma in the hospital two weeks ago. Probably not this soon. My brother is composed, as am I. He says that grandma is with grandpa, I say thats kind of a good thing. He says she's with her 10 year old leukemia stricken son, and brothers uncle clea and uncle warren, and then he breaks down and has to go. My grandmother is dead.
For some reason when deaths happen I focus most of my attention on myself, on whether or not I am producing the correct response. First "why I am not crying?", then justification, "well he was there..." and blame "why was I not there?" Luckily between blame and the onset of guilt I got the next phone call from my mom.
Apparently grandma was being held alive by one blood pressure medication and once the doctors realized it they decided to take it away once my family was there. Without the medication it was a two hour waiting game, watching the machines and the listing to the beeps as they told the last lines of my father's mothers amazing story. Who wouldn't be breaking down after that. I told my mother and father I love them hung up the phone. In the quiet of my one room apartment I began searching for plane tickets.
The other weird thing I do when people die is I try to find something else to throw my brain at. When after a highschool basketball game I was informed that three of my classmates died in a car accident and watch probably the biggest man I'd ever seen break down in tears I spent the rest of the night working as long as I could on my homework. Once I realized I was kidding myself, that I had produced an agonizingly meager amount of work while trying to chase the reality from my thoughts, I broke down and watched my tears soak the margins of my book. As I grew older it seems I've developed more strength in suppression than in dealing with emotion, and that was one of the last times I've cried.
So as I searched from orbitz to kayak and eventually cheap tickets.com to find a ticket, slightly annoyed by all of happy pictures of family vacations on all of these websites, it was possible for me to avoid the crushing weight of what has happened. The end of a life who has stood atainst convention, withstood tragedy, pulled others up to stand beside her, and never once allowing herself to be someelse's doormat. To be the daughter of a farmer in rural mississippi it was impressive at the time to be of a black family that owned their own land. It would be hard to convince her family that she would move to a city, working as a seamstress in chicago and despite her and her husbands middle school education, raise a group of young men with 6 University degrees between them. Lovie D of the 1930's would easily wrap her brain around this story. When approached by my grandfather she demanded that she be taken north, or else he find someone else. Even though he was of small means as well he fulfilled her wish by joining the army and, after serving in arizona, moved to indiana. They moved into the first new house on a soon to be paved road in the growing industrial town of gary, indiana. This house would serve as the launching pad not only of her and my family, but those of countless relatives arriving from the south needing somewhere to stay before getting settled.
The more I think about the things that grandma must have lived through, the death of a 10 year old son to leukemia, the end of segregation and the urban decay that followed, a son's and that son's son's battle with bipolar, the less I am inclined to cry. From the viewing platform of historical significance, it is hard to feel anything but awe, and admiration for my grandma and the wonderful life she led. But the less I think about that, and the more I think about what she meant to me. How she used to call me professor, long before anybody thought I was going to Harvard. How she used to crack a knowing smile when I wore my overalls down there, like an old friend had arrived, and then she would remind that Eeeverybody used to wear them down south and they were called "full bussoms." The lottery numbers, watching the price is right, eating her sweet potato pie every birthday except 25 this stuff is what makes my tear ducts swell up to the point where I feel like I'll get a cramp.
And I find my ticket, I'll be home on wednesday. I can go back to lesson planning, finish downloading that copy of The Departed, and, well, find something for my brain to do before I have to go to sleep. but first I'm going to call my other brother, half brother ray, who buried his grandmother a few years back. I'm going to chat with friend online about how I feel. I'm going to take a few moments and let myself grieve, since I won't really be able to for another three days.
4 comments:
Bear with me.
two summers ago a scene in an upper crust cincinnati restaurant: me: sitting in a leather bound booth adjacent to my new, blonde, bright-eyed, relieved girlfriend: watching as a waiter sets out trays of assorted vegetables, meats, desserts, bubbling pots of oil, chocolate, fondue sticks. draining the second of three bottles of wine. celebrating the end of the ohio bar exam. across the table: her friend and a faceless boyfriend du jour, and basically i'm feeling pretty haughty, pretty adult, very together.
as my phone vibrates i consider ignoring it but it's my littlest sister and i'm kind of drunk and in the mood for one of her drive-by phone calls. prepared to be peppered with happy twelve-year old wit and a tale or two of my dog, i answer, and am for a moment confused. lauren is crying and i can feel the blood drain from my face and i motion to my girlfriend, drunk on relief, to let me out of the booth. she thinks nothing of it and i step outside and i wait for it: grandpa's dead, robbie.
even now after i typed them i can't reread those words--i do it now with my eyes shut for the seconds it takes to commit them to print.
this man survived getting shot down over germany in a b17 in WW2--in fact he was the only survivor in his 11-man crew. he survived prison camp. he survived the aimless and primal russian liberation of his prison camp. he returned home. later, he survived two cardiac bypasses, an angioplasty or three or eight, then the removal of a quarter of a lung wracked with cancer.
on the phone, i say, to my mother, 'do you need me to come back?' in this scene, 'no' means 'yes.' but i choose cognitive dissonance, believe otherwise. i stay with my girlfriend. i go to a wedding, get drunk, occupy myself with other triviality while i attempt to discern what exactly to feel.
over the course of a couple of weeks, i cry a couple of times. never hard. in october, i fly to DC. my sister and i get drunk on the plane, maybe to cope, maybe to alleviate the boredom, maybe to make a silent statement to our parents when we arrive at dulles.
a day later, we meet the rest of the family at grandma's new 'apartment.' we board limousines. we ride, cramped and mostly quiet, for 90 minutes. 120. 150.
we pull into arlington national cemetery. the raw majesty of the place is intimidating, exclusive.
it's not until the army chaplain takes in his white gloved hands my grandmother's frail fingers and says "as i walk through the valley of the shadow of death" do i lose it. you know, faith, sanity, all the fluid my eyes can emit. as the riflemen conduct the solemn rites of full military honors, firing into the air on call, and the lone bugler standing amongst white gravestones a half mile in the distance sounds the final notes of Taps, i am two years old, and i've just fallen down the stairs.
hang in there man. it took 5 months to manifest my grief. only then did it make sense. clarity and order will not return until they are ready to. just know that no emotion is wrong, and know that we can only hope that upon our own departure, there will be those who will revere our memories and empty their souls in tears as we do at times like these.
know this, and you will know why.
wow, carl. I'm so sorry. what an amazing woman. I'll be thinking of you.
Thanks Christine. And Dewite that was beautiful, I'll bear with you any time. I also just bore the first set of tears that will probably get even worse after I board the plane to chicago tomorrow afternoon.
i am so sorry to hear about your grandmother
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