viragette

Now that I am freed upon the unsuspecting populace (ahem - unemployed), I’ve been visiting (mooching off) my family. Last October, I went to Utah to spend some time with my husband’s family in Salt Lake, and my maternal grandparents in St. George. My grand-in-laws offered to drive me from SLC to St. George (they have a second home there), where I would meet my Mom at grandma’s house. I caught a ride to SLC and spent a few days attending major milestones in the lives of people shorter than me and succumbing to dog-and-house envy.

On my last evening with the in-laws, the HB called to relay a message from my uncle. My grandmother had been admitted to the hospital for what they thought was a problem with a nerve - her back hurt. I wanted to go and so we started out the next morning and arrived in the afternoon. By evening, it was clear that something was very wrong. My grand-in-laws took me in, and my mother began a week-long bedside vigil.

The week before, while my mother had been visiting her, my grandmother felt pretty good. She had been recovering from a broken hip, but was otherwise probably the healthiest 70-year old woman we knew. She’d played golf for decades and was tall, straight and strong. She kept active, loved to cook and had a wry sense of humor. Suddenly she was in a lot of pain. She was unable to recline comfortably, and she spent hours and hours talking with my mother. My mother learned more about her family, her parents, and her mother in those few days than she had learned in her entire life. I am still reeling from the truth I hadn’t known.

Before we understood what was wrong, they were sparing with the pain relief. She wasn’t eating, and the doctors wanted her to be more alert. She wasn’t awake often, but when she was, she was in agony. My uncle the physician arrived. In the moments she was conscious, he was terrific. He would try to get her to eat, or drink fluids. My mother and I would adjust pillows, run errands and hold her hands. Soon she was asking to be allowed to die. Sometimes she would look at us and say “Please help me”, or “Let me die”. She figured out soon enough that we weren’t doing her much good.

She woke up writhing in pain and begin to yell at us in desperation “Kill me! Let me die. Oh God.” My uncle was trying to get her to eat and my mother, who stood by at the head of her bed, had turned away to cry into her hand. I was across the bed from them, holding my grandmother’s hand and feeling useless. My uncle told her, “God is going to help you Mom.” “No he’s not!” She replied. Years of Catholic school talking, that. She craned her head up to my mother. “You don’t believe that crap do you?” My mom laughed. She took my grandmother’s hand, “No Mom, I don’t.” “Sorry” she added to my uncle. I felt grandma’s hand tighten over mine: another wave of pain was coming. I moved my other hand to her burning forehead - blessing my icicle fingers. She started to writhe again and again with the “Kill me!” “Just kill me!” “I want to die.” My uncle, as serene as the Buddha under pressure, waited for her to take a breath with the spoon poised. Then said loudly and clearly “Mom? Do you want some chocolate pudding, mom?” She stopped screaming “Kill me.” She looked at him and sort of shrugged. I saw the tiniest glimmer of her wry smile. “Eh. Yeah.” He fed her the pudding.

There was a miracle drenched pause and then we started cracking up. My uncle looked up and said “Death, or pudding.”

I can’t even begin to describe the next 3 days before my Grandmother’s death. It was cancer, caused by smoking in an otherwise healthy woman. I wish I had 20 more years with my grandmother, but at the same time her struggle was so insanely precipitous. She went from good health to gone in a week. After the diagnosis, the pain medication was more adequate and she slept almost all the time. She went peacefully in her sleep in the middle of the afternoon. It was the worst thing ever, and also the most profound. I don’t remember those days nearly so often as her life, but we each found a way of commemorating her passing. My uncle told me that he arrived back in Las Vegas for his flight home an hour early - he put the top down on his rented convertible and drove up and down the neon-drenched strip in the warm desert night thinking about his mom. He said it was incredibly beautiful.

Myself, I made a pact with her. She struggled against odds in her life that seem unreal to me, and I never even knew it. In retrospect, I understand there were times when she wanted to reach out to me, and protect me from facing those hardships myself. My deal with grandma is that I will shoulder that responsibility for myself from now on.