Notes In the Moments Upon My Grandfather’s Death

September 3rd, 2013

It is a perfect morning. They must not have heard the toilet flush because I’d gotten up and then climbed back into the warmth of bed. It was 6:57am. And I’d just left a dream, of skiing down a mountain. My sister was there, and she’d actually gone first, though we didn’t have skis. There was a young man at the top of where we’d climbed to, and there was some odd overlap of being from the same place. My sister flew down the mountain without skis, but was fearless, tumbling almost. I think our other sister was there too. We’d gone up together, on a trek, maybe even in a sort of gondola. It’s a bit blurry. But it was in celebration of my birthday. Two things are for sure: we were on a mountain in the snow, and skied somehow — or flew — down that mountain without skis. And there was a young man atop. I woke and minutes later, the greatest skier of all, the man who taught me, was dead.

Before I knew this I felt my tender bones, a subtle ache in my legs, and wondered if I should run today. Now I know the answer.

To me, it is a day of celebration. Celebration of a life, of a man who has finally found his peace. My grandfather.

“You have to live with all that he taught you,” his caretaker spoke as we sat looking at the body, the soul escaped free at the last, all within the blue dawn of the dining room. His body on a hospital bed there. Whether I like it or not, I feel some strange responsibility. Whether I like it or not, these are my roots. This house, this man laying dead now before me.

“You might offend some people by saying that,” he had said in response to my statement that I believe there are more things to be learned, more things to be discovered than Cal football. But I suppose Cal football can teach you a few things too.

I will call my father, and tell him.

“Let’s just take him out the front,” says an undertaker.

Life goes on as it does. We must drink our coffee and our orange juice, laugh and cry. “No one saw beauty the way he did. He saw beauty in everything. Never complained,” an aunt says.

When a person dies, what dies with them?

Why does my family believe it a virtue to never complain?

Aren’t there things, plenty of things, worthy of complaint? “To whom should I complain?” cries Isabella…

The evening was made of gold. Painted by the rain and thunder and even a calm flash of lightening. It was moist and new, paving the way for tomorrow, today. I could fall back into the air; the light would hold me.

“It hurts her more than it hurts me. She’s hurting herself more than she’s hurting me.” I said this to my mother, who at first did not understand. I did not want to bother that one, my sister, by asking her to pick me up at the airport tomorrow night. I knew what her answer would be. She is not one for acts of selflessness, nor is she considerate. I refused to text her, so my mother did, she insisted, and of course the sister’s response was, “Can’t she take a taxi? Mom, really it’s not ideal. I have a lot going on right now.” Perhaps the order in which she strung her words was different, but one gets the idea.

My mother urges us to reconcile our differences. I have come to believe that I have, and it is thus not my place to beg, plead, or forcefully urge the sister to understand, aid, or even listen to me. I am, however, here should she ever need me. But since she has money, since her studio is decorated to perfection, and since she has a boyfriend and she has his friends and she has his dog, it is unlikely that she will much need me.

Last night I learned of mother’s dream when pregnant with Sarah. She sleeps as she always has in a small white casket in the earth alongside Martha and Henry Jocelyn. Mother dreamed she birthed her between bouts of squatting and walking and caught her in her hands. She was very tiny, but then grew big. Like Alice. That was the dream.

The doctor gave mother two choices. For without a spleen she would not live. It’s called Potter’s syndrome. One in ten thousand babies. I can’t write it now. I am hungry, which is pathetic, but also, I just can’t write it now.