Another passing
I got a phone call yesterday afternoon from my landlady’s daughter, N., telling me that her mother was in the hospital, dying. The call reminded me of my grandma’s death last year, for a number of reasons. Of course there was age, though my grandma was about twenty years younger than A. who was 95.
But then there is also the fact that when N. called, A. wasn’t dead yet (she died later in the day), just dying, and that was my grandma’s condition when I got the phone call about her last Fall. My grandmother actually died while I was on the phone with my stepmother; my stepmother was going back to the hospital room to put the cellphone to grandma’s ear so I could say goodbye to her, but she died before that could happen.
In A.’s case, like my grandma, she was in an induced coma as well. I didn’t ask to say goodbye; it seemed inappropriate.
N. said she had a bad fall early Friday morning as the result of what the doctor called a “catastrophic event,” but she’d managed to drag herself into the bathroom where she pressed her med-alert button and called the ambulance. The first N. knew anything had happened was when the paramedics pounded on the door.
A “catastrophic event” just about describes death perfectly, doesn’t it? Whether we die slowly of cancer, or suddenly of a heart attack, it is catastrophic. The body just suddenly fails.
It seems like these deaths are happening so frequently now, I hardly know what to say anymore. This morning, lying in bed in the gray morning light, I found myself thinking about who might be next. It seems like my grandpa will be around for awhile yet–he’s only 77–but his older brother Jim seems more elderly every time I see him. My Dad’s a smoker, and middle-aged, so he’s racing down heart attack alley without a seatbelt.
Depressing stuff. We should be able to stop time at about age 30, when our parents and grandparents are still reasonably healthy, our children small and lovable, our own lives full and rich.
To live to be 95 seems almost a cruel joke, when you consider what life is like at 95. A. was so frail she often felt like a skeleton with skin stretched over it, when I’d hug her goodbye on Wednesday nights, prior to going up to bed. Her teeth were bad and she could never get false teeth that fit properly. She was vain about her looks, having been quite beautiful in youth, and would never let her picture be taken in old age. There was an oil painting of her in her twenties in the nineteen thirties that hung in an upstairs hall, and indeed she was a blond beauty at one time. The painting did not exaggerate either; her wedding photo that sat on the mantle confirmed the artist’s impression.
She took a battery of pills every day that sometimes seemed to sap her energy and upset her stomach. Her husband, all her friends, and most of her family were dead. She came from a large family of brothers and sisters, and though they all lived to be very old, she outlived every one of them. In the end, she had her three children, one grandchild, three great-grandchildren, and a niece with whom she remained close.
She had me, I guess, too. Although she never let me off the hook for rent (it was a pittance really), she always said she thought of me as family. I lived in her home for over six years, from January 2003 to the present.
When I first moved in, she was 89 and could still go up and down the stairs with some care, so she slept upstairs in her old bedroom. I’d eat dinner with her in what she called “the stone den” because the walls were made of the same stone as the outside of the house; it was like a small sunroom with windows all around. We’d eat dinner, talk, and watch the evening news, and these became our habits throughout the years I lived there.
In a short time, her kids started to worry about her going up and down the stairs, so they moved a small bed into the stone den, and that was where she spent the last years of her life. However, I am pretty sure she defied her kids and went upstairs during the day, because I’d find subtle little things different about my room when I’d come home in the evenings.
N. once told me that when she was a girl, her mother gave her no privacy whatsoever, snooping in her room, her purse, etc. I suspect A.’s visits to my room were to rifle my things for contraband, or perhaps just to snoop, as well; but I never particularly cared. Aside from my clothes and toiletries, laptop and books, there wasn’t much else to find amongst my things.
After she moved into the stone den, I continued to sit with her in the evenings, and we watched the news and talked. Because I once told her that I went to school in Morgantown, West Virginia, she told me at least a dozen times a year the story of Max Morgan, a 2nd lieutenant in the Navy who had boarded with her and her husband during World War II. Max was from Morgantown, and A.’s story always ended with the same question, “Do you think his family founded Morgantown?” To which I’d have to say, “I don’t know.”
Just to keep a record of it, the story went that Max liked to play Pinochle with A. and her husband, and after the war he went into the oil business in Oklahoma and became a millionaire. Apparently Max was also an alcoholic because one time, A. added a detail to the story suggesting he had to be taken out of the home by ambulance for detox.
She loved the Civil War and would read book after book on the subject. Later she became fascinated with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and we’d talk about that for hours. I read some books on the assassination as well, so I’d know where she was coming from. She was convinced Mary Surratt was innocent. I have my doubts about that.
When she was healthy, she had her daughter take her for a drive along Booth’s escape route into Northern Virginia, ending at the spot of the former Garrett farm where he was shot. It’s just an empty field down a dirt road now, with a plaque along the highway marking the spot. But she made the trip and often talked about it. She also made frequent trips to Surratt’s tavern where the assassination was planned; it remains a tourist site and museum.
Gettysburg was another trip she made with her daughter once or twice a year. In fact last week, N. tried to keep A.’s spirits up by promising her a trip to Gettysburg this weekend, if she’d eat a little something and get her strength back.
When I saw her last, on Wednesday night, she seemed almost like her old self. She was sitting up in bed, talking and watching the news, complaining about “that Obama” and looking forward to the visit of her youngest son, who was coming up from Florida. She did get to see him a little, since he arrived late Wednesday night. I don’t know how he felt, since she died so soon after his arrival, but he was likely relieved that at least he got to see her.
I’m glad my last memory of her is a good one, as well. I hugged her goodnight and told her I’d see her next week. She seemed cheerful, and she said “I’ll see you next week” without hesitation. I went upstairs thinking to myself, “Well, she’s pulled through again.”
She always surprised me with her resilience, but I guess this time there was no springing back. The fight was over. Now she’s amongst so many loved ones who went before her, and probably feeling better than she ever did in life.