On the Day I Needed a Little Serendipity, There It Was

Two years ago this week, my grandmother died.  I think I've written this line to start blog posts over and over again all week, only to erase them and write about something else.  I couldn't do it. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I just didn't know how to write about it.

Losing my grandmother was hard.  She was more like a mother to me than a grandmother and we had all the complexities of a mother/daughter relationship.  The love, the fury, the frustration, the complete and total comfort.  My grandmother and I had a total understanding of each other and a complete misunderstanding of each other. I respected her and she drove me crazy.  She respected me and I drove her crazy.  In this way, our relationship was very special and also comfortingly typical.

As I've mentioned in the blog before, my grandmother had breast cancer when she was 42.  She survived this and lived for many, many years with only scars and memories of it.  When she was in her 80s it returned and wasn't caught until it was in the later stages.  She was given the option of chemo, but chose not to take it. From that point on, we knew the clock was ticking. Her death would come within six to nine months later.

When you're young and death seems so far from you, in the attempt to be deep and insightful, you'll often ask each other, "If you had a limited amount of time to live, what would you do?" The answers are always things like "travel the world" and "sky dive." Stuff like that.

The truth is, when you know your death date is near, you're usually too sick to do all of that stuff. You're tired, you ache.  Often your mind is muddled and confused. Most of all, you're frightened at the unreality of this very real and horrible thing.  You are going to die. What does that even mean? And what did life mean? What just happened here?

My grandmother struggled with this questions a lot during the first few months after her diagnosis. She would ask me what she had accomplished. She would ask me why we couldn't just pray the cancer away.  She would ask me what it all means.  I didn't have answers, but the questions stayed with me.  As much as a moment from when my grandfather died has always haunted me.

I wasn't there when  this happened, but my grandmother told me that when my grandfather was dying in the hospital, she and their preacher were standing beside him. He was sleeping but woke up and looked at the preacher. "It's all a lie," he said to him. "Why didn't you tell me it was all a lie?"

I think this moment haunted my grandmother as well. I know she thought about it a lot during those months, the ambiguous but very provocative accusation to the preacher.   The preacher is one of the few rather honest people I know, so I'm rather curious about that statement myself.

Gramma also thought a lot about the deaths before her. Her parents, most of her brothers and sisters. She was one of eight children. During the last year of her life, four were still alive. By the time she died, only two remained and one of them died very soon after.  The last one passed away during December of this year.  That's one of the oddest facts about a long life. You begin it seeing "family" as one set of people and end it with "family" being an other group.

When Gramma died, the situation is what many people describe as ideal for dying. She was with people who loved her. She had music. She was in her own bed.  As she passed, we were telling her we loved her. I was holding her hand.

Since that moment, I've struggled with it.  Not just losing her. The grief isn't as raw as it used to be, but grief never leaves you completely.  No, it is the fact that I was there and I saw her die. I was touching her, grasping onto her, as she died. I felt her go cold.

For two years now, this has disturbed me. Intellectually, I knew it shouldn't have.  It was what she wanted. It was perfectly natural. I did nothing wrong.

I've felt wrong about it though. I'd never seen someone die before. I'd never felt that.  There is so much about our society that is clinical now. Death usually happens in a very sanitary and separated way from us.  For most of our existence as humans this wasn't the case, but it most often is now.

While the taboo part of it bothered me, there was more to it than that.  I didn't know how to explain it or even how to conceptualize it where I could make peace with it. I had done......something. But what? I was changed......but why?

Then today, by complete random chance, I saw this.

This wasn't a show I followed, so I'd never seen the ending.  Watching this though, I understood why I was so broken about holding Gramma's hand and watching her die.

Death is a holy thing.  It is one of the few moments in the life of any human when we witness a complete mystery.  I not only watched this happen, but I was touching the mystery. I was part of it, the last link between this space and what comes next.

I've finally accepted that it's okay to be disturbed by this.  Something this fundamental should alter who and what I am. Touching death changed me.  And as much as it might seem that it would make me fear my own death more, I actually accepted it.

I don't know what my grandfather meant about it all being a lie. I don't know what my grandmother was thinking as she grew cold against my hand.  I just know that the reality of death is now something I understand far more. I also know it's time to make peace with the events surrounding the deaths of these two people. 

I'll Take Your Hand While you Stumble if You'll Laugh with Me When I Fall

My roommate writes a blog about being HIV+.  He realized a couple of days ago that he got the date of his diagnosis wrong on his blog title.  He's been blogging since January.  He corrected the mistake and started things anew with the proper date.  Easily fixed, yes. But I could tell it was somewhat frustrating.

I didn't notice the mistake either. It's funny how two people with high educations and sharp minds can miss things like this.  It doesn't surprise me though.  That sort of thing happens as one ages, when one deals with illness and being draggy and tired.  The whole discussion, when we were younger, probably would have skyrocketed into embarrassment and deep, if good natured, mocking. Instead, it ended up with us chuckling a little and both somewhat in awe of the fact that we didn't catch the mistake.

One of the things I have come to appreciate about being human, and experiencing life with other humans, is accepting, with a kind of grace, the fragility of our existence.

We're not perfect.  It's clichéd to even say so. And all too often, when we do say this, there is behind it this implication that we should be perfect. That our imperfection as humans is an lousy excuse because we should be perfect.  The irony is, if we were perfect, imperfection wouldn't bother us so much. We would accept it as part of the grand design of things. As perfect beings, how could we not? Alas, as Joseph Addison said, "It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect."

Moreover, we seem to expect perfection in others. People make lists of all the qualities someone has to have before they will love them.  People wind themselves up into a state of constant misery because others aren't living up to their expectations.  Some people even put clauses in their marriage contracts that the other party can't fart around them. Or look old. Or gain weight. Or have bad breath.

Or really, be human.

I've known my roommate since I was 21.  We've lived together for almost ten years.  In this time, we've seen each other get degrees, find jobs, lose jobs, get ill, get better, lose family members, lose friends, find hobbies, win at life, fail hard at life, and make new discoveries about ourselves.  Through all of this, we have been there to help each other.  We've made a home.

And most importantly, we have learned to accept each other as humans.  We know that we can screw up and say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing. We know we both have personality flaws and idiosyncrasies  and moments of odd behavior.  Sometimes our bodies do grow things.  Sometimes our bodies cause us a lot of pain and we have to be in pain while someone else watches us.

But through all of this, we are human. We not only accept each other as humans, but value that humanity.  To me, to have someone who accepts me so much is a great gift.  More importantly, to have someone who I care so much about that I can move past my petty whims and accept and adore them for their human fragility is an even greater gift.

Joseph Addison went on, in his discussion of imperfection, to say that, "The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become of the defects of others." I believe this to be true. I also believe the reason for it has to do with how we become more perfect as we find that gentleness.  And we find that gentleness when we are accepted and loved, despite our own imperfections.