FIN
9:30 AM, Last Tuesday. My cell rings. Mother.
“Hi, what are you doing?” she asks as always. Naturally I tell her I’m doing “things” because sitting here just petting Polly while smoking a fag sounds creepy.
“Your grandmother is dying” she quickly states. Uh, yeah, I kinda knew that. She delivers the information as if it were a sudden development or an accident. The house blew up. My grandmother is ninety years old and had cancer. Dying is not the shocker my mother seems to believe.
“Oh” I reply. Maybe there’s more, “Your grandmother is dying and I’m an alien...”
“She looks horrible. She looks like she came out of a concentration camp and all she does is lie in bed.” Yes that’s what people dying usually look like unfortunately. It seems to be part of the Package. I am the Death Expert in the conversation since all of the information so far is not very surprising to me. No more Death for me, thanks. I’m full! At seventy, my mother has not taken this path yet.
“All of your cousins were there.” Of course they live There so I wasn’t too impressed but the connotation was obvious. I haven’t spoken to my grandmother in years and frankly have not regretted doing so. You could say I loved her at some point but one of the things I’ve learned, and not in a fuzzy Gilmore Girls kind of way, is just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
My mother continues,“She told me she thought I was always jealous of you and her.” Exactly. Even on her deathbed, unable to move, my grandmother managed to blowdart a personal zinger. “She’s fucked up on morphine” I tell my mother. “How could you possibly believe anything she says?”
“Maybe you could send her a card.” Get Well Soon? “Just write something and say you’re sorry.”
I was hijacked into my mother’s agenda with death, the incompletion, missed communication, her inability to fathom the natural inevitability of our body’s function. She doesn’t want me to write a note, she wants me to write a note for her saying what she feels unable to put into words. I won’t. I refuse to dilute her process, abet any scheme to camouflage her true feelings. It’s a tough lesson but one we all must face.
“Why are you back home and not with her?” I ask my mother to change the subject. “Oh, I had to come back to pay the bills.” Of course. Otherwise you might be one month late on the cable. “I told her to hold on until I got back.” Hold on tight. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy flight.
Dear Grandma,
Enjoy your trip into the next phase. If they ask you to walk into the White Light, go for it. Save us all a seat, we’ll see you soon enough. The pain will soon be gone.
xx Hugh
Of course I can’t. The Family around her would probably freak, read my words as a invitation to die, as if I’d gone there and taken a large downy pillow to soothe her . Anything other than Denial over the end of her body, this ride, these specific molecules is rejected.
What do I know? I’m just the Expert.
8:28:27 PM  sro home /
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Monday, February 16, 2004
