08.01.04
Today, while I was working, my Grandma died.
It isn't like it was a surprise -- she was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, and has been slowly dying from systemic cancer every since.
And in a way, it comes as a blessing, as a peaceful end to the suffering.
My family got out there a few days ago, and mom said that Grandma was nearly comatose, incapable of speech and movement, a rheumy-eyed wraith waiting for the suffering to end.
My uncle had been keeping me up to date on her condition, detailing her physical and mental deterioration.
She was hallucinating and beginning to relapse into memory, thinking that events from her past were current happenings. She didn't remember or recognize her own family members. But, as I learned in a phone call a couple of weeks ago, still patently aware that I hadn't been out to see her in a while.
To me, Grandma was this cool lady that I hung out with during the summer, when all the crazy people in my family went hiking and camping. We'd talk, shop, go out for Chinese, and just spend time together. There's something terribly comforting in sitting in Grandpa's recliner, doing a crossword, and having your grandmother come in and ask if you want more iced tea, dear.
So, when I saw her a couple of years ago, I barely recognized her. Gone was the spunky, salt and pepper-haired companion of my childhood. Someone stole her and left me a frail, white-haired old lady that used a walker, hated most everyone in her retirement center, and wanted to die because she'd outlived her usefulness.
In my mind's eye, I see her slowly climbing over rocks and setting up lunch when we all went fishing up in the mountains at Mack Lake, a vibrant woman in pull-on polyester pants and a windbreaker, her back beginning to hunch slightly as she slowly progressed into old age. Solid and strong amid the jutting boulders and Indian paintbrush, her blue jacket glowing in the dimming sun, before the inevitable midafternoon rain shower chased us all into shelter. That is how I choose to remember her.
The last time I was out in Colorado, she got altitude sickness at my cousin's wedding, an elevation considerably lower than any of the home where she grew up, and the alpine ridges we'd explored in my youth, and had to be driven back to the retirement center during the reception.
When I found out about her illness in February, I thought a lot about going to visit her, but I couldn't. I knew that she'd moved into a nursing home because of her failing health, and I knew that she was close to blind and mostly deaf, her hair thin and her skin nearly translucent. I had a hard enough time reconciling the Grandma at Amy's wedding with the Grandma in my memories.
And I know it is selfish, but it is easier for me to deal with things I can't see sometimes, than to have them sharply brought into focus. Being face-to-face with that would have been harder for me than you can imagine.
It was painful enough reading the "Mom Report" my uncle sent out. When he included a picture of Grandma a few days before she died, I couldn't stop crying at what I saw. I don't think I'll ever look at the picture again.
And I've thought about going out for her remembrance gathering next week, but I can hear Grandma in the back of my head admonishing me for wasting that kind of money on a last-minute ticket to go make everyone see in person that I do care.
What's in your head?