Chaya
I’ve been here since 4:30 or so, sitting with my family, lowercase and uppercase F families. I am so happy, so happy to be here. I regret that I never got to be with my grandmother in her last moments because I never got to tell her a bunch of things I wanted to.
My father and uncle went to the snack bar and my mom and I were sitting in the room with him here at the hospice and I was holding his hand as he struggled to breathe (he has pneumonia, he’s slowly going) and I was talking to him and he gave my hand a mighty squeeze. Not a “could be construed as a reaction to the interminable sound of your voice” squeeze but a mighty mmph! of a squeeze. I said hey! hey you! and cried, but then my mom went to the bathroom and I got all of it out, everything I needed to say, everything I needed to ask of him came out like a flood, before I wasn’t alone anymore, before I wasn’t sure I could anymore.
So now it’s just a matter of waiting, waiting for God, waiting for carbon dioxide to do its work, waiting for something, some shoe to drop. It’s just me and my dad now here and I’m talking to people online, I guess to remember the world’s still spinning.
It’s weird how life works. An old man dies, a young woman gets married, somewhere a child is born. A steady hum of milestones flying past me as I try to get it down, try to save it, the carpet under my feet, the ragged breath of my elder and the sighs of my father. Watching an oak bend like this is staggering.
It could be argued that I’m isolating myself from the experience by sitting here writing about it as it happens but I think anyone who knows me and what my work is for, what it helps me to do, would know that isn’t true. I wouldn’t be in the moment if I couldn’t record it, if I couldn’t get it all out of my head. Out of my head and into the world. I want you to know my father. I want you to know his father before him and how sitting in this room with the great men of my life feels, watching one of them fade away. There is so much power in this room right now. There are forces in this space and a whole world that we can’t see, it’s all in here surrounding us and it’s real and tangible. There are things in here that we can’t see! But they’re there and it’s a bit like hope. This feeling we can’t see. It’s almost crippling, but it only cripples the ideas of atheism, of our solitude in the world. There’s no way I can believe, staring into this man’s face as he is ready to die, ready to see my grandmother’s face again and have dinner at the table of our god, that he’s going off into a black nothing.
I got my brother to come see granddad, which my parents were shocked over. He had to leave though, because he was starting to crack and he wanted to be strong for my dad. I think it really meant something that he was there.
I’m gonna wrap this up now but I’ll update later. Pray for my family, if you would. Send us good thoughts.
June 29th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
A beautiful, poignant entry. I’ll be praying for you all.