Dear Watching Someone Die Part 2

"He's fading pretty fast," My mother says on the other end of the line. This feels very practical. We are having a practical conversation about the end of my grandfather's life.

"I think you need to come down and see him. And you can stay with him while I take Nanny to buy some new shoes." Yep. Yep, ok. Practical. My grandmother really needs new shoes. This will be a nice thing for her. And I can sit and talk with him or watch him sleep or listen to the television. In my brain I think "Yes, ok, I'll go say my goodbyes. On the only free afternoon I have. This will work out nicely." But what my body does is fall down onto my bed, what my face does is deform itself into the world famous ugly-crying-position, and what my voice does is whimper out "What if he dies while I'm alone with him?"

This, all of a sudden, is the worst thing I can think of. We know he's dying, and now he's dying at an acellerated rate. It could happen any day, any minute. What if it happens while my mother and my grandmother are out at the shopping mall buying sneakers and I'm all alone with him? Am I in charge of trying to save him? What if he falls over? What if I have to pick him up and I break him? What if he's choking? Do I let him choke? I am terrible at CPR.

This man who has helped raise me and care for me my entire life is fading fast. A euphamism I roll my eyes at though is still one of the only accurate ways to describe what is happening. He has been a strong and handsome tree trunk, with a full cinematically sculpted head of silver hair. Now he is collapsing in on himself. He weighs less than I do, and his hair is wild and crazy. He looks like a holocaust victim trying to be a Gene Wilder impersonator. This is my grandfather. This is not my grandfather.

I cannot come to terms with this paradigm.

I cannot be the one in charge of him in what could be the last moments of his strong handsome tree trunk life.

I have had a lifetime of sudden deaths and painful blinsiding necessitations of saying goodbye. My relationship with grief has been built on the foundation that you say goodbye and then spend years coming to terms with the tragedy and dealing with the grief. Putting the pieces back together, painstakingly, over reflection and memory. I have never been given the morbid experience of knowing. I do not know how to deal with this kind of death. If he got hit by a bus? I am all over that. I have training for how to be sad and carry that with me. But he's just sort of slowly (or, more rapidly now) losing his life? No tools. I am not equipped to process this. I'm feeling it and I don't even know what it feels like. I don't even know how to label these feelings.

An old man comes into work. He orders a muffin and a cup of coffee. He wants a large paper cup but he only wants to fill it half way. "I couldn't possibly drink all that!" This man and I talk sometimes. He has a full head of cinematically sculpted hair which looks like he dies it brown. He has wrinkles and smiles. On this day, he orders his half full cup of coffee and his muffin ("that looks like the best one in the case!") and he shuffles over to his seat, and I am slapped in the face. By something. I don't know what it is. I turn my back to the room and pretend I am making coffee and I begin to weep. Just uncontrollably weep. "Get it together," I say. "I can't," I say. Truly, I can't. I just have to hide my face and weep. Eventually I stumble upon the grand discovery that this man makes me think of my grandfather. And I am crying because my grandfather is dying.

I am crying because my grandfather walked me to school in the morning when I was in 7th grade. I am crying because as a child I loved to be naked, and would run around his house parading my nudity, and he would throw his arms up exclaiming to my grandmother "Jeeesus Christ, Vianna! Get some clothes on that girl!". I am crying because that was his way of delighting in my freedom. I am crying because he never disapproved of anything I have done. I am crying because after my cousin died he told me privately the one thing he wanted before he died was to watch me get married. I am crying because I am not married, and I am crying because he probably doesn't even remember he said that. I am crying because on father's day after I had gotten my first tattoo, which was his tattoo, my mother made me show it to the family and amidst the squaks of disapproval and my grandmother scolding me, he smiled and slapped me on the back, right on the fresh tattoo, because that was the only way he could express how proud and honored he was. I am crying because in all the years I lived with him and close to him we spent a lot of time not talking. Because our relationship didn't necessitate words. I am crying because growing up with a revolving door of male figures to look up to he was the one constant. I am crying because when my father needed a stiff shake back into responsible parenting my grandfather gave it to him. I am crying because there have been nearly 20 times that doctors have told us he would die, and they've always been wrong. Except for now. I am crying because I've been breaking out in hives and I'm pretty sure this is why. I am crying because nothing in this world can replace who he is or what he has been to me. And nothing should. And I am crying because the weight of that absence is being felt while he is simultaneously still on the planet and that makes me feel sad confused and guilty. I am crying because I cannot stop my life to be with him. I cannot ask for free time or not go to work or tell all the obligations that have me way too busy "Sorry. I can't right now". I am crying because it's happening no matter what. It's happening. He is dying.

Today I go to say goodbye. Maybe I'll get another chance. I am not sure though how many times I can handle believing I have seen him for the last time. Today I am saying goodbye. With hives and body odor and malnutrition I am going to sit with him and his crumpled little body and Gene Wilder hair. And I probably won't even find it in me to tell him how much I care. We will probably just sit. Because this is the way this happens. The anti-climactic, burdensome, sorrowful, regret-filled, totally uneventful act of watching someone die.