Death Chic

My grandmother died late this morning. I say “died” because that’s what she did. She didn’t “pass away” or “move on”. Her body shut down, gave out, and ceased to operate as bodies are wont to do when they are malnourished and eaten away by disease.

Last night my grandfather, one of my aunts and I sat with her until way too late in the evening. Someone, a member of the hospice staff I imagine, had dimmed the lights so the room had taken on a warmish glow that for some strange reason reminded me of a lit-up Christmas tree. Another someone, my aunt I think, had suggested opening the french doors next to my grandmother’s bed. It had been a wonderful idea; yesterday there had been a break in the heat and the overcast skies blew over us in dramatic shades of grey, blue, and black as mild breezes wafted in with a light rain.

The three of us sat with my grandmother and talked for several hours. There is no way I can convey how incredible this was. For the sake of not kicking a man when he’s down I will simply posit here that over the years my grandfather has become rather, uh, pointed in his criticism of his children, grandchildren, neighbors, fellow Californians, the Modesto city council, NASA, Democrats, Muslims, Sikhs, Mexicans, and just about anybody who is not a registered Republican over the age of sixty. So being able to sit with him last night and simply enjoy his company was somewhat of a new experience and one that both my aunt and I took great pleasure in.

…but yeah, I will concede here that the Fox news channel was on throughout the evening and I was forced to sit through an episode of The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes before my aunt and I succeeded in permanently muting the television when my grandfather turned his back.

For her part my grandmother lay hammocked between my aunt and my grandfather, who each held one of her hands under a light sheet. I sat on a roll away bed provided by the hospice in case someone needed a little shut eye during the vigil. My grandmother’s breathing had become quick, shallow, and labored. She was working far too hard to get air. She was changing colors. Her eyes had literally fogged over. It had been days since she had responded to anything in a meaningful way.

The slack-jawed struggle for breath and deadened eyes were reminiscent of the death of my other maternal grandmother, the biological one who had been divorced from my grandfather for over forty years at the time of her death in 1995. I had been with her too when she died and the commonality caused me to revisit a question I’d had then: When someone has reached a point at which their entire body has abandoned the extremities and most major organs in favor of simply keeping the lungs inflated, what happens to their ability to perceive their current situation? Are they aware of what is going on? Can they hear us? Is our presence a comfort to them? Can they feel pain? Are the scared? If so, how can we ease their pain and reassure them?
I’m embarrassed to admit now that curiosity got a good finger-hold in me throughout the night and that I ended up seizing every opportunity I could to ask the doctor about the physical changes my grandmother was enduring. At one point I think he sensed that I don’t freak easily and he became more candid. He lifted the sheet at the end of the bed to reveal her legs and feet.
“See that discoloration? Circulation has nearly ceased. That will get worse as her body continues to shut down.” He lifted a foot gently and pointed to blotches of brown under the legs. “Blood is pooling there right now. That will get worse after she expires.” The doctor then put her foot back onto the bed and tucked it gently into the sheets. I continued to ask questions; was she oxygen starved and is it possible she could be panicking? Her eyes stopped blinking hours prior and were drying rapidly, should we do something about that? She was sweating profusely but her temperature is plummeting, was this normal? Why did it happen? She had Alzheimer’s, did he think she was capable of comprehending anything we had been talking to her about? Was she cognizant of anything at all?

To his credit, the doctor answered each question patiently and with sensitivity to the fact that I didn’t want my aunt or grandfather to hear. Whenever my aunt or grandfather returned to the room during my ghastly interrogations, the doctor would simply switch the subject, give my grandmother a pat on the legs, and focus on my grandfather. He was intuitive to a fault.

Still, he couldn’t answer the most pressing questions I had because nobody can. Like, when a person reaches this point are they still alive in the spiritual sense of the word? What happens to their essence, the spark that individuates each of us from one another? Is it still there or has it fled? Is their soul trapped within their body? Has it been released? Does the soul really exist? Is the glint that animates each of us a simple cosmic mishap or part of a divine plan? Where is the thing that made her, her? Has she been reunited with God?

Why am I in a state of perpetual spiritual crisis and why do I project that onto others? Somebody please shut me up. I’m so sick of my own crap.

“I think we’ve gone too far.”

“I dunno. The map says something like five miles out or blah, blah, blah.”

“Five miles or blah, blah, blah? I’ve been driving forever. Where is this place, Death Valley?”

“Lemme check.”

“Yeah, check to see if it’s in Death Valley because that’s where we’re headed.”

“Just keep driving and let me check the map.”

My brother, one of my sisters and I were all headed due east and had been for quite some time. One of my other sisters and her husband were following behind in their car and I could see twin expressions of consternation in my rearview mirror as they contemplated the same question I was at that moment; Where the hell are we going?

We were looking for Euclid Avenue and driving through some of the worst shit holes in the Central Valley to find it. Not that “shit hole” really differentiates between where we were and a good chunk of the rest of the Central Valley, but trust me… these neighborhoods were especially nasty. I never thought I would see strip malls that a check cashing place would have been too good for.

Anyway.

We were looking for the turn off to the hospice my grandmother was dying in (still is in fact. No, she’s not gone yet. Did you know that once an Alzheimer’s patient starts refusing to eat or drink any more it can take them up to two weeks to starve to death? I didn’t. I figured once she started refusing water she would pass within days if not hours and that, would mercifully be that. No dice. On top of the minor indignities of chronic confusion, getting lost in her own home and forgetting how to operate a light switch my grandmother gets to experience gut-wrenching hunger pangs and severe dehydration as her organs fail one by one in a total system shut down that is undoubtedly agonizing to experience and can take up to ten to fourteen days. That’s what is happening right now. My grandmother is still alive, but barely, and suffering and just thinking about it makes me wonder why chimps and gorillas are considered “lesser” primates. I mean hell people, even Koko would have had the good sense to give doctors the finger and pull the plug by now. Us? The ones who have mastered verbal communication and can drive a car? We let our loved ones suffer horribly until the end and then pat ourselves on the back for picking out an urn in their favorite color.)

“There it is!” My brother threw his arm across me and pointed to a crumbling side road as we flew past doing about seventy-five.

Shit. I pulled my truck around. My sister and brother-in-law were still behind me wondering why they had given me the map in the first place. We had not spent five seconds on Euclid before the conversation in our vehicle went to hell in the proverbial hand basket.

“What’s this place called?” My sister asked from the back. “Alexander Cohen? Co-HEN? Co-HUN? What kind of name is that?”

“Cohen, like the ‘h’ is a ‘w’. It’s Jewish I believe.”

“There are Jews in Modesto?”

“No Annie, Modesto has no Jews because they’re all in the government and Hollywood. They just built synagogues to give the rednecks a place to spraypaint swastikas.”

“Whatever Steph.” My sister said. Supposedly she loves me but it wouldn’t be a horribly big surprise if she were secretly plotting to kill me for being such a sarcastic bitch to her. Like now. “Whatever Mr. Co-WEN was, his hospice house was on the left back there.”

Shit. Pull the truck around again. That’s when we came face to face with the single largest senior complex I ever hope to see in this lifetime. Several buildings. Walkways. Pools. Apartments. A shuttle was picking a bunch of people up for a trip to a local Indian casino. It was like a geriatric Mecca.

“Ok…” My brother said and started riffing through a mess of papers. “We’re supposed to go to the Alexander Cohen House. Not Samaritan Village.”

“Alright. So Alexander Cohen House is the hospice building?” I pulled through the gate and futilely started looking for signs pointing the way. It had occurred to me that putting up an arrow pointing to the hospice would be like building a glue factory next to Churchill Downs. “I have no idea where we’re going.”

“Yeah, let’s ask for directions.” My sister piped up helpfully from the back. “There’s someone. Right there. Stop.”

“Him?” I looked at a guy that my sister was pointing at. He was barely upright and was badly contorted. “Holy crap he’s convulsing. Quick. Matt. Get out and help him.”

“He’s just practicing his golf swing. See? He’s holding a club.”

“Are you sure? It looks like he’s trying to commit suicide with it. Maybe we should ask him if he wants a ride to the Alexander Cohen House.” I said, but my brother had already jumped out of the vehicle and was talking to the man in question. This guy seriously looked like he could have voted for Abraham Lincoln. After a short conversation my brother came bounding back and leapt into the truck.

“He says it’s just over there.” He pointed and I drove ‘over there’ where we found the place within fifteen seconds. “Check it out, employee of the month gets their own parking space.”

“Huh. Yeah. I wonder what you have to do to become employee of the month at a hospice.”

“You know what Employee of the Month’s car needs?”

“What?”

“An ‘I heart Kevorkian’ sticker.”

“Very nice. Oh hey! There’s the parking spot for ‘Patient of the Month’”

“Really? Where?”

“Right there.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s a hearse. Duh.”

“You’re an asshole.”

I wish I could say that my brother and I make these jokes because we’re nervous and uncomfortable and that we really don’t find anything funny about death at all but that would be a lie. When this type of shit happens my brother and I crack each other up like a couple of stoners watching the carpet grow. We exhaust ourselves laughing because we’re insensitive, callous, and probably a lot of other adjectives that have previously only been applied to people like Stalin and Idi Amin.

I have no idea why. I mean, I really do love my grandmother. I hate seeing her in pain. I don’t find dying funny at all. I don’t like to see her or anybody suffer. I especially don’t like seeing my grandfather’s heart is broken into a million pieces several times a day when my grandmother wakes up just long enough to fix him with a blank expression that betrays not a hint of recognition. I don’t think it’s funny at all to watch my grandfather cry and cry because his heart is weighted with regret about his chronic infidelity or the fact that the only opportunity he has now to make it up to my grandmother involves changing adult diapers and sponging her mouth while we all hold our breath and hope she passes peacefully. It’s not funny in the least. In fact, it’s really fucking horrible.

Yet for some reason my brother and I laughed like a couple of jackasses anyway. At least until we got inside. That’s when we shut up because even though we are a couple of sick idiots who haven’t mastered the art of “grieving appropriately” we aren’t completely stupid.