Say Goodbye to Grandma
This is a story I tell often, and if you know me (and let's face it, if you don't, then you wouldn't be here) you've probably heard it all before. Nevertheless, I shall tell it again here. You've been warned.
It
seems to me it was a beautifully
sunny summer day that day, though I was about three years old, and I suppose
every day was either beautifully sunny, or (if it was winter) piled high
with snow. [Note: As it turns out, my dad's mom died in January, 1964] I remember it as my first real, complete memory (there are a
couple of incomplete sketches-more feelings or impressions than real memories-but
this day seems clearly etched into what passes for my brain). I was outside,
being attended to (or more likely being played with, since I was by far
the youngest of the four and still new enough to be a novelty, rather than
a pain in the ass) by my sister and brothers, when someone (my mother,
I think) asked if we wanted to go visit "Gramma Sauter." I don't
remember my father's mother, but I must've liked her very much, because
I remember being quite excited at the thought (I'm told she was a marvelous
baker which, no doubt, had something to do with it). At any rate, it wasn't
long before we were off.
The trip was nothing
special, apparently (Gramma lived on the other side of town, only a few
minutes drive away), for I don't remember it. What I do remember is the
oppressive heat and darkness inside her house. The heavy curtains were
drawn tight, and no air moved in that musty old room. One thin ray of sunlight
forced its way through a crack; I followed its progress across the hardwood
floor to the edge of the sofa. There lay Gramma, with eyes closed and mouth
stretched into a cartoonish gape, gasping long, slow, painful breaths.
I can see my mother and sister kneeling beside her, crying quietly. I clearly
remember my sister's red, devastated, wet eyes, and her sniffling (for
once not attributable to the allergies she would later outgrow,
and I would come to inherit). The whole room, in fact, seemed
to be weeping. Except for my father.
I sat on his lap,
underneath a big old clock which tick, tick, ticked away. That same clock
would later take its place on the wall in my parent's living room, though
incessant overwinding (it was rather fun to take out the big brass key
and play with it) would soon render it silent. My Dad's face was stony,
emotionless as he sat listening; listening to his family cry, listening
to his mother breathe, listening to the old clock tick. A long grating
breath. A cry, a sob or two. And a few more ticks of the clock in that
hot, still room.
I had no idea
what was goin on here. People were crying, all we were doing was sitting
around watching Gramma sleep. Whatever this was, it was boring, and it
certainly was not the fun-filled afternoon at Gramma's house
I'd envisioned.
"I'm sorry,
I'm sorry," I remember saying(for truly I was, though I wasn't quite
sure why). "But can we go home now?"
The room briefly
erupted with strained but honest laughter; tension shattered and air, for
a while, seemed to circulate once again. Years later, relatives I don't
remember remind me of this moment (usually at that great American social
event, the wake). Unfortunately we didn't leave, and the room gradually
(reluctantly) settled down to the quiet rythym of that ticking clock, and
my grandmother's terrible gasps for breath.
They came farther
and farther apart (the breaths, that is). It became a game for me, to count
how many ticks there would be before the next breath. Young as I was, I
could feel the air in the room thicken as the clock ticked away, until
finally the old woman drew yet another gravelly breath into her tiny unmoving
body. God, how anyone could make such a noise, yet be so still, I am to
this day unable to comprehend. There seemed to be no exhale; it was as
if, after expending all that precious energy to drag air into her body,
she was determined to keep every ounce of it. Her skin (I can see it clearly)
reminds me of the fat around a cheap cut of beef; white, with deep veins
of dark blue running through it. And still the clock ticked until, finally,
there came a breath much like the others, yet somehow...different. I'm
not sure I can explain it; more of a feeling, than an auditory phenomenon.
If you've ever heard a church tower tolling out the hour and,without counting,
you somehow could distinguish that final toll, even as it still echoed
(somewhat more hollow, more lonely than the rest), then you know how that
breath felt to those of us in the room. It was a lengthy, shallow, gasp
which rattled deep within her. The ticking of the clock was the only sound
in that room for what seemed like hours as nobody cried, nobody spoke,
no one moved. My grandmother would breathe no more.
There was a knock
at the door, and as two men in suits magically appeared, we were herded
into the kitchen. When we were allowed back out, my grandmother was gone,
and though I asked, no one would tell me where she was. And although a
sob or two still escaped the former spectators, the air had lightened,
and light flooded our eyes as my aunt snapped back the curtains, and life
filled the room once more.
It was many years
later that it dawned on me (entirely by accident, as I was thinking of
something quite different) what had happened that day, and that I'd been
present at my grandmother's death. It astonishes me, really, that my Dad
was able to sit through such a thing, watching his mother die like that.
I don't know if I could've managed it, but I wish I had been there for
him, when he died. Instead of dying in the home he loved, surrounded by
his family, he died alone in the dark in a hospital in the middle of the
night. That may have been easier, but I don't think it was right.