Unveiling

Thanks to everyone to read my last post sympathetically.  I needed to get all that irritation at my mom out of my system, and I did.  I now have a clear heart for her.  I feel ready to stand by her on Sunday at her father's unveiling.

This will be my first visit to my zaidy's grave.  You'll recall that I wasn't well enough to attend his funeral in September.  I'm not sure how it will strike me, the impact of seeing his headstone.  I feel that I can picture the scene without undue distress.  I'm pretty sure that I've accepted his death.  But you never know.  At least, I never know.  These days I'm prone to being blindsided by onslaughts of emotion that appear to come out of nowhere.  I am praying for strength and resilience.

This morning I lay in bed, trying to picture what it was like for my buby, the night that he died.  There is a story she tells over and over again about the events surrounding his death.  But she leaves so much out.

She says "The paramedics were so quick!  They were there in four minutes."  But she doesn't say what she did during those four minutes, which must have felt like four years.  Did she remember to unlock the front door, and then go sit with my zaidy and hold his hand?  Did she hover by the front window?  Did she talk to my zaidy's slumped, unbreathing body, telling him help was on the way?  Or did she pray silently, single words in a mental whisper or shout:  Help!  Hurry!  No!  Please!

Did she cry, or did she detach and stay unnaturally calm?  (Knowing her, probably the latter.)

Who did she call first?

Did my mother hear the news from my buby directly, or did one of her younger sisters call her?  What was she doing when the phone rang?  Did she feel faint when she heard what was happening?  What thoughts ran through her head as she dropped everything and drove to the hospital?

I know none of these things.

I try to picture my zaidy's lifeless body.  I'm glad that I had the chance to sit with my other zaidy's body after he died.  His was my first close-up-and-personal dead person.  I was privileged to witness the stillness, the absence of him.  His eyelids weren't completely closed.  Those turned-off eyes were the deadest part of him, by far.

I picture my mother's father's eyes, turned off like that.