One Year Closer to the Grave

I called my best childhood friend a few weeks ago to wish her a happy birthday. She was turning 38. I'll be catching up to her next week.

*ring ring*

- Hello?

- Hey Laurster! Happy Birthday! How are you doing? Having a good day?

- Oh well [she laughs] you know. One year closer to the grave!

I scolded her for saying that, and she was kind of joking, but then again I guess it's true. And lately I seem to find reminders of human mortality everywhere. For example, on the radio I heard two morning show hosts have this conversation:

- When do you think middle age begins?

- I don't know. I guess that's open for debate.

- The most recent statistics show that the average North American lifespan is 76. So technically, when you're 38 you're in the middle.

- So you're saying your life is half over once you're 38?

- That's what I'm saying!

Way to hammer the point home, radio people! Aren't you supposed to be cheering people up in the mornings?

Then there have been actual deaths. The friendly, energetic handyman who took care of our premises at work, who couldn't have been more than 55, dropped dead of a sudden heart attack. Not right before my eyes, mind you, but it still came as a shock. One day he was up on a ladder, whistling a happy tune, changing lightbulbs, and the next, boom, he's gone forever.

A woman I work with, someone 2 years younger than me, lost her father very suddenly last week.

And my own step-dad could be doing better. He has high cholesterol but can't tolerate the medication that was prescribed to him. He also had a scan done on his heart, which shows that his heart muscle is enlarged. I know from watching Dr. G., Medical Examiner (a forensics show on the Discovery Health Channel) that this is a Bad Thing. The bigger the heart muscle, the more likely that person is to die of a sudden, massive heart attack. Now every time I see him I wonder if it will be the last. He's in his early 70's already. He seems lively and full of plans for the future, but you never know.

It's all adding up. I've been feeling kind of introspective lately. It's not all bad. I'm feeling very grateful for every day I have with my loved ones, as I hold that consciousness of life's fragility. I guess that's all I can do.

The Passing

When my father called to tell me of my Zaidy's passing, I was in the middle of scrubbing the toilet.

My Buby had fallen asleep by his bed, worn out from sleepless nights of worry. When she woke up, his chest wasn't moving anymore. She couldn't rouse him. A nurse confirmed it: Zaidy was gone.

Not five minutes later, my uncle and his wife arrived for a drop-in visit. I suppose they had one of the great shocks of their lives when they walked in and found my Buby, distraught, saying "He's gone! He's gone!"

My uncle called my father, who called me. "We're going to the hospital," he told me "to wait with Buby for the funeral director to come and pick up Zaidy's body. They're not sure how long it will take. Do you want to come?"

"I don't know," I said.

I sat on the couch with Ken and absorbed the news. And then, of course, I went. How could I not go?

I had never seen a dead body before. I was very nervous, going up to the room. And it was certainly a shock to see his body, unmistakably lifeless, for the first time. His eyes were open a little. Looking into eyes with no soul behind them, now that's a singular experience. Intense. It was all incredibly intense.

In all, seven living family members gathered around the bed. We put on pale yellow cotton surgical gowns and latex gloves because Zaidy had a C. Difficile infection when he passed away. In the dim room, with all of us looming against the walls in these shapeless gowns, we looked like a family of ghosts. The living haunting the dead.

It's a Jewish tradition not to leave the deceased alone until after the burial. There are men whose job it is to stay with the bodies in the funeral home and pray over them unceasingly until it's time for the interment. Until the professionals arrived to take over, it was up to us to sit watch over Zaidy's body.

For two hours we held the vigil together. At times the conversation veered to other topics, and at other times the room became silent and emotional. We stayed until the official men arrived with a gurney. Then we said our difficult, tearful last goodbyes, de-gowned, and walked out of Zaidy's hospital room for the last time.

We went for dinner together at a local restaurant called Steve's. Someone hadn't closed the top of an "a" on the daily specials board, so I ordered "Meat Louf". At one point as we were eating, I looked up through the plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant, and saw a beautiful rainbow stretched across the sky. It was truly a blessing.

I thought I would get up and go to work the next day, Monday. I wasn't consciously devastated by Zaidy's passing because at the age of 96, death is an inevitability, not a tragedy. I'm glad he won't be suffering anymore. But I guess there's more to this experience than the dictates of logic. Grief pushed me down and sat on my chest. I couldn't face work. My body craved sleep. I called in sad and stayed home.

Today was Zaidy's burial. The weather was supremely gorgeous. His plot is in a lovely cemetary, green and well-kept with mature trees providing some shade.

The rabbi spoke well, but watching the casket being lowered into the earth was what really twisted my heart. I watched it go down, down, down, disappearing out of sight into that deep hole. I had an urge to say "Stop! That's far enough!" Six feet is a long, long way. But eventually the box was settled at the bottom.

The next part was the hardest for me, today. It's Jewish custom to provide shovels at the graveside, and to let each mourner take part in covering the casket with the first layer of earth. The rabbi explained what it all meant. I wasn't listening 100% but as I understand it it's a way that we can let go of Zaidy and give him permission to rest.

It's one thing to stand by the graveside and watch, quite another to grab the shovel with my own two hands and drop shovelfuls of dirt onto my grandfather's casket. The impact that had goes beyond any words. I was pretty shakey when I went up for my turn, but after I was done I felt more peace.

I think that when most people use the phrase "I buried so-and-so" they mean it figuratively. But I can say "Today I buried my grandfather", and I mean it literally.

I thought I would be going back to work tomorrow, but... not so much. I need one more day. Actually I'd love to take a couple of weeks off, but I'm too responsible to do that. So I'm going to give myself one more day to unwind, and hope that my brain unscrambles itself enough to be useful. I'll rest my body, which is wearing my grief like a lead suit. The world can wait for one more day.

Farewell

My grandfather, my father's father, passed away this afternoon.

He will be sorely missed.

If you are the praying type, please say a prayer for my grandmother. She has a lot of courage. I am praying for her to have peace in her heart, and joy in her life.

Pre-History

This has to come out.  I have to write, or this spell of winter blues will turn into a deeper darkness.

The signs are there.  I find myself thinking thoughts such as this:  "Sadness floats in me like marrow bones in an old soup pot."  I'm having trouble focusing at work.  I'm starting to get anti-social.  I have the urge to journal.  This is serious.

Let me tell this publicly, so at least I'll be held accountable.  (For what, I don't know.)  I'm a little fuzzy on some of the details, because I picked them up in bits and pieces over the years, but this story is not about the details.

A long time ago, 14 months before I was born, my mother gave birth to a baby girl.  Or, almost did.   There was a prolapsed umbilical cord.  The doctors didn't catch it in time.  The baby girl who would have been my older sister (assuming I would even have been born) did not survive the journey into this world.  She went straight on to the next one.

Legally, she never had a given name.  Her paperwork said simply: "Baby Girl Lastname".  All I know of what happened next is that the Salvation Army "took care of things".  I suppose my parents were grief-stricken and bewildered.  They didn't know where to turn, and the Sally Ann offered their kind assistance in making burial arrangements.  

I don't know what the Jewish tradition would have been in such a case.  It's a measure of how wrong things were in their world that Christians stepped in to offer help, and my family accepted.  I don't know about my father, but it's not something that my mother would have consented to under lesser circumstances.

My mother makes a special donation to the Salvation Army every year, in memory of their kindness, and their generous help at such a wrenching time.  I also drop a few coins in, or more,  whenever I pass one of their kettles.

I have not asked for more details than were offered to me, because it is such a painful subject and I haven't wanted to re-open old wounds.  To my father who will certainly read this, I thought about calling you for fact-checking, but decided I'd rather lay out the pictures I've been carrying in my head all these years, and then let you correct me later.  The pictures I have, right or wrong, and definitely incomplete, are what I've been working from.

So far as I know, there was no memorial service.  There was no one from her family in attendance at her funeral.  Her body lies in a cemetary somewhere in Ottawa, where I've never been.  I'm told that "the family" didn't want to talk about it, and so everyone tried to carry on as though she'd never existed, just looking to the future.  Trying to forget.

I've always felt sad for that little baby, my elder sister.  I know my parents will never forget her, but she should have had more than just that.  And my parents should have had more support at such a time of enormous loss.  It was a tragic situation made worse by silence and confusion.

I think of her sometimes.  How I grew in the same womb-space, only months after she had been there.  How I travelled down that same tunnel to the light, passing through the place where she died on my way to life.  Wondering if these shared spaces link us somehow.

I also think of how it might have been for my mother, although I'll never really know.  In my life, on the balance (so far), there has been more sadness than joy.  Even before my birth.  I think of my fetal self as a teabag in the cup of my mother's belly, brewing in reverse, being flavoured by the sadness that flowed through her body.

I think of my elder sister every now and then, with a passing wistfulness.  I never knew her, have never visited her grave, so she always seemed a bit unreal.  But...

When I went to Tak's funeral, it was the first time I was present at an interment in which the deceased had been cremated.   When the funeral car arrived, Tak's remains were brought out, enclosed within a wee wooden box.  A tiny coffin.  Almost big enough to hold an infant.

I watched Ken kneel to place the little box in the ground.  Watched as earth was shoveled on top.  Felt numb.  Went and ate lunch.  Carried on an otherwise normal day.

But that night, I fell apart.  It all came crashing in.  It was 1971, the Salvation Army people in their uniforms, saying prayers by the graveside, and that lonely little box going down into the earth.  My heart broke for my mother, and my father; for the baby; for my family.  I cried until my face hurt, my back cramped, my jaw ached.  I cried until I couldn't cry anymore that night, but it didn't feel finished.

And since then it has all been swimming around just under my consciousness.  It's all in a big, jumbly mess,  getting confused with grief at not having my own children, and sorrow for all the recent deaths in my circle.  My sadness for my mother for that old loss is all mixed up with my sadness for her present divorce.  

It's like everything in my family that ever hurt us and pulled us apart swelled up inside my heart, even as the holidays brought some of us together.  Being close and loving my family (even as it is broken into pieces) makes the (re)open(ed) wounds ache, because I care.

I used to feel that there was no end to the losses in my life.  By the time I'd almost recovered from one, another would come crashing in.  I lived in traumatic environments for so long that I felt I would never catch up, never be done with all the grieving so that I could actually have a chance to heal.

I'm in a safe place now.  And I know I need to get through these griefs if I want to move forward.  So I'm not going to fight them when they come up, or hide them, or try to soldier on through.   I am healing, and this is how I do it. 

Bittersweet

It's the morning of Christmas Eve.  I'm at home in my jammies, eating oatmeal with dried apricots.  There are presents waiting to be opened, there's food in the refrigerator to see us through the next few days, and tonight I'll be celebrating my grandmother's birthday with my family.

However, this Christmas is bittersweet.  There have been deaths in the past few weeks.  Ken's grandpa passed away in mid-November.  

The next week, I heard, through my mother, that one of my grandfather's few remaining friends had died.  

My step-mother, whom I love dearly, lost her mother just a couple of weeks ago.  I only met Ivy a few times, however it broke my heart to see my family grieving her loss.  My sister lost her grandmother.  My step-mom and her brother had to say goodbye to their mother.  My father also grieved.  I attended the beautiful and moving memorial ceremony, and there was not a dry eye in the place.

Last night, my mother called me.  Only that morning, a dear friend of hers had passed away from cancer.  This friend, Cara, had not been diagnosed yet one year ago, when my mother's world was shattered by the news that my step-father was having an affair and would shortly leave her.  I only learned last night how Cara insisted upon calling my mother every day to check up on her and support her.  Cara left for a vacation to Florida later that same winter, and continued to call my mother every day, long-distance.  They hadn't even been close friends until that time.  Cara, generous woman that she was, saw that my mother was in need, and so she stepped up and gave her love.

Later, after Cara's cancer diagnosis, my mother returned the favour, calling daily to support her friend.  Although they were friends for a relatively short time, two or three years, they each had a huge impact on each other.  I am so grateful for the support that Cara offered to my mother when she needed it.  I'm sorry that I never had a chance to thank her in person.  Last night I offered up my gratitude to the ether, with a prayer that the message would be delivered to her spirit.

My mother will attend Cara's funeral today, and then rush home to complete the preparations for my grandmother's birthday.  I will be there to help her.  I suggested to my mom that she might want to cancel the party.  She insisted that life must go on, and she'd rather have the family there with her than sit alone.  She probably won't even have told them that anything is wrong.  We'll see how that goes.

I really hope it's not a repeat of how my family learned about my parents' separation.  I found that pretty hard to take.  I have to admit I'm not heading into this evening with 100% enthusiasm.  But no matter what happens I will be 100% there for my mom.

So this Christmas is most certainly bittersweet.  Being surrounded by deaths makes me all the more conscious of how lucky I am to have so many beloved friends and family still with me.  I intend to appreciate and love all of them to the maximum of my ability.  There's nothing like loss to make one appreciate what one has.  Truly.

Saying Goodbye

Ken's Grandpa passed away this afternoon.  He was 93 years old.

Before the second World War, Tak (short for Takashi - this side of Ken's family is Japanese), was married and living on the West coast of Canada.  The family had money, land, and cars during the Depression, when most people were just scraping by.  Their wealth came from farming.

Then, in 1942, the Canadian government forcibly relocated all citizens of Japanese background from British Columbia to internment camps in the prairie provinces.  You can read here about the horrible conditions they endured.   All of the family's wealth and property were stolen by the government.

Tak and his wife spent years in the camp.  Ken's mother was born there, and grew up in those conditions until she was five years old.

Finally, the government released the Japanese-Canadians.   As he left, Tak was given $ 5.00 by government officials.  This was the only material wealth he had left in the world.

Tak moved his family to Montreal, where he apprenticed at an autobody shop.  Once he learned how to fix cars, he moved to Toronto, where he set up his own garage in Chinatown.  He built up his business by fixing the taxi cabs of Jewish drivers.  At that time, due to intolerance, the Jewish cab drivers had a lot of trouble finding anyone to fix their cabs.  It was a good partnership, and Tak developed a special affection for the Jewish community.

Tak did well, and was able to buy a large home for himself and his family in Willowdale, a well-to-do area north of Chinatown.  He was still living in this home when I first met him, seven years ago.

At 86, Tak was still himself, if a little deaf.  He always wore a button-down shirt with his signature bolo tie.  He was gruff, tough, and serious.   He kept a vegetable garden on his Willowdale property, and, true to his farming roots, he had no mercy for theiving pests.  He used to trap squirrels in a wire box, and then put the box into a big tub of water, as Ken tells it, "until the bubbles stopped".  Sentimental, he was not.

In his prime, Tak was a force to be reckonned with.  However, he started his downward trajectory not long after I met him.  His wife passed away.  His mind started to go.  He got his a.m.'s and his p.m.'s mixed up, and would show up at Ken's mother's house at six o'clock in the morning, expecting to join the family for dinner.   The decision was made to put him into a nursing home.

For one and a half years, while Tak was still able-bodied enough to walk on his own, and get in and out of a car, Ken and I took him out for lunch every Sunday.  Usually we went to Chinatown.  Sometimes, for fun, we'd go somewhere different.  Like the time we took him for Indian food.  There was rice on his plate like usual; he didn't understand why he couldn't have chopsticks.  I think the curries were a little too spicy for him.  At one point he reached for his water glass, then hesitated and asked me quietly:

"Is the water hot?"

Poor guy.  If a place was weird enough to serve rice without chopsticks, then maybe they had spicy water too!  I suppose it did make sense.

As Tak got more frail he required more and more babying.  I wiped his nose, which seemed to run perpetually.  One time, when the home forgot to put a belt on him, I walked next to him with my hands through his belt loops, holding up his pants.  That was after they'd fallen all the way down to his knees.  Let me tell you, the man had a very smooth behind!  Not a trace of cellulite.  I was impressed.

Tak had a fight with pneumonia, from which he never fully recovered.  After that he was wheelchair-bound.  We still went to visit him frequently, in the nursing home.  We took turns feeding him his lunch.  I liked feeding Tak.  He had a good appetite.

When Tak spoke coherently, it was always about his plans to escape from the nursing home.   He had cooked up a grand scheme for getting out and travelling to California.  If I wheeled his chair to face a window, he'd always ask if he could get out that way.  He confided in Ken the most important element of his plan:

"You gotta have a man on the outside!"

Well, this afternoon Tak finally escaped from the nursing home, the only way he could.  It was his time to go.  Ken will miss him very much, but is also happy for his grandpa, now gone to a better place.

We'll miss you, Tak.  Enjoy your freedom!