Death and Gratitude
If things are as they seem, I will have lived 38 years with four living grandparents, and then lost both grandfathers within the span of a month. Grandpa P. died a week ago, and Grandpa S. (Grandma S. says) will die within the next two.
I am surrounded with unconditional support and condolences. Each time I float into pensive observer state; I wonder, what was their relationship with their grandfather and how did he die? From what experience and what pain is this offering?
I confess that it’s hard to know how to accept condolences directed to me. In my role as a granddaughter, I am not sad, and this is not particularly hard for me. Occasionally, a wave of nostalgia will wash over me; a pang of wistfulness that I won’t ever know what Grandpa S. will think of Hamilton, or see my son squeal with laughter at Grandpa P.’s Donald Duck imitation; a bolt of empathy for my parents losing a parent. But mostly I am flooded with gratitude.
We were warned that Grandpa P.’s death was imminent. (That call was worse than the death itself, because of a few sad circumstances I won’t get into.) Grandpa P. survived a serious stroke a year and a half ago, with his mental faculties intact — in some sense every moment since then seems like a bonus. But we immediately started sharing stories about him and gathering photos. I videochatted with him about a day-and-a-half before he died; he saw his great-grandkids. My dad was with him when he passed. The logistics of coming here were mercifully not too burdensome or stressful. And now I am here with all three of my siblings, and all of our respective children. I spent a few hours last night with my sister and dad scanning old photos.
And on learning that Grandpa S. was in his final stages on our trip for Grandpa P.’s funeral in the same city—after the brief shock worse off, more gratitude. Grandpa S. has been a shell of himself for 15 years due to Alzheimer’s. After years of wondering every time I see him whether it was the last, I would have the blessing of getting to see him one more time.
Aging is brutal. My sister commented on the pitiable recent state of both our grandfathers. “What kind of life is this?” she lamented. She may be right. The end of my grandfathers’ lives will have been awful for them to experience. The heavy toll those months and years took on my grandmothers, parents, aunts, and uncles, is immeasurable. Who am I to speak from a privileged and naive position of one who has never experienced such suffering, who has never borne the burden of decisionmaking or caretaking?
Whenever and however someone dies we must search for peace, some reason for comfort, some element of goodness, hope. In my blessedly limited experience with death, it seems that the most despair springs from difficulty in finding them. It seemed impossible when my 21-year-old cousin died in a car crash. It remains a struggle. But those that lived rallied to find it anyway, and created so much beauty by doing so — seeing her essence shine on through those she touched, the memorial scholarship that was founded in her name, the serene photo cards distributed at a memorial, with her picture in a field of flowers and a phrase that translates to “in God’s eyes we are one.”
There are things about our existence we cannot know. We cannot know why one is ripped away from us suddenly and in youth; and why another dies slowly of old age after years of end-of-life physical, mental, emotional, financial, and logistical struggle. I feel thankful that these dear elders of mine had the opportunity to complete in full the physical process of living, even its agony-inducing moments.
Y’hey shmey raba m’varah l’olam ulalmey almaya.
