The time my grandfather died - Part I

Because springtime reminds me of death, we take a journey back in time...

When my grandfather died I looked for him in his dresser drawers.

We went to the viewing and my aunt fell down sobbing in the aisle.

We all wanted to be alone, ashamed of her grief.

I had never touched a corpse. My aunt went up to the casket and draped herself over it. “My Daddy” she wept.

The viewing is a morbid curiosity. Here’s the shell of the man you loved. Doesn’t it look great? Doesn’t it seem so life-like? Like it will open it’s eyes, or maybe smile? Like he shouldn’t be dead?

But he was. After my aunt’s outburst, I went and touched his hand. It was cold and stiff like a plastic model.

At the house, we had food and drink. At one point my grandmother broke down in the kitchen and just started sobbing. She has Alzheimer’s. Every time she remembered he was gone, it was the first time.

I went into the backyard and smoked a joint I had smuggled cross-country. Everyone was laughing and drinking. People commented on how great he’d looked. They must not have touched him.

After most of the guests left, my grandmother and I cleaned up. She washed the dishes. I dried. I put away the deserts and snacks. My sister and my aunt tried to stop us, tried to make me make my grandmother stop and eat something. But I wouldn’t, and she couldn’t.

That was the closest we had ever been. In our rebellion. Because I am a firm believer that someone who has lived as long as she has should be able to eat ice cream and candy all day if they wanted. And they didn’t understand that she just couldn’t leave a sink full of dishes.

I dried.

My grand father was gone. Sometimes, when people die, you feel somewhat selfishly, that part of them is still around. I looked all over that house. I went to the third floor and the basement. There was only emptiness. Not the vacuum of a sudden death, like a trauma or something that leaves unfinished business. I felt like he had left before he died. He had been moving away the whole time and he never told us. It was painful to think he dismissed us so easily. I was angry at him and angry at myself for not saying goodbye.

He had gone into the hospital a month before. They said he was dehydrated. They gave him liquids and sent him home a week later. No reason for concern. A few weeks after that, he was back in the hospital. This time they better run some tests. I spoke to him on the phone. He didn’t sound like himself. He didn’t sound like grandpa. My sister called and said I should come, but my dad said she was an alarmist- which is true; and that I shouldn’t worry. Then they said grandpa had advanced bone cancer, and they gave him three months. A week later he died. They said he had probably been in pain for a while, but he never complained. He always kept everyone together. I felt like the diagnosis was his release. Like he now had an excuse - he was given a dispensation, he was pardoned, he was free to go.

I brought my grandmother a bowl of ice cream and rubbed her swollen feet. I made a note to myself: Don’t get old. She started to rambled about a theory she had about how Grandpa conspired to dirty her house, how she was very tidy, and he was always messing things up. Then she cried when she realized he was gone.

I thought I found him in the backyard. He used to grow roses and flowers on one side, and monster tomatoes and squash on the other. He had been a patient gardener. He always insisted on having plants in the flower boxes on the front porch. Theirs was probably the only house in Newark that always had something growing. But the yard had not been tilled in at least a year and part of it was fenced off for a dog run for my sister’s Labrador. There was a mobile basketball hoop set up where the patio furniture used to be, for my nephew. There was only one rose bush still growing in a wire trellis. My dad had given up smoking years ago, and he came outside and we had a cigarette in silence.