On Death

My grandmother died today. Well, not from your perspective. You will be reading this months, and more likely, years after I write this. I am publishing this well after the fact, but I wrote it today. I won’t tell you the day. You will simply be left to wonder.

I am left with three feelings. Relief, shame, and wonder. I know that it’s an odd three, so I’ll unpack it.

Relief: I suspect those of you who lost someone from a long illness felt the same. My grandmother had some memory troubles a decade ago. The last time I saw her with her memory, when she still had her mind, she was forgetting simple things. She didn’t know how to get around town, though she had lived in the same city all her life. She couldn’t remember if she had put eggs into a dish. That state frightens me, but it is so much better than what comes next. Alzheimer’s, dementia, whatever the disease is, infantilizes lions and burns happy memories.

The next time I saw her in person was seven years later. I know. We’ll get into it in the shame section. Anyway, as none of her children lived in the same country, when my grandfather died, her children decided it was best to put her in her childhood home, where she still had family. In the Caucasus Mountains, she gently lost her mind. Surrounded by mountains and farm animals. I suppose it would be peaceful. I think I would like that, were I in the same position. Then Putin went and invaded Ukraine, and in response Biden cut Russian out of world-wide banking. We had no way of paying for her care.

So she was moved out of that idyllic landscape and flown to live with my uncle and his family. That is when I next saw her. I was part of the team to help ease her in to her new abode. It was as though my grandmother had withered in the intervening time. She had shrunk, her hair completely white, her skin hung off her bones. Eyesight had failed her, and she spent her days looking down, confused about where she was and what she was doing. She could only say three things unprompted. “Where am I?” “Don’t hurt me.” “Where is my caretaker?”

In that state she persisted two more years. Nothing grew clearer for her. Just a long slow decay until she finally expired. Right now, as I write this, her body is on a gurney in a hospital on the other side of the world.

Her pain is over. Her disease is over. Now she can rest, finally rest. She will no longer be afraid. No longer be confused. She will no longer resemble Picaso’s Old Guitarist. Death is a terrifying thing to me, especially when I consider going through the process myself. But here, I can only feel relief for her. The long tragedy is over.

Remembrance can begin.

Shame: I feel I was a bad grandchild to my Russian grandparents. Especially as a child. I didn’t call on my own volition. We saw them every year or two. My mom called regularly, and roped us into the call when us kids were around. I would stand there, answering questions in their language, not mine.

Selfishly, I wanted them to speak my language. I wanted them to be normal American grandparents, though I already had a set of those. I think what I wanted was to understand and be understood. That was not the case. I was a pretty rotten kid in my treatment of them. I can remember a couple temper tantrums that I had in front of them that I rue today. The past is the past, and it will needle me forever.

It’s not all downers. I loved them, I just don’t think I could express it. My grandmother taught me how to make an omelet, which to this day remains my go to for any breakfast that takes more than twenty seconds to make. I can still remember so many games of chess I played with my grandfather, how he would laugh when one of us (me more often) made a bad move.

I wish I had more memories; I suppose. I feel ashamed that I didn’t seek them out. Every day that I didn’t the possibility remained that I would. Now, I never can again. That is the shame that I will carry the rest of my life I think.

Eight hours ago, she breathed. Eight hours ago, her heart was beating. Then, it hit the last note, and will be silent forever. Eight hours ago, there was a human being named Irena. Now she is gone. She will never again be seen in this life. Her time, now immortalized in the past, a land strange and distant, where I cannot walk but in memory.

Wonder: There was a moment, a brief one probably, an infinitesimal moment, when my grandmother was the most recently deceased person. When she was the last soul to leave the earth.

That thought leads me to the next one, as I thought about the 150,000 who died on the same day as her. I wonder who they were, and I know that most of them were elderly, but some weren’t. Some were sick children, some were soldiers. Some were people in accidents, some were people who made mistakes. Some were people consumed with hopelessness.

All of them, people who may never have met one another, share one thing. They all left this life on the same day. They are forever linked in that.

My sense of wonder first lands on the scale of humanity, the thought of all those people. Then it expands, and I think about everyone who grieves this day as I do. How many of us went through the same pain at the same time, scattered throughout the world, alone in our little islands of grief. My mind is on you today, as I hope your mind might stray to me today.

I know that if we knew about one another, we would comfort and console, because that is simply who we are as a species.

It’s an odd thing, this life. But I find comfort in knowing that no matter how I feel on a given day, there is someone out there in the world who is going through the same thing, in much the same circumstances. In the wide network of humanity, someone is always hurting.

Something to think about as you walk the sidewalk and see the people pass by, or drive and look at headlights coming your way. Someone in that number is having an awful day.

Something to think about.

Thanks for reading,

Michael