When Grandma Died

I wasn’t very old, still too young to be completely in my body. I was at a point where I walked around hollow, listening to my heart beat, listening to the empty space where I could not bear to think about what was most painful (healing would come later, in waves and moments, through prayer and courage). Adulthood loomed and I felt utterly without guidance. I had dropped out of high school and started waiting tables at Pizza Hut on Dodge, then the IHOP in Wilmette. Many people didn’t understand. “You have so much potential” they said. “That’s nice” was my inner reply. I don’t know what I said out loud. Maybe I smiled and enthusiastically explained all the reasons I’d left or maybe I just assured them it would be OK, knowing they weren’t convinced, but I had made up my mind firmly.
When I was off work I was writing in that cafe on the corner by the Dempster el stop, the one with brick inner walls they eventually painted white, the one that I saw closed recently as I rounded the corner onto Sherman Ave or I wrote at Steep & Brew in the back, the smoking area. I spent time in Northwestern’s music rooms with a few friends when they were out of school for the afternoon. I read Richard Bach and hoped life could be as beautiful as he hoped it could be, as he claimed to experience.
Around this time, my grandma Katz was getting old and sick. The kind of sick that comes from worry. She lost weight, seemed to unlearn how to talk, needed to sleep a lot, be fed with a spoon by another. I watched in observation mode as I couldn’t hold on to an image of her for long and certainly no thoughts about her condition. It was what it was and I was her kin, so I sat with her in the kitchen, listening as she struggled to be understood, when she may have only wanted to have a sip of water but the effort to communicate that simple request was exhausting.
In February 1990, she went in to the hospital for several days. It was serious, so we were called to her bed side in St. Louis, several floors up in a quiet hospital wing. It’s the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in, distinctly missing the common bustling, dinging pace under the surface of relative calm. I remember enormous windows, good natural light, serenity and quiet. There was a large room full of couches and tables near her room. This is where I spent most of my time. I had a pair of head phones and several tapes of Simon and Garfunkel. I had an 8 1/2 x 11 cardboard bound spiral with a bright yellow cover. I’d wander into my grandma’s room, see my aunt Marsha, Agnes or my mom by her side, holding her hand. They were often silent. I might linger in the doorway a moment but since I had nothing to offer, I’d slip out again, head for that large comfortable lounge, turn on my music, open my notebook and write what I saw. I wrote about the sun coming in the window just so, about grandma laying there so small and helpless, about the quiet. I also wrote poems about flying, painted word pictures of gorgeous sunsets and shared my hopes for the adult I would one day become.
We were there for 3 days. I went to another universe during that time. The universe of slow sadness, of beautiful wondering. Hours and hours each day, from morning til night, I wandered back and forth between the lounge where I was cocooned by my art to grandma’s room. Sometimes I’d go to her side, talk to her, but it was awkward. It didn’t seem to be my place. As I write this I can still feel the air brush past my face, the still air of a hospital corridor as I wandered about knowing I couldn’t feel impatient. I nearly filled that yellow spiral. I would leave the overhead lights off in the lounge until the last bits of light faded each evening. I was always alone in there.
Grandma didn’t die in February. She held on until December. December 1990 in her house is less clear to my memory than the hospital. I know the house well, but no details of the mundane aspects of the trip have lasted. I only remember that my grandma was in her corner bedroom, in her bed, small, so so small. I was always aware of the antique mirror on the inner wall, huge, reflecting bottles of perfume and a hair brush she kept on her dresser. Her legs moved of their own accord beneath the green covers almost constantly. It was her breathing though, her labored, raspy breathing that I could hear clearly no matter what room of the house I was in that penetrates every thought of that good bye.
At that time in my life I was a heavy sleeper, often hard to wake, even aggressive toward anyone who disturbed me. But not that night. I fell asleep after midnight to the hollow rattle of her sighs. I was on the couch in the front living room, the one with the prettiest furniture, the fireplace and ornaments collected over a lifetime. I slept on the couch where I sat with my grandma 10 years earlier explaining the Baha’i Faith. It was the only time I remember having her full attention. My legs stuck straight out over the edge of the cushion, grandma and I angled toward each other in deep conversation. I patiently explained progressive revelation over and over. She wanted to understand but only asked the same questions over in over in the most earnest tones.
I remember that in normal life my grandma was always busy cooking and cleaning, usually afraid, often uncomfortable, so to have her sitting there with me, just us on that big couch, together in the middle, her listening to me respectfully, having a regular kind of conversation was Gold. Tears spring to my eyes as I write this, as I recall us sitting there, side by side. You’d have to have known grandma Katz to know how wonderful this was. This was the couch I slept on, the one I woke on a bit before 8am December 19th when something unseen drew me up out of bed to the doorway of her room. My mom woke at the same time and we met there, looking at Molly Katz, unexplainably aware that we were witnessing her last breaths, both aware that this was a time for her to be alone, like an invisible shield kept us respectfully on the other side of the open doorway.
Right now Carlos Nakai Earth Spirit is playing on Pandora. This is the one I listened to in the delivery room the miracle morning Devyn was born. Now I listen to it as I re-experience the moment my much loved grandma was born into the Abha Kingdom. Oh God, I didn’t know I had any sadness left for her parting, anything I’d miss. But then I saw us in the pretty living room, grandma with her only grand daughter, talking the way I wish we could have done more often while she was alive in body.
I have talked with her many times since that December morning we said good bye. She has hugged me and comforted me through countless painful times in my young adult life from her new home. Sometimes she jokes around and cracks me up. I’m willing to accept this may be wishful thinking but I believe it is more real than the floor I stand on when I wake each day.