Antifreeze
Dec. 21st, 2004 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldI am not well-acquainted with grief.
I've been pretty lucky so far. There have been few great losses among my close friends and family. I never knew my father's mother, since she died when my dad was only 18, but I assign that to disappointment rather than grief.
My first loss was Uncle C., who was actually a great-uncle, when I was seven or so. I didn't even really know him that well, since he lived in Massapequa (along with most of my mother's family) and I only saw him twice a year, if that. I have mostly vague recollections of him being a sort of eccentric intellectual. But when I was six and I spent a whole summer reading the World Book Encyclopedia and I somehow memorized all the presidents in order, Uncle C. was the most excited about it. And he promised me that next summer he would take me to Oyster Bay. Oyster Bay, where President Roosevelt was from. I can't even remember which Roosevelt it was, but I will never ever forget how he said "Oyster Bay" in his easy Long Island accent.
Within a year he was gone. Brain cancer. My mom attended the funeral in Massapequa while my brother and I stayed home with Dad, probably because we had school or something, but also to shield us from grief. And for a long time, that distant, antiseptic episode was the sum total of my experience with death.
There were other deaths in the family after that. A decade later, my great-grandfather (My mom's dad's dad) passed away in his late 90s. He was a great Greek bear of a man with a face like weathered granite, though he was more or less of a man when I last saw him in a Sephardic old-age home, confined to a bed, mumbling quietly and coughing loudly. He seemed only marginally aware of me, which is probably okay, because I wouldn't have been able to understand anything he might have tried to say to me.
My great-grandmother (My mom's mom's mom, Uncle C.'s mother-in-law) passed away a short time later at the overripe age of 99. Though also a Greek immigrant, she was the polar opposite of my great-grandfather: sharp as glass, vibrant like a tuning fork, so little I could fit her in my shaving kit. She adored my brother and me. She adored everyone, it seemed, although I would hope that she at least reserved her sloppy wet cheek-kisses for family members. She would even kiss you over the phone – you could hear her smooching the receiver between chirping terms of endearment. Her love was so incredibly unconditional, it was awe-inspiring.
They both passed silently though, so silently that I can't even remember exactly when their deaths happened. I know I didn't attend any services or send any condolences. It would be at least a little comforting to think that it's because I was once again being sheltered – or even ignored, rather than enraptured in teenage self-absorption. I'd like to believe that I could have taken a few days out of my pimple-scrutinizing schedule to mourn some faraway loved ones.
While I certainly felt and still feel these losses, it wasn't until the fall of 2001 that grief actually punched me in the gut. I was at work one day, when I got a call from my father. He said that my Aunt J., his sister, was in the hospital, and she didn’t have a lot of time left, and I should call her there.
Everything he said made sense, but it didn't add up in my head. I had to go through the process in my mind of asking and answering the question. Why do I need to call Aunt J.? To say goodbye.
Aunt J. had been sick for a long time. Five years, at least. Maybe more. It was the same kidney disease that struck her (and my father's) mother in middle-age, and the same disease that's afflicting her daughter (my cousin) now in her mid-30s. It is by far the scariest medical condition that runs in my family. Fortunately for me, it only seems to affect females. We dudes just have to worry about losing our hair and people mispronouncing our last name.
Aunt J. had been fighting through dialysis for a while, and every Thanksgiving she would be a little bit weaker and a little bit sadder, but she was always there. And when the cancer showed up, and it meant more drugs and more doctors and chemotherapy – in addition to the now thrice-weekly dialysis – Aunt J. was still there, asking about my life, as if I had recently done anything more important and meaningful than beating "Madden 1999."
By the end, when cancer of the lung had become cancer of the everything, she had traded in her strength for peace. And when I heard her whispery voice on the other end of the phone, I was just praying that she'd hang on long enough for me to find the words to say.
I told her that she was in my thoughts, and that I loved her. I also thanked her – for that one year when dad left and mom was a basket case and my brother and I were screaming behavioral nightmares, and still she let us run around her yard and play in her pool while she sipped tea with my mother and told us everything was going to be okay.
There was no way she could have known it was going to be okay. It was like looking at a crack house and saying "it just needs a good vacuum." But Aunt J. had a way of being so unblinkingly sincere that we had to believe her, at least until we went home.
And she was open-minded. If I had told her that I wanted to drop out of college and join the circus, she would have said, "Isn't that great. Show me some fire-breathing." Even now, it puzzles me as to how she and my father sprung from the same family, since his likely reaction would have been to breathe fire himself.
And she was smart. She could talk to anybody about anything, even though she was a high school math teacher and our conversations rarely broached the topic of the Pythagorean Theorem, she could talk to my brother about professional wrestling and then turn around and talk about Brahms with my cousin.
And she was welcoming. For my mother, a Jewish girl from Long Island, my father's Irish Catholic family was intimidating and weird, especially around the holidays. Aunt J. embraced my mother and helped her to feel comfortable when nobody else even considered how much she felt like an outsider-looking-in.
Most of all, she believed in us. She believed in everyone, and with everything she did and said she tried to help each of us realize the very best part of ourselves. She told me I was good, and I could be great, and I wanted desperately to prove her right. I still do.
Things haven't been the same since we buried Aunt J. You could even say that her funeral – sad and solemn as it was – was her way of bringing the family together one last time. Even at weddings and graduations and holidays, we are like eggs rolling around without a carton, aimless and fragile. She was our glue, our Yoda, our ad-hoc director of morale. She was Christmas, and school plays, and summer barbeques. She was the closest I'll ever come to knowing my grandmother.
I'm going home to Rochester for the holidays tomorrow, and on Christmas day the remaining members of my father's clan will assemble for dinner and presents. I will try hard to have a good time and bask in the glow of our hearths and hearts. But I will be thinking of Aunt J. and wishing she were still around, so I could tell her about all the progress I've made. I hope she'd be proud.
To my friends and readers: Have a safe and happy holiday. Cherish the people you love and the memories you own. Be good to each other. I believe in you.
I've been pretty lucky so far. There have been few great losses among my close friends and family. I never knew my father's mother, since she died when my dad was only 18, but I assign that to disappointment rather than grief.
My first loss was Uncle C., who was actually a great-uncle, when I was seven or so. I didn't even really know him that well, since he lived in Massapequa (along with most of my mother's family) and I only saw him twice a year, if that. I have mostly vague recollections of him being a sort of eccentric intellectual. But when I was six and I spent a whole summer reading the World Book Encyclopedia and I somehow memorized all the presidents in order, Uncle C. was the most excited about it. And he promised me that next summer he would take me to Oyster Bay. Oyster Bay, where President Roosevelt was from. I can't even remember which Roosevelt it was, but I will never ever forget how he said "Oyster Bay" in his easy Long Island accent.
Within a year he was gone. Brain cancer. My mom attended the funeral in Massapequa while my brother and I stayed home with Dad, probably because we had school or something, but also to shield us from grief. And for a long time, that distant, antiseptic episode was the sum total of my experience with death.
There were other deaths in the family after that. A decade later, my great-grandfather (My mom's dad's dad) passed away in his late 90s. He was a great Greek bear of a man with a face like weathered granite, though he was more or less of a man when I last saw him in a Sephardic old-age home, confined to a bed, mumbling quietly and coughing loudly. He seemed only marginally aware of me, which is probably okay, because I wouldn't have been able to understand anything he might have tried to say to me.
My great-grandmother (My mom's mom's mom, Uncle C.'s mother-in-law) passed away a short time later at the overripe age of 99. Though also a Greek immigrant, she was the polar opposite of my great-grandfather: sharp as glass, vibrant like a tuning fork, so little I could fit her in my shaving kit. She adored my brother and me. She adored everyone, it seemed, although I would hope that she at least reserved her sloppy wet cheek-kisses for family members. She would even kiss you over the phone – you could hear her smooching the receiver between chirping terms of endearment. Her love was so incredibly unconditional, it was awe-inspiring.
They both passed silently though, so silently that I can't even remember exactly when their deaths happened. I know I didn't attend any services or send any condolences. It would be at least a little comforting to think that it's because I was once again being sheltered – or even ignored, rather than enraptured in teenage self-absorption. I'd like to believe that I could have taken a few days out of my pimple-scrutinizing schedule to mourn some faraway loved ones.
While I certainly felt and still feel these losses, it wasn't until the fall of 2001 that grief actually punched me in the gut. I was at work one day, when I got a call from my father. He said that my Aunt J., his sister, was in the hospital, and she didn’t have a lot of time left, and I should call her there.
Everything he said made sense, but it didn't add up in my head. I had to go through the process in my mind of asking and answering the question. Why do I need to call Aunt J.? To say goodbye.
Aunt J. had been sick for a long time. Five years, at least. Maybe more. It was the same kidney disease that struck her (and my father's) mother in middle-age, and the same disease that's afflicting her daughter (my cousin) now in her mid-30s. It is by far the scariest medical condition that runs in my family. Fortunately for me, it only seems to affect females. We dudes just have to worry about losing our hair and people mispronouncing our last name.
Aunt J. had been fighting through dialysis for a while, and every Thanksgiving she would be a little bit weaker and a little bit sadder, but she was always there. And when the cancer showed up, and it meant more drugs and more doctors and chemotherapy – in addition to the now thrice-weekly dialysis – Aunt J. was still there, asking about my life, as if I had recently done anything more important and meaningful than beating "Madden 1999."
By the end, when cancer of the lung had become cancer of the everything, she had traded in her strength for peace. And when I heard her whispery voice on the other end of the phone, I was just praying that she'd hang on long enough for me to find the words to say.
I told her that she was in my thoughts, and that I loved her. I also thanked her – for that one year when dad left and mom was a basket case and my brother and I were screaming behavioral nightmares, and still she let us run around her yard and play in her pool while she sipped tea with my mother and told us everything was going to be okay.
There was no way she could have known it was going to be okay. It was like looking at a crack house and saying "it just needs a good vacuum." But Aunt J. had a way of being so unblinkingly sincere that we had to believe her, at least until we went home.
And she was open-minded. If I had told her that I wanted to drop out of college and join the circus, she would have said, "Isn't that great. Show me some fire-breathing." Even now, it puzzles me as to how she and my father sprung from the same family, since his likely reaction would have been to breathe fire himself.
And she was smart. She could talk to anybody about anything, even though she was a high school math teacher and our conversations rarely broached the topic of the Pythagorean Theorem, she could talk to my brother about professional wrestling and then turn around and talk about Brahms with my cousin.
And she was welcoming. For my mother, a Jewish girl from Long Island, my father's Irish Catholic family was intimidating and weird, especially around the holidays. Aunt J. embraced my mother and helped her to feel comfortable when nobody else even considered how much she felt like an outsider-looking-in.
Most of all, she believed in us. She believed in everyone, and with everything she did and said she tried to help each of us realize the very best part of ourselves. She told me I was good, and I could be great, and I wanted desperately to prove her right. I still do.
Things haven't been the same since we buried Aunt J. You could even say that her funeral – sad and solemn as it was – was her way of bringing the family together one last time. Even at weddings and graduations and holidays, we are like eggs rolling around without a carton, aimless and fragile. She was our glue, our Yoda, our ad-hoc director of morale. She was Christmas, and school plays, and summer barbeques. She was the closest I'll ever come to knowing my grandmother.
I'm going home to Rochester for the holidays tomorrow, and on Christmas day the remaining members of my father's clan will assemble for dinner and presents. I will try hard to have a good time and bask in the glow of our hearths and hearts. But I will be thinking of Aunt J. and wishing she were still around, so I could tell her about all the progress I've made. I hope she'd be proud.
To my friends and readers: Have a safe and happy holiday. Cherish the people you love and the memories you own. Be good to each other. I believe in you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
"Lullabye" by Ben Folds Five
Date: 2004-12-21 07:33 pm (UTC)The world has more for you
Than it seems
Goodnight, goodnight
Let the moonlight take the lid off your dreams
We took a small flight
In the middle of the night
From one tiny place to another
And my parents they remained
At the shack with Lorraine
And my aunt and my Grandpa and brother
We walked past the tarmac
And boarded the craft
The rain had me chilled to the bones
Just the three of us took flight that night
Uncle Richard, me and James Earl Jones
And the pilot he gave me a blanket
And the tall dark man sang to me in deep
Rich tones...
Goodnight, goodnight sweet baby
The world has more for you
Than it seems
Goodnight, goodnight
Let the moonlight take the lid off your dreams