Ups and Downs, Joys and Pains
Such is life, the Friday that you buy your first house, the Sunday following this occurs….
It is late afternoon Sunday and I am at work being the best darn mattress salesman I can be, both out of pride -- and in the foreknowledge of my looming mortgage. My plan is to get out of the store right at six, so I can play my Sunday poker game at a local watering hole at seven.
While working with a customer, my dad calls my cell phone, which I put on mute as I continue my pitch. A few minutes later my mom calls as well. Since I am still pitching away, I again put my cell phone on mute and proceed to fail to close the deal.
Leaving the store, I check the message mom left me. “Lee, the nursing home just called. They’re calling the family in. They don’t think Grandma’s going to make it through the night.” I stand for a moment, stunned for a second, then I call mom back. I’ll get right up to the nursing home as soon as I can.
It is an hour’s drive from my store off Dixie Highway to the nursing home in New Castle. Essentially, I am three counties away, Jefferson, Oldham, then Henry. I pull on the Watterson Expressway, going as fast as I dare go with the heavy traffic enforcement they have going on, and a vibrant melancholy strikes. Melancholy is by nature a subtle emotion; it is soulful, sweet, but usually muted. Not now, as I zoom down the Interstate, Americana music playing on the local public radio station (yes I occasionally listen to public radio, yes I occasionally feel like a snob) and the music is grounded, earthy. And the sun is peeking through the clouds, and a ray hits me in the face, a warm, glowing, briefly blinding light, and it is so damn sweet, life. If ever there was a case of vibrant melancholy, this is it, pulsing so painfully pleasant.
I get to the nursing home, and I am startled by a cat that nearly runs under my feet, and I laugh, in part to lighten myself up, but my dad is there.
“Grandma has passed,” he says.
I am too late. She had died with her husband and two of her children by her side. Her daughter-in-law (my mom) arrived five minutes late, her hurrying to get there. Grandma died with two of her six grandchildren breaking speed limits to get by her side. My brother Micah was twenty minutes late, I was forty. Mom had called me again to tell me, but my radio was too loud for me to hear the phone ringing.
She was loved, and she died quickly, relatively speaking. About as good as you can hope, for she had just been committed to the nursing home ten days prior, when finally my grandfather and uncle could not keep up with her needs. She died at 84, officially of pneumonia, in truth simply of old age. Her body got tired and went kaput.
I walked into the room, and here is something that shows how sheltered we are now as a society. I am a twenty eight year old man who for the first time saw death face to face. Before it had been simply the embalmed mannequins in Sunday finery that we see at funeral homes, or the occasional AP dispatch in the local paper.
The first time. Face to face: the ugly yellowish pallor, the jaw gaping cavernous, the eye lids only half closed, the dull orbs within empty where once someone whom I loved shined. The quiet creeping horror.
Oddly enough, at a moment like this, you would think that your faith would be sent into potential crisis. Not so. Not for me anyway. This is not because I am some sort of saint with powerful faith, for I am most definitely not. I am weak; I have had doubts before. But now, looking at the corpse, it was strengthened. There is much more than this physical matter we see. We can debate on what exactly, but we are not merely cleverly sculpted clay with impressive chemical reactions going on inside. That I know.
The funeral was great, a strangely good time. All the family came in, and a pleasant number of surprise visitors came to the viewing or funeral. At the viewing we sat and talked and caught up and gossiped and laughed, all with Grandma there in the room. Everyone wanted to talk to me about the new house, and I was excited and pleased to do so, over and over again. Lows and highs.
I was a pall bearer, along with my grandmother’s other three grandsons, and her two brothers who were able to make the trip from Nebraska. The four grandsons of course did the actual lifting of the coffin, while Uncle Orville and Uncle Darrell grasped the rail and walked with us.
It was a good, somber, Lutheran funeral service. Lutherans are the master of somber, and the weather obliged us well: cloudy, windy, and a few light dollops of rain that thankfully never developed into full-fledged showers.
My grandfather is fine, I believe, considering he lost his wife of 50-plus years. That old man would rather choke than show a weak emotion. How he feels at night... in bed... alone... I do not know.
This is not my grandmother’s obituary, or her requiem, or an ode. That is for another post, when things are clearer with distance. I tried to write one, but it sounded too much like the standard fare you read in the morning paper. This here is just my collection of observations; this is about me, at least for now. For isn’t the funeral for the living, anyway.
It is late afternoon Sunday and I am at work being the best darn mattress salesman I can be, both out of pride -- and in the foreknowledge of my looming mortgage. My plan is to get out of the store right at six, so I can play my Sunday poker game at a local watering hole at seven.
While working with a customer, my dad calls my cell phone, which I put on mute as I continue my pitch. A few minutes later my mom calls as well. Since I am still pitching away, I again put my cell phone on mute and proceed to fail to close the deal.
Leaving the store, I check the message mom left me. “Lee, the nursing home just called. They’re calling the family in. They don’t think Grandma’s going to make it through the night.” I stand for a moment, stunned for a second, then I call mom back. I’ll get right up to the nursing home as soon as I can.
It is an hour’s drive from my store off Dixie Highway to the nursing home in New Castle. Essentially, I am three counties away, Jefferson, Oldham, then Henry. I pull on the Watterson Expressway, going as fast as I dare go with the heavy traffic enforcement they have going on, and a vibrant melancholy strikes. Melancholy is by nature a subtle emotion; it is soulful, sweet, but usually muted. Not now, as I zoom down the Interstate, Americana music playing on the local public radio station (yes I occasionally listen to public radio, yes I occasionally feel like a snob) and the music is grounded, earthy. And the sun is peeking through the clouds, and a ray hits me in the face, a warm, glowing, briefly blinding light, and it is so damn sweet, life. If ever there was a case of vibrant melancholy, this is it, pulsing so painfully pleasant.
I get to the nursing home, and I am startled by a cat that nearly runs under my feet, and I laugh, in part to lighten myself up, but my dad is there.
“Grandma has passed,” he says.
I am too late. She had died with her husband and two of her children by her side. Her daughter-in-law (my mom) arrived five minutes late, her hurrying to get there. Grandma died with two of her six grandchildren breaking speed limits to get by her side. My brother Micah was twenty minutes late, I was forty. Mom had called me again to tell me, but my radio was too loud for me to hear the phone ringing.
She was loved, and she died quickly, relatively speaking. About as good as you can hope, for she had just been committed to the nursing home ten days prior, when finally my grandfather and uncle could not keep up with her needs. She died at 84, officially of pneumonia, in truth simply of old age. Her body got tired and went kaput.
I walked into the room, and here is something that shows how sheltered we are now as a society. I am a twenty eight year old man who for the first time saw death face to face. Before it had been simply the embalmed mannequins in Sunday finery that we see at funeral homes, or the occasional AP dispatch in the local paper.
The first time. Face to face: the ugly yellowish pallor, the jaw gaping cavernous, the eye lids only half closed, the dull orbs within empty where once someone whom I loved shined. The quiet creeping horror.
Oddly enough, at a moment like this, you would think that your faith would be sent into potential crisis. Not so. Not for me anyway. This is not because I am some sort of saint with powerful faith, for I am most definitely not. I am weak; I have had doubts before. But now, looking at the corpse, it was strengthened. There is much more than this physical matter we see. We can debate on what exactly, but we are not merely cleverly sculpted clay with impressive chemical reactions going on inside. That I know.
The funeral was great, a strangely good time. All the family came in, and a pleasant number of surprise visitors came to the viewing or funeral. At the viewing we sat and talked and caught up and gossiped and laughed, all with Grandma there in the room. Everyone wanted to talk to me about the new house, and I was excited and pleased to do so, over and over again. Lows and highs.
I was a pall bearer, along with my grandmother’s other three grandsons, and her two brothers who were able to make the trip from Nebraska. The four grandsons of course did the actual lifting of the coffin, while Uncle Orville and Uncle Darrell grasped the rail and walked with us.
It was a good, somber, Lutheran funeral service. Lutherans are the master of somber, and the weather obliged us well: cloudy, windy, and a few light dollops of rain that thankfully never developed into full-fledged showers.
My grandfather is fine, I believe, considering he lost his wife of 50-plus years. That old man would rather choke than show a weak emotion. How he feels at night... in bed... alone... I do not know.
This is not my grandmother’s obituary, or her requiem, or an ode. That is for another post, when things are clearer with distance. I tried to write one, but it sounded too much like the standard fare you read in the morning paper. This here is just my collection of observations; this is about me, at least for now. For isn’t the funeral for the living, anyway.
posted by Lee | 2:43 PM
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