My grandmother passed away on Friday at the age of 94.Since a diagnosis of throat cancer at Christmas, there has been a steady decline in her health. Both times we've been able to go and see her, I've been very conscious that there was a good chance it would be the last time. In truth, I've watched the gradual decline of a highly intelligent and vivacious woman over the past ten years. First her eyesight deteriorated to the point where she could no longer read, then an attack of shingles took her lower still. Gradually, she began to lose her memory, to the point where she was like a goldfish, repeating the same thing every three seconds. Whether it was - as she herself claimed - the shingles that ruined her memory or just the normal run of ageing, we will never know, but she gradually went from a good-humoured and benevolent woman who at eighty years of age would regularly go on five mile hikes in the country, who was informed about the world and its goings on and as independent as it is possible to be to, for the past few years, the frail (and often petulant and selfish) child who depended on my mother to minister to her most basic needs.
I am very conscious that when we would go and see her, we were seeing her at her best. Seeing me, my wife and kids was a treat for her that would lift her spirits and there were flashes of her real self in there. I knew that she found these visits very welcome but also exhausting, and some of her worst behaviour would come after she'd had a visit. My mother would bear the brunt of this petulance, and I know she found it draining.
Given the drawn-out timescale of her final decline, I find myself not really sure how I feel. I remarked to my brothers that I've learned that I'm not good at pre-empting how I will feel about things. I thought I knew how I would feel when I got married. I thought I knew how I would feel when my first child was born. I didn't. It appears I've been fitted with a b-movie brain that scripts everything far too simplistically.
I'm glad it's over and my grandmother is no longer suffering; any sadness is for me and my family, not her. For the past two and a half weeks, she's been on morphine and not eating and we all knew that the end was imminent. From what my mother tells us, we don't think my grandmother was particularly aware of what was happening, but there's not really anyway to cast suffering in a good light. When my brothers and I spoke last night after getting the news, we remarked on how we'd already said most of the things to say. The grieving has been going on for a long time; for years we'd opined that it would be no bad thing if our grandmother were to die, such was her quality of life. With how it's been since Christmas, it's just been a waiting game.
I do feel sad, of course, but so far it's a quiet, reflective sadness. I have no faith to cling to. My grandmother has not gone to a better place; her consciousness has ceased to exist with the cessation of biochemical activity in her brain. What is left is simply meat; it might look like my grandmother, but it is not her. I tell the children that Great Nana has gone to be part of the universe, and in a simplistic sense this is true; the molecules which comprised her body will be broken down and will go on to interact with others and may even become part of another living being, but this is not any sort of continuation of her existence.
I don't find myself feeling nihilistic though. Nana always said that for whatever she'd done for her children, she would be repaid if they did the same for their children. Although I'm one generation removed from her, I cannot but pass on at least some of her wisdom and generosity because it is a part of me too. As reflected in the title for this entry, how we live on is in the hearts and minds of those who remain - I would add 'and in our DNA' too, though that's more prosaic - and this is where I know I will be able to find my hope and my comfort.
OYJ - 5th May 1915 - 12th March 2010
Those are beautiful memories of a beautiful woman. Having lost one parent after a long decline from cancer and one overnight from a heart attack, I'll say that your observations about loss and suffering are spot on. There's no easy way down.
ReplyDeleteScience tells us that energy never dies, it gets passed on, although perhaps in different forms. Your grandmother put much energy into her children, one of whom passed that energy on to you. When you draw breath and when your heart beats, you do it in part with energy from her, and in that way her existence continues.