Auld Lang Syne

I returned to school to find a chippy note in my box about requesting too many days for bereavement.  I tried to quickly get things together and went to my first class.  The students were very sweet, happy to see me and genuinely compassionate about the loss of my Grandmother.  I looked around the room.

"Where is Jaquey?" I asked his teacher.  "I feel like I haven't seen him in forever."
I saw her eyes dim a little and she looked down.
"He's gone.  They withdrew him....they are sending him back to his mom....they can't deal with him anymore, the stealing.....".
"I hope somewhere he is getting what he needs." I answered, feeling that he had been failed, that he was slipping through the cracks.
"I do too" she answered. 

I finished the week and our two week break began.  It was filled with shopping and Christmas trees and food preparation for the Christmas Eve event that is hosted at my house for my family.  My beautiful former student Dau came to town, only a year away from getting the degree she so fully deserves.  I got crafty and built my sister a little, free ADULT lending library to house porn in her front yard.

We quietly brought in the New Year, while I silently wished for a good 2016.  

The Scottish

The following days became more of a nighttime blur.  In the midst of my and my mother's bar crawl of some of the places my alcoholic father had preferred, I decided to tackle the issue of my brother.  But let me first add that my dad had excellent taste in bars.

We are estranged from my brother.  When I started traveling a lot, my brother's wife decided to attack my mother on my first long trip.  My sister stood up for my mom in the ferocious way that I would have if I had been present for the bullshit this woman was dishing out AT MY MOM.  When I returned nearly a year later, my brother and his wife were being very sweet and delicate with me and there was no contact between them and my sister and mother.  It always made me uncomfortable.  I felt like I was being used as a pawn, that the fact that I would speak with them was some sort of validation of their position against the rest of my family.  Against my mom, who single handed raised the three of us.  I did not agree with what they did, and did not like the perception that "Look, Hilary's okay with us.  The rest of those people are crazy."  My mom and my sister are not crazy.  My brother and his wife, are.  

My sister was voicing increasing anxiety about the prospect of my brother and his wife coming to my Grandmother's funeral.  The drama that would ensue.  The stress.  Sitting in a bar that had walls covered with Scottish kilt fabric, I texted my brother.  I felt like it was time for me to take the bullet, not my sister or my mom.  Me, the good one, the nice one, the pushover.  I was finally going to speak up.  I identified myself in the text because my brother doesn't even know my phone number.  I politely asked him to come alone to my Grandmother's funeral, if he intended to come at all.  I really didn't give a shit if he brought his kid, but didn't know how to say, "Can you at least leave your cunt wife at home?".  I asked him to do it for the sake of my mom, that it was her mother's funeral and it was important to me that she could say goodbye to her in a stress-free environment.  I really did not think his wife would be terribly heartbroken about not attending the funeral of a woman she had met a handful of times.  And, my brother is a big boy.  He can handle the funeral on his own.  The thing that was most important to me was my mom.

Somewhere in the blur of days we stopped by the hospice.  I went inside and delivered a large Poinsettia to the nurses and thanked them for taking such good care of my Grandmother.  Another group of people was standing in the hallway, crying.  Someone else had passed.  I knew I was going to cry again just from walking in that place and I quickly exited.

I wasn't going to attend the funeral.  The had to schedule it for the following Monday, as Catholics don't have funerals on Sundays and Saturday was booked up.  I had already missed a week of work; I knew I couldn't ask for anymore days, though my sick leave bank is so massive I could technically take the rest of the year off.  My niece and sister were on their way up to accompany my mom to the funeral.  I received a dramatic response from my brother about how he "broke the news to his wife and child that they weren't permitted to attend their Grandmother's funeral".  Wife and child.  As if I don't know their names.  Caveman style drama.  He thanked me for "allowing" him to come.  I didn't respond, as the end result of texting him in the first place was successful.  I still have the texts saved to my phone.  I don't know why.

On my last night in Saginaw, we ended up again around the table of my aunt and uncle, drinking wine.  My cousin and her partner stopped by a couple of hours after I probably should have stopped drinking. When I rose Saturday morning to get ready for my flight, my head was pounding.  As my mother drove me to Flint, I threw up out of the door of the car and in the process, down the front of my clothes.  I entered the airport.  There was one person at the security area.  I sheepishly went through and proceeded to the gate and sat in a chair crouched over with my head in my hands. I made a mental reminder not to touch anything except bottled water while at the airport.   I heard the flight attendants call my name and I feared they weren't going to let me fly.  To the contrary, they told me they had moved my seat to the emergency row. Yes, the passenger with vomit all over her clothes will be assisting you if the plane crashes.  I passed out before the wheels left the ground and only woke up when we landed in Chicago.

I made it back to Atlanta in the late afternoon.  That night as I slept, Lola curled up beside me.  She breathed heavily as she slept and for a second, breathed quietly.

I woke up, startled, thinking I was beside my Grandmother's bed in the hospice.  But I wasn't.  I was at home in Atlanta. 

Far Out in the Red Sky

As we got in the car, I noticed a text message from my niece, Emma.  It was a heartfelt message to my mother about my Grandmother.  The time stamp said 10:37 pm.

It felt like we arrived at the hospice within minutes.  As we rushed to the front door, I saw a gurney being pushed by with a full, black, body bag on it. I had a rush of emotion.  Throughout the days in Saginaw I often thought I was okay with things, accepting them, but then something would happen and I would have to turn away because I knew I was about to cry.

We went inside.  A large family speaking multiple languages stood in the hall, crying.  We arrived at my Grandmother's room.  She was gone.  We did not arrive in time.  I overheard my Uncle Dick say that the time of death was 10:38 pm.  My Grandmother looked peaceful and I kissed her.  She was warm but I knew she was dead.  I again stroked her hair and hugged her.  It didn't seem strange to do this to a dead body, though I have never touched one before.  Her mouth still hung a bit ajar: I wanted to close it.  I didn't think she would like to be seen that way.  Relatives arrived and circled her bed.   Another vigil was starting.

One of the nurses came in and told us that the funeral home, located out in the country where my Grandfather farmed, could not pick my Grandmother up for a couple of hours.  My mother sat at her bedside, stroking her hand.
"I am staying with her." she stated.
I heard my uncle say the exact same thing, independent of my mother.
We all stayed.  People talked and laughed, telling stories of my Grandmother while we circled her bed and overflowed to a common area outside of the room.  It felt important, that we were ushering her out of the world.  I had the definite sense that she was in some sort of in-between moment and I wanted to help her through this stage.  The relatives from the farm area and those from the city, all extensions of my Grandmother's family, spoke to each other seamlessly and without judgement, though their accents and conversation topics were different.  She became colder and her limbs more rigid.  I noticed my uncle slip away to a farther common area, alone.

The driver from the funeral home arrived.  Everyone spoke to him in a friendly manner.  Finally, he told us to leave.
"You don't need to see the next part," he told us, "it isn't pretty."
I knew what he meant.  The black bag.  The zipper.  The end.
We left.

Thursday morning my mom and uncle were up early to meet with the priest and select passages for my Grandmother's funeral.  My mother and I went out later and had a tour of Saginaw's bars.  My mother has excellent taste.  We woke Friday morning and drove to my Grandmother's apartment.  I felt exhausted and surprised that our schedule was still so full.  We were going to help pack up my Grandmother's belongings.  I felt guilty, we had slept later than we should and I knew others were working.  My mom and I rushed to get ready and darted to the apartment with our drive-through, Tim Horton coffee.  We walked in to cheerful faces.  A cooler filled with light beer sat in the middle of the floor.  I realized why we were there.  My aunts and uncles, the stepchildren of my Grandmother, had done everything.  They guided us to small piles of my Grandmother's possessions, encouraging us to take things to remember her by.  One brought out a jar of change announcing that it was the inheritance.  My Aunt Peggy had already left and my Uncle Dick announced her "shit out of luck" for her inheritance cut.  I thought we would be carrying mattresses, packing boxes.  I opened a can of beer and selected a few things of my Grandmother's that I loved, putting them in an eight cent cigar box I found in her bedroom. 

As we walked out of the apartment, I glanced back.  The furniture was gone, a box or so remained and an old newspaper sat on the counter.  I though of Alec, Lola and I eating breakfast with her in the  summer of 2014 in an area that now stood vacant.  My Grandmother had insisted that we "sneak Lola in" to the apartments, though pets weren't allowed, let alone a ninety pound Pit Bull.  I suddenly had to turn again so that no one would see me cry.

She was gone.

Strange Days

I flew halfway around the world once, going west.  We spent days in darkness, basically chasing the sun across time zones.  Something about that flight reminds me of my visit to Saginaw.

My mother and I sat on either side of my Grandmother's bed, drinking red wine out of plastic stem glasses.  It was odd, as if the three of us were hanging out together, though my Grandmother was still unconscious.  A multitude of family members visited my Grandmother that evening and later, it was just my mom and me again.  The T.V. flickered through the night as we watched over her.  Donald Trump appeared over and over on the news shows as they all rehashed the same stupid things he had said that day.  I fell asleep a couple of times, only to wake and see my mom sitting across the room, eyes open, T.V. lights flickering on her face. At times my Grandmother's breathing would become shallow and I would feel startled, but then she would breath deeply again.

The hospice nurses visited routinely throughout the night to shift my Grandmother in her bed.  When they tried to give her morphine, she pursed her lips and made raspberry noises at them.  It made me giggle.  She looked like a soft, defiant little baby hell raiser, not like my Grandmother.

In the morning, family members relieved us and my mom and I went back to my uncle's to sleep for a couple of hours.  Clancy, the beautiful Irish Setter that I had been dying to meet, growled and barked at me again, and then ran and hid under the kitchen table.
"Wow," my uncle commented, "he only acts like that with the mailman."
I fired off some more lesson plans and checked my work email.  A snippy one sat there from one of my bosses, instructing me to re-submit a sub request "ASAP" because I had used the wrong reason code for it.
"Thanks," I thought "definitely the first thing on my mind."  I emailed my other boss telling him that there was no way I was going to make it to work Thursday.  It was Wednesday morning.  When I didn't receive a response, I called him.
"Put in for a sub for Thursday and Friday," he instructed "I am not sure how many days you can take for bereavement, but mark it bereavement."  I did as instructed and laid down to sleep.  I could hear the click click click of Clancy's toenails and occasionally opened my eyes to find his face inches from mine, staring at me.

We got up a couple of hours later and went out.  I bought some treats to bribe Clancy and we visited the hospice again.  My Grandmother laid peacefully in her bed.  My aunt and uncle that had spent the day with my Grandmother told us the nurses' latest reports of signs of imminent death.  The night crew arrived and we readied ourselves to leave.
"If, you know, the nurses say they think it's happening, should I call you?" my Uncle Dick asked my mother.
"It probably won't be that way....." my mom responded.
"But if it does, should I call?" he repeated.
"Yes."

My mom and I returned to my uncle's house.  Clancy was happy with me now that he had his chicken jerky and actually let me pet him.  He rubbed against my legs as I fed him piece after piece.  My aunt and uncle opened a bottle of wine and we sat around talking.  The mood was actually festive, we looked at old pictures, talked about travels and laughed.  It was very natural and relaxed.  It felt like being at a party with people you really wanted to talk to, not relatives you hadn't seen in a long time.  One conversation spiraled into another with talks of my mom and uncle's childhood, the wonders of France and Spain, how silly dogs are yet how much they mean in our lives.

The phone rang.
"It's happening" my uncle announced quickly, grabbing his keys as we all rushed to the cars and raced toward the hospice.

She was going.   

Mother and Me, Part II

I woke up the next morning in a trundle bed in my uncle's attic.  I had slept so hard I was confused about where I was.  I woke my mom up.  We were late.

We arrived at the hospital to relieve my uncles that had spent the night at my Grandmother's bedside.  It had been determined quickly and seamlessly that she would not be left alone at anytime.  The nurses spoke of physical signs of looming death: mottled skin, a change in nail color, something about the feet.  I had never heard of these things before. 

A hospital administrator arrived and announced what everyone feared:  Medicaid was bucking at the daily cost of the hospital and wanted my Grandmother moved to hospice. 
"We are afraid of moving her," my mother said, "all of the jostling.  It's not that we don't want her in hospice, we are afraid of transporting her in this condition.....".
"I understand," the administrator said, "but we can only push Medicaid so far....".
Shortly after, the paramedics arrived.  I felt a seize of terror.  I didn't think I could watch them lift her, watch them move her, but I felt like I had to.  The bundled her carefully in blankets until only her head poked out like a little cotton ball.  The moved her gently to the gurney and rolled her out as we followed.  I still felt terrified, but was surprised by how smoothly they had moved her.  My mother went in one direction with the paramedics to ride in the ambulance with my Grandmother and I went toward the parking lot.  I passed the massive, larger than life manger scene by the parking lot and looped around a huge camel to my mother's compact rental car.  I bumped my head on the ceiling, started the car and followed the ambulance to the hospice. 

I drove through Saginaw.  The sky was still very gray.  I started getting worried about what the hospice would be like after taking a turn at a county juvenile lock up and driving past a large, impersonal hospital.  I was surprised to see things suddenly become pastoral and after passing a large barn, a nice looking building with white columns came into view.  I could see the ambulance pulling into a side garage.  The garage seemed ominous to me, the place where everyone arrived and left, shielded from view because death is so uncomfortable.  My uncle paced the parking lot until I parked the car and we went in the front door together. 

The hospice administrator spoke about their services with my mom and uncle while my Grandmother was made comfortable in her room.  I looked at my mom and uncle, seated next to each other on a couch, making decisions about my Grandmother's care.  It seemed like an odd coming of age moment that had never occurred to me before, one of the important moments in life that you don't spend with your spouse, but with your sibling.  I saw similarities in their faces and thought processes that I had never noticed before. 

I was relieved that my Grandmother was at the hospice the minute we were permitted to enter her room.   It was comfortable and lit with lamps.  She was tucked in cozily; the oxygen thing that had irritated her nose was gone.  A small dose of morphine, "the heroin" as one of my uncles would later call it, had relaxed her breathing and she seemed much more natural and comfortable than she had in the hospital. 

Others arrived and my mother and I returned to my uncle's house.  We viewed and made recommendations about the clothes my aunt had bought for my Grandmother to be buried in.  I again had never really realized that people went shopping for that.  The clothes were all red.  My Grandmother had requested to be buried in red.

Later, my mother and I made preparations and returned to the hospice.  We were going to be taking the night shift.  It was Tuesday evening. 

Mother and Me

I glanced at my text messages while in between classes.  I always feel a bit of dread when I do this, though about ninety percent of them don't contain anything grave.  I started feeling that way in April, 2014 when my stepfather officially started falling apart.

"Grandma has had a stroke." the text from my mother read.
I was obviously taken aback but really wasn't sure how to react.  My grandmother is ninety-six years old.  She has had various ailments, but somehow always comes out of them.  A stroke obviously wasn't good, but I couldn't really digest what this might mean.
As I left school, another text came through.
"Grandma is having seizures.  I am flying to Michigan tonight."
My breath seized in my chest.  I found myself hoping that my mom would make it to Michigan before her mother died.
Gruesome images of my delicate Grandmother having seizures filled my mind.  The horror.  The pain.  I cried.  I didn't want her afraid, I didn't want her to hurt.  The images would not go away.

My mother flew into Flint, Michigan that evening.  It was a Friday.  Flint is the sister city of my hometown, Saginaw.  It was made famous by the Michael Moore film "Roger and Me" that detailed the economic collapse of the city after General Motors moved out.  Most remember the scene where a Flint resident skins and eats a rabbit she caught, because there wasn't other food.  It is one of the more memorable scenes.
"She is still unconscious." my mother texted.
"But does she seem comfortable?" I replied.
"Yes.  She is not in pain."
"They are going to do CT scans to determine the amount of brain damage."

I spoke with my mom on Sunday.
"The test results are back.  She has lost her ability to speak.  Her left side is paralyzed....the stroke was massive, she has a lot of brain damage....".
My mother sounded awful.
"They are going to send her to hospice, we are hoping that she won't wake up, that she won't know the shape she is in.....".
"Alright, that's it." I responded, "I'm coming up there.  I can arrive around four or around eight tomorrow, which do you prefer?".
"Four."

I called my job.  My boss sounded amused that I was trying to call in sick for a Monday, on a late Sunday afternoon.   I didn't know how to explain.
"I need to accompany my mom while they move my Grandmother to hospice." I said, without giving other details.
"Oh, Ms. Wagner, I am so sorry.  Start by putting in for three days, put bereavement as the reason."
Three days seemed like a long time.  When I think about it now I can tell I wasn't really thinking clearly or at least that my boss was thinking more clearly than me.  I just wanted to help my mom through this.  I knew her extended family was up there, brothers and and step-brothers and sisters, all of the spouses.  My mom wasn't there with her husband, and she seemed very alone to me.  I felt like she needed her own wing man; everyone else had one.

I bought a one-way ticket to Flint.  When I arrived at the airport the following morning, my plane had already been delayed five hours because of weather in my layover, Chicago.  I would miss my connection to Flint.  I was surprised when the gate agent switched me to a direct flight on another airline that would get me in only an hour later than my original flight.  I looked through the windows at the gray December sky and ordered my first of many Bloody Marys as I waited the five hours until take off.

My mother was waiting for me at the airport.  We got on the highway and drove to Saginaw.  Christmas lights lined the small old houses and yards.  It looked northern, different than Atlanta in every way.  My mother seemed a little scattered but purposeful, and was attempting to put on a happy face for me.  We drove straight to the hospital.

As we walked to my Grandmother's room, I saw a small crowd outside of her door.  My cousin and her partner, my aunt and uncle... I am not sure who else.
I gasped when I saw my Grandmother through the open door.  She lay still, but her mouth was open and pulling in air.  She did not have her teeth in.  I knew that she would hate to be seen that way and wished someone would close the door.  As I walked through the doorway, my cousin's partner looked at me with his eyes full of tears.  I can't remember what he said, but I knew that he was in pain.

I hugged my Grandmother.  I kissed her face.  I stroked her arm and I talked to her.  I smoothed her hair.  I was never that affectionate with her when she was alive, wait, I told myself, she is alive.  I was never that affectionate with her when she was...conscious.  But now she just seemed so small and delicate, almost childlike but not infantile.

I wanted her to know that I loved her, in all of the ways I never expressed when she was conscious. 
 

Hazy Days of Winter

"Oh my gosh, were you following what happened in Paris?" I asked Oliver's little brother, Cassius, knowing that he has a fascination with ISIS.  He had told me the year before, when he was in fourth grade.  While the rest of the kids spoke of listening to music or sports on the radio, he mentioned that he was more interested in international affairs.
"Yeah totally!  My dad knows a guy that was in the concert hall!"
"You're kidding, is he okay?"
"Yeah, yeah.  You know, seventy years ago, there wasn't really terrorism like this....."
"Yeah, you're right.  I guess people were persecuting Jewish people..."
"The Nazis weren't the first to do that," he answered.  "It was just a fad."
Haven't really heard of antisemitism referred to that way before, but, I guess he is like, ten years old.
He looked up at the sky.
"There didn't used to be all these pissed off middle eastern people...." he added wistfully and trotted away.

Thanksgiving passed in a whirl.  I had a couple of days off, made a shit-load of food, and then went to New Orleans for a few days.  My Monday return to work felt oddly out of place. 

"Yes ma'am," my new little morning duty friend added, whenever I asked him a question.  He stands with me on my distant corner duty station every morning now, making the station a little less of the most pinche, Loneliest Duty Station in the World.  I am not used to the southern-ness of constantly using "ma'am" or "sir" with adults.  It is kind of cute but I kind of want to tell him that we're friends and that it isn't necessary.
"So I can't wait to put my little brother's hand in warm water while he sleeps...." he continued.
"Oh my gosh, so he pees?"
"Yes ma'am".
"Why are you going to do that to him?!" I asked, laughing.
"Because he sucks, ma'am.  I kick him in the nuts sometimes too, ma'am".
His eyes were rolling and twinkling, unaware that half of what he had just said is not in "ma'am" territory.

By the end of my week back to work, disaster was striking again.  I started arranging a sub, thinking of the last time I had had to use one.  She showed up wearing an oxygen mask and sat with her head on the table in our office with the lights off.  She also went AWOL in the middle of the day and no one could find her.  The kids had wild stories about the classes she did show up for.  One group said she kicked back in a chair, took her shoes off and started shaking some sort of debris from her shoes all over the rug.  She spent the rest of the class texting people and rubbing her bare feet on the rug, only stopping to randomly call out "Be quiet!" without looking up from her phone. 

I pulled the trigger on ordering a sub and rapidly found a flight to Michigan.  I really did not know what was in store for me.