SHAFTWAXER

Saturday night, around 9:30pm, she passed away.

My wife and brother and I had been wondering exactly how aware she was that “this was it”. She would occasionally say things that led you to believe that she wasn’t aware, that she really believed that she would see you again, but the more I think about that, she was either speaking spiritually, or she was speaking that way because she didn’t want anybody to feel awkward or uncomfortable.

Saturday evening, after eating her dinner, she made an interesting request. My grandmother was incredibly diabetic. For my entire life I could recall her dealing with it, and the slightest variance would put her in a very dangerous place. One of her absolute favorite things that she couldn’t have for the past few decades was a hot fudge sundae. She loved them, but she had to refrain because of her diabetes.

Saturday night, she asked for a hot fudge sundae.

The nursing home, with strict instruction to provide “comfort care”, obliged. Very shortly, they gave it to her, and she ate almost the whole thing. She loved it. Very shortly thereafter, she passed away. I think she knew. And there is something about that whole event that puts an odd smile on my face.

She lived a long and incredibly full life. Up until the last 5 or 6 years, she didn’t miss a beat. She was a strong, tough woman. In many ways, my grandparents on that side of the family were the best example of how to be a loving couple that I had in my life. I think the best example I had about being a loving husband and in general great man would be my grandfather, and I know that losing his wife of almost 69 years will take a serious toll on him.

So after many trips to and from the hospital, fighting really fucking hard the whole time, it’s finally over. And in the end, she got her hot fudge sundae. I’ll miss her. A lot.

Today was fucking surreal.

My grandmother has been on a slow, downward spiral for the last 4 or 5 years really. She is an otherwise strong and active woman who finally had hit the wall with a number of issues. She had been on dialysis for the last 3 or 4 years. Had been. As of 2 days ago, they stopped as it wasn’t really doing any good anymore. I got the call Monday night, so yesterday, it was off to visit and essentially say goodbye.

It’s fucking crazy. She has been there for 30 years of my life, and she is a tough woman. I guess you always have this feeling inside you that they are invulnerable and immortal. I never really had to deal with any of my grandparents dying until 2.5 years ago. In that sense, I was extremely fortunate.

I guess she has been occasionally in and out of various levels of dimensia. Sometimes she’s spot on, sometimes she’s a little time shifted. I knew that she would not have any problems remembering me though. There was a time when she landed in the emergency room 4 years ago. It was extremely serious, and most of us didn’t think that she would make it. During the 2 weeks that she was in emergency intensive care, she was essentially unresponsive, but the 2 people that she would make slight acknowledgment that somebody was out there were my grandfather and myself.

So there I was, standing there with my wife, my brother, his family, my father, my grandfather, and my cousin. We are all visiting. We are all essentially watching her die. I guess you could say we are all dying, just at varying rates, but that would otherwise be astonishingly and unnecessarily morbid.

My grandfather knows this is the end. He has been insanely strong taking care of her for as long as he did. Next month they would have been married for 69 years. Fucking amazing. I guess if there was somebody who was my role model for being a successful husband, he would be it.

The last time I talked with her on the phone, I told her that I was going to be coming sometime soon and that I would be showing her all the pictures from the wedding and the honeymoon. Turned out that yesterday was that time. There is something strangely comforting in knowing that I was able to share that incredibly important moment in my life with her, even if it was just in looking at the pictures on the laptop and telling her the stories behind them. Every time that I have visited her in the hospital or the living center, I figured that it was my job to tell her stories since she was unable to get out and do things herself. Even if they were otherwise mundane to me, I knew that she was just happy to have somebody visiting her and talking with her.

If you know that it is the last time that you will ever talk to somebody or see them, what do you say? Honestly, I wasn’t sure, so I just helped her eat her strawberries and her jello.

She finished her lunch, and she had gotten tired. My grandfather was sitting next to her bed and holding her hand. He was watching his wife die. That blows my mind. I went over to my grandmother, hugged her, kissed her, and told her I would be in the other room getting something to eat while she rested. I told her to stay out of trouble like I usually do. She was happy to see us.

When I came back from lunch and poked my head in the room, both of them were asleep, still holding hands. I didn’t want to wake them. 2 people still in love almost 69 years later. I’m alright with that being how I will remember it.

I started to feel myself tearing up, so I silently said that I was sorry, and I said goodbye. Forever.

It’s so incredibly hard to wrap my head around it.

So yeah, kinda neglected this page for a while. Sorry about that.

It appears that I am married. I can tell because there is a rather large silver band around my left ring finger. When it was all said and done, the wedding day went quite well. There were a few stresses (which I imagine are to be expected), but in all it went over very well. People had a good time, our ceremony was unique and relevant, and finally, all of that planning came to fruition.

I was slightly surprised to see that before the ceremony I was feeling quite edgy. Not quite nervous, but man. The women have it much easier in a way. They get to play and get their hair done, do their make-up, get ready with the dress, all that shit. It pretty much takes up their entire morning up until the ceremony begins. Me? I did laundry. Emptied the dishwasher. Didn’t really have shit to do aside from wait. And think. Once things were going, it was much better for me. And my wife? Fucking gorgeous in her dress.

Being married kicks ass.

The honeymoon was also pretty great. It was pretty much exactly what we both needed. It was long enough that we got to see and do lots of cool shit, while being just long enough that by the last day, we were pretty much ready to come back home and take a few days to decompress. San Francisco was lots of fun. We always had things to do everyday, but we had also always managed to leave some time in our schedule so if we wanted to do something else a little more spontaneous, we had more than enough time to do it.

This turned out to be good as many of the best things were spontaneous. The most notable was a side trip down a road to a northern peninsula that dumped us on a short foot trail that emptied out on the Pacific Ocean. Magnificent. And the drive around that part of the state was incredibly fun. Driving along California 1 is tons of fun if you are into that kind of thing. It was great, I didn’t even think about work until the afternoon before we came back.

So here we are, about 6 weeks or so since we have been married. Nothing really seems all that different, after all, we had already been living together (in sin!) for the last year, and before that we might as well have been living together, just with our shit spread apart between 2 apartments. I think what it really comes down to is that the difference is in more how people perceive you and your relationship. The change (somewhat against the normal grain) comes more from outside rather than in.

I’ve been busting my ass as best I can at work. I don’t think that I am working faster than before. If anything, I think I’m slower. I do feel, however, that the quality of my work is the best that it has been. For working in a highly creative field, this really makes me feel good. I’m most pleased with how far ahead I’m managing to plan visually, often months before I will get around to making it happen. This is good. Still, the whole wedding thing kinda set me back a bit. My list of things to do is a little over half done, so with some luck, I’ll be making solid headway on that over the next week.

We also have made some new purchases. With the wedding money, we were finally able to get a new dining room table and chair set to replace the hand-me-down stuff we had been using. It wasn’t bad, they were sturdy and solid, they were just rather old, beaten up, and showing their age. My computer also had a bit of a temper tantrum while we were gone on the honeymoon, and since my computer is pretty much my total life line for my work, something needed to be done. The result is a fantastic new machine I built. I had not built a machine entirely on my own in years. I was pleased that I was able to make it happen with an absolute minimum of issues. We also ended up getting a Playstation 3. Holy shit. People were right. Once you have it, you get it. It’s going to be an incredible machine, and it really is the media center of our entire home and network. Wow. We picked up the BBC “Planet Earth” 4 disc Blu-Ray set to go along with it and our 1080p TV. Holy shit. Stunning.

So yeah. I’m back.