SHAFTWAXER

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.