January 15 was one of the worst days of my entire life. The night before, I started to feel sick, and after several hours of hardcore vomiting, I ended up going to the emergency room. I spent several hours there while they filled me with fluids and anti-nausea medicines, but by 6 AM I was cleared to go home. When I returned, I fell into bed, totally exhausted.
When I woke up several hours later, there was an anguished voicemail from my mother waiting for me. “If you want to say goodbye to Grandma, you need to come home now.”
I immediately tried to call Mom back, but her phone wasn’t on. For the next few hours, I was left in an agony of uncertainty. It all seemed so unreal. Even though Grandma has been fighting cancer for the past several months, the idea that she might die seemed utterly absurd. She’d beat it once before, and we had every reason to think that she’d beat it again. Even though she’d just had surgery due to complications from her radiation therapy, she was expected to make a full recovery. For her to suddenly be on the brink of death seemed unthinkable.
Even worse, I was in no condition to travel. Although the anti-nausea medicine had stabilized me, I felt wretched and I was still running a fever. And there was no way I could risk giving my bug to my Mom. But the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to make it home before Grandma passed was like a knife to the gut. She was one of my favorite people in the entire world, and I would have given anything to say farewell in person. In the end, I had to settle for saying goodbye over the phone. They were some of the hardest words I’ve ever had to speak.
And then there was the wait. There are few things more excruciating than waiting for someone you love to die. I kept thinking about how when I was little, I hated having to say goodbye when Grandma would come to visit. I would cry and carry on and beg her to stay just a little bit longer. Twenty-some years later, the sentiment was still the same. Thankfully, the Physicist was with me when I finally got the news. That was a small mercy, at least.
The stomach virus cleared up in time for me to head back to Michigan later in the week. Grandma thought that traditional funerals were rather morbid, so she wanted us to go to her favorite restaurant and have a party instead. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of storytelling, and I think she would have liked how it turned out. But after the party, we were confronted by the innumerable practicalities of death, like how to divide up her possessions. Her house had a bizarre atmosphere of normalcy: it was as if Grandma had just gone out to the store and would be back at any minute.
I had some wonderful times in that house. When Mom and I first moved to Michigan, we lived with Grandma and Grandpa for a bit. It was one of the darkest times of my life, and I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for making a turbulent time of transition much smoother. That first Christmas together was particularly magical, and it set the stage for many more happy occasions together.
Now that Grandma is gone, I don’t have any grandparents left. It’s the end of an era, and a sobering reminder that nothing in this world lasts forever. Everyone we hold dear will eventually turn to dust. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that.
When someone you love dies, it’s as if someone has suddenly dug a great pit in the middle of your garden. At first, you can’t bear to look at it because it’s ugly and raw and reminds you of what you’ve lost. But with the passage of time, the jagged edges soften and it gradually becomes part of the landscape.
The more you look at it, the faster you come to realize that it’s not truly empty. Floating around in the blackness are memories of your loved one, each one a preserved snippet of the time you spent with them. Encountering them will be painful at first, but eventually the sting goes away, and they become celebrations of what you had rather than reminders of what you lost.
Codex Lochianus 