Priceless Memories

Eight years ago, my sisters, our husbands, and our children traveled from our corners of the country to meet at my grandmother's house in Alabama.  The day after we had arrived, our group of eleven piled into cars and drove across the state line to Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

When we got there, we found out that there were 15-passenger vans available for rent to drive through the park - and the vans were zebra-striped!  We knew it would be much more fun for all of us to be together in one vehicle to travel amongst the animals who roamed free over the many acres there.  We paid the admission and the rental fee and then headed towards our Zebra Van; as we were boarding, my brother-in-law Peter walked over carrying a giant bag of animal feed.  He said it was a better deal to buy in bulk instead of purchasing individual containers of food for each of us to feed to the animals in the park.  I will never forget the look of wonder on Grandmom's face when she saw Peter carrying that huge bag; she laughed excitedly as she took her seat in the van and then said, "The animals sure are going to LOVE us!"  

Somehow it worked out so that my brother-in-law David took the wheel in the van - some of the time with my niece Daly on his lap - and with my daughter Molly in the passenger seat in front.  The rest of us sat on the bench seats in the back with our windows rolled down, ready to feed the animals as David slowly drove along the gravel road, stopping frequently as wildlife approached the van.  

There was a great variety of animals in the park, from antelopes to zebras.  We all had a blast, including and maybe especially Grandmom, who smiled ear-to-ear the whole time that we were there and laughed hysterically when a big slobbery bison leaned in through the window and tried to lick her in the face!

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We had such a good time there that day that a couple of years later my husband, my daughters, and I went back to the park with Grandmom.  The second time, when it was just the five of us, she was moving much more slowly than the first, and we just drove through the park in our car since we were a much smaller group.  After we had driven through the safari part of the park on our return trip, we went in the gift shop.  Grandmom, who, as I've mentioned, lived on a very tight budget, thanked us for taking her and for paying for her admission, and then she said she wanted to buy a souvenir for us to take home.  Always the practical thinker, she picked out a pair of salad tongs with a zebra carved into the handle of each one.  When she gave them to me after she had paid at the counter, I noticed the price tag said $19.99.  That was a lot of money for a person of her income to spend on a non-necessity, I knew, and she knew that I knew it.  I looked at her, thinking that I should decline the gift and try to get her to return it, but then she said, "Thinking I was going to be able to take a vacation somewhere this summer, I had some money saved. Today has been as good as any vacation, and I don't need anything else, so please accept my gift."  

The zebra salad-tongs, today

A few weeks before, Grandmom had stepped into a hole in her backyard while hanging clothes on her clothesline and had broken her leg.  My dad had tried for years to get her to let him buy her a dryer, but she insisted that it was a waste of money and she didn't need it.  After all, she said, she had raised a family and had lived without one for eighty years, and who could argue with that logic?  When she had fallen, she laid in the yard, unable to get herself to a phone, for about an hour until her next-door neighbor pulled up in his driveway and saw her.  He had called the ambulance and then my dad, and my parents had come to be with her while she was in the hospital.

When I'd called the next week to check on her, she told me that she had a walking cast on her leg and that she would appreciate some help with a couple of things so she hoped we could come to visit her soon.  Of course, I arranged to get there as soon as I could, worrying that things must really be dire if this independent woman needed help taking care of herself.  When my husband, my daughters, and I got there, though, we found out what she actually wanted help with, and it wasn't technically self-care: she wanted assistance with pulling her refrigerator out from the wall in her kitchen so she could do her scheduled quarterly cleaning behind it and with cleaning up debris that had fallen into her yard.  Other than that, she had it covered, she told us, and so we did those chores and then decided to head to the Safari Park the next day.  (Side note: Grandmom had told us to put any limbs, sticks, or leaves from her yard on the curb across the street from her house instead of in her trash can, but I had dumped a bucket of semi-wet leaves in there anyway, thinking it didn't really matter.  As we walked out to the car to leave for the park the following morning, she cooly lifted the lid of her garbage can and peered inside, and then she said, "Somebody put debris in here!"  I had to admit that I had done it, and she said, "Well, next time remember to put all of that stuff on the curb where it's supposed to go; that's what I do!"  Ouch!)

We had a lot of fun on our return trip to the park, but not nearly as much as we'd had the first time when we had gone as a big group.  I have treasured those salad tongs since that day, though, remembering fondly both of our trips there with Grandmom and remembering how she so generously spent her vacation money to buy them for us.

Several years after our second trip to the park, Grandmom had a stroke, and her physical and mental decline began.  Many, many times when we visited her after she was in the nursing home, we talked about how much fun we'd had at the Safari Park; in fact, when her condition had progressed to the point where she couldn't carry on a conversation, we often described things from the day when all 11 of us went in great detail, in an effort to help her to remember that wonderful day and to help her to focus on a much happier time.  

On the night before Grandmom died, as my mom was sitting with her holding her hand, my sister Jennifer called Mom's cell phone and asked Mom to hold the phone up to Grandmom's ear.  Although Grandmom had been unresponsive for several hours before, as Jennifer again tried to use her words to paint a picture for Grandmom of that great visit, Grandmom smiled and her breathing pattern became more relaxed, and I have no doubt that that happy memory was one of the last things on her mind as she transitioned out of this life.

"Not too many people can say they've been kissed by a bison!" Grandmom said. 

Not Knowing - Grandmom's Story, Part 5

Continued from Grandmom's Story, Part 4

Mourning the loss of my grandmother in between the time that she died and the time of her funeral brought with it many emotions; even in the midst of the series of aftershocks that my family felt as a result of the compounded, extended grief after first my dad's death and then his mother's, I found it hard to believe that she was really gone.  She had been slipping away - and it could even be argued that she had already slipped away in essentially all forms except for the physical - for several years, and we knew her time was near, but not coming together as a family to grieve during those few weeks made it difficult for me to accept.  

I knew that I wanted to be prepared to say something about her life to those who would gather to honor her memory; I spent many nights sitting up, intending to write down what I wanted to say but not being able to, either because the words just wouldn't come or because the tears that flowed kept me from being able to see clearly enough to record my thoughts on paper.  I re-read some of the many letters that Grandmom had written to me over the years, and I looked at lots and lots of photos of her from during her life, many of which had also been taken with my dad by her side.  I created a slideshow of many of the pictures and selected background music to go along with it.  None of it helped me to process things or to come up with what I felt were the right words to say as a tribute, though; I ended up leaving to make the trip to the town where my grandmother had lived for 5 decades and some change - and where my dad had grown up - without a firm idea of the words that I wanted to say during the memorial service.

My husband, my daughters, and I met my mom, my sister Nancy, and her husband David at the hotel where we were staying for the weekend; many of the members of my dad's side of our extended family were staying at that same hotel, and, after not having seen the majority of them since I was a teenager, it was a little surreal to keep running into them a little at a time in different settings, in the hotel elevator, the lobby, the parking lot, and the Waffle House next door to the hotel.  I had to tell myself countless times to hold it together, because, as each layer of the family reunited, the subject of my dad's very unexpected illness and death was naturally piggybacked onto that of my grandmother's passing, a recurrent one-two punch that I didn't think I had near the stamina to withstand.  

I didn't sleep much the night before the funeral; I felt unsettled and almost inconsolable.  I texted back and forth with my sister Jennifer who had not been able to make the trip from California that weekend, and together we came up with a message that I planned to communicate at the service the next day.

It's difficult to organize a funeral from out of town, especially in a town with limited resources and where one has limited connections - and especially in a state of compounded grief.  Not knowing what the best thing to do would be, we planned to have the service at the funeral home and then, at the invitation of the members of my grandmother's church, to have fellowship and food afterwards at the church.  Based on a decision my parents had made before my dad had gotten sick, my grandmother's body had been cremated, and my mom had the task of transporting her remains to the funeral home, allowing my grandmother an opportunity to go home in yet another sense.

                       Click to view the slideshow from my grandmother's funeral

When we arrived at the funeral home, we took a few minutes to set up the video projector and my computer so that the slideshow of photos of Grandmom could be shown on the wall of the chapel before the service, and then we met briefly with the funeral director, at which point it came to light that a burial service was not planned as part of the arrangements for that day.  When that realization hit me, I felt the floor drop out from underneath me; it seemed so utterly disrespectful and as if Grandmom's death - and her life - were being disregarded.  I hadn't known that a ceremony for the burial hadn't been planned, and I felt strongly that as a family we needed to lay her to rest, essentially to take the opportunity to do the last thing that we would ever be able to do for her - and maybe for my dad as well.  In the midst of the back-and-forth banter about if and how the arrangements could be changed, my brother-in-law David saw the look on my face and took the funeral director aside.  I'm not sure what he said to the guy, but a few minutes later David came back over and said, "After the memorial service, immediate family can meet the funeral director at the gravesite for the burial of the ashes; is that ok?"  I felt hot tears of gratitude and grief spring to my eyes, and a minute later we were called to come into the chapel for the service to begin.  

The music was playing and the photos of Grandmom were being projected as planned; again things seemed surreal, and I felt as if I were floating to my seat on the front pew.  My father's brothers were in the aisle behind us; his sister had not been able to attend from out-of-state due to her own poor health.  As the music ended, the minister from my grandmother's church stepped up to the microphone and began the service; my grandmother and this woman had not known each other, but the minister knew of my grandmother and certainly of the decades of service that she had given to the church.  She gave an eloquent sermon, a fitting tribute to a woman who had so loved her church and her community and the people of both.  After she had finished, she invited me to come up and speak on behalf of the family.  I pulled out my scribbled notes, and here is what I said:

I know that my grandmother truly appreciated the love of all of you and that she would want to thank everyone who helped her during her life, just as she helped so many of us with her smile, her openness, and her perspective.  So thank you to everyone who visited her and kept her company over the years and to those who ran errands for her once her vision began to fail, especially those who drove her to her doctor's appointments and to Fairfax Methodist Church, which she loved so much.  She would also definitely want to thank my mom and my dad, who did such an amazing job caring for her, particularly over the past few years.  When my dad was sick, he worried so much about his mother.  My mom promised him that she would be there for Grandmom, just as she and Dad had always been, and she was.  When Grandmom passed, Mom was with her, holding her hand, and, for that and for everything else, Mom, Grandmom would want to thank you, and I do too.  

I finished up by thanking people for coming to honor my grandmother's life, although the exact words that I said to convey that part of the message probably got lost somewhere in the midst of my tears, which had started as soon as I said, "When my dad was sick, ..."   I am not a crier.  I felt somehow that my uncontrollable tear-shedding was something of which Dad and Grandmom would not approve - and possibly even something they wouldn't understand; I could almost hear them telling me from behind the scenes to get it together, but I just couldn't do it.  I looked over at my family and at my dad's brothers as I walked back toward my seat on the pew, and I saw that they were all crying too.  The sadness was palpable in the air; after the family members had walked from the chapel into the lobby, we could still hear one man in particular sobbing.  We later found out that it was one of Grandmom's long-time neighbors; while I felt great sorrow at the man's apparent grief, it was a touching reminder of my grandmother's impact and that she had touched so many people, many of whom we didn't even know.  

After the service, family members congregated in the foyer and thanked people for coming as they filed out in the parking lot.  In a quiet moment, I told my dad's cousins Carl and his sister about the dream I had had about their grandfather; the three of us agreed that we were comforted by the thought that our loved ones who had gone on ahead were together now.

After that, we drove to the cemetery and parked near the place where my grandfather had been buried many years before.  The funeral home director and his assistant met us there with a flowers from the service and a shovel; we stood quietly with the sun beaming down on us as we watched the burial of Grandmom's ashes.  It was a simple ceremony, but yet it felt tender and unabridged. 

I will never forget the meal afterwards at the church where my grandmother had been a member for over 50 years, where she had volunteered as the church librarian, and where a couple of years ago the church library was dedicated to her.  The food, which had been prepared by church members, many of whom had been friends of Grandmom’s for decades and some of whom had known Dad since he was young, nourished more than just our bodies.  We didn’t  know most of them, and most of them didn’t know us; but we knew each other’s hearts because we all knew Grandmom, and she was nothing if not heart and spirit. 

Before we said our goodbyes and left the church, we went upstairs to the library that bore my grandmother's name.  We admired the plaque with the engraved dedication to her for her years of service to the church, and we thumbed through some of the neatly organized books on the shelves in the room.  My sister and I came across several sticky-notes tucked inside books; on the notes were two things that made us smile: the name of Dad's business, letting us know that he had donated some office supplies to the library, and a sampling of Grandmom's unique style of penmanship; she had written notes about each book, possibly to herself or maybe to future readers.  

After we'd gotten back to the hotel, some of our group decided to go antiquing in a few nearby stores; my sister Nancy and I walked to a convenience store and bought some beer, and then we sat in the sun and drank it, still wearing our funeral dresses, on the tailgate of my husband's truck in the parking lot in back of the hotel.  Whether it was the sun or the beer or the company - or a combination of all three, sitting out there felt somewhat curative; we knew it was exactly what Dad would have done had he been there, and somehow knowing that helped a little bit, too.

My grandparents' house, where my dad grew up

The next day, we packed up the car and drove around the little town one last time.  We ended our tour by driving past the old textile mill where both of my grandparents had worked for almost all of their adult lives.  The building was in the midst of being torn down, overseas outsourcing having taken the work that had provided a living for many of the townspeople for so many years.  I watched in the side mirror as the mill got smaller and smaller as we drove away, and I felt unexpectedly sad to know that this would probably be the last time I would ever come to this place, a town that held so much of my grandmother and my dad - and even a little bit of me. 

"The Mill"

Not Knowing: Grandmom's Story, Part 4

Continued from Part 3 - Grandmom's Story 

One of the things that my dad worried about the most when he was sick and even before then was his mom, who, since the death of my grandfather many years before, had been living alone in a small town in southern Alabama until she suffered a stroke at the age of 87.

My daughters and my dad, with Grandmom, Sept. 2010

For all of my life, I'd thought of my grandmother as one of the most fiercely independent individuals I knew, a person whose goal it was to leave the earth a better place than she'd found it, without asking for much help or (as she put it) "without burdening" others and without using anything as an excuse for not doing her part to help others in need.  Grandmom has perhaps one of the most interesting life stories I've ever heard, with lots of adventures and even more challenges faced along the way.  She pinched pennies, cut corners, and made due for all of her life, but, a deeply religious person, she never failed to tithe or to give of her time when her church or someone in her community needed assistance.  She was well-read, and maybe that was one thing that contributed to her acceptance of people from all walks of life, of all backgrounds and all races, which was not a practice often seen in that time.  From the way I saw things, Grandmom didn't concern herself too much with what a person's income or job title was or with how fancy of a car or house a person had; as long as someone seemed to have a good heart, seemed to be trying to "do right," and seemed to be genuine and kindhearted, Grandmom liked that person, and, like my dad, she extended courtesy and respect to most everyone she met.

Although the level of anxiety and extreme depression that Grandmom had been experiencing seemed to leveled off for the most part over the course of the weeks after she had been told about my dad's illness and subsequent death, her overall health did not improve.  On the afternoon of April 18, 2011, my mom got a call from the nursing home and was told that Grandmom's condition had worsened.  Mom called my sisters and me to update us as she hurried to get to Grandmom's side, where she stayed for the remainder of the day.  With Grandmom's breathing labored and her skin color changed, Mom talked to the nurses and decided to spend the night with Grandmom so she would not be left alone even for a minute.  The staff at the nursing home was kind enough to move Grandmom's roommate to another room so Mom could sit at Grandmom's bedside in privacy.  Throughout the night, Mom read to Grandmom, talked to her, and tried to reassure her that it was ok for her to go on ahead, reminding her that she was so loved and that my dad and my grandfather were waiting for her in heaven.  Grandmom seemed to be at peace, and, as the first light of day could be seen through the big window in the room and with my mom holding her hand, Grandmom took her last breath.

My sister Nancy joined my mom soon afterwards at the nursing home, and together they dealt with the things that needed to done, including calling the funeral home, packing up Grandmom's belongings, and saying their goodbyes.  There were some haunting similarities to what had had to be done after my dad's death just three months earlier, but at the same time this was a different situation for many reasons.  Given all that had happened to impact her quality of life and given her age and overall health, we all knew that Grandmom was prepared to go on ahead and that she very likely welcomed her own passing from this life.  From my perspective, it seemed that she had been leaning into the light for quite some time, dearly missing her husband of 50 years and many others who had gone before her - and feeling that her purpose on this earth had been served.  Personally, I will say that the news of her death hit me hard but that my mourning was much more for my own sake than for hers, and the grief from her passing and from that from my dad's was so enmeshed it was like pouring gas on a fire.  

I found a group email that my dad had sent out just before he'd gotten sick to update people about Grandmom, and I used that set of contact information to communicate the news to many extended family members and friends about Grandmom's passing and to let them know that we had decided to hold a memorial service for Grandmom in her hometown over Memorial Day weekend to give those traveling from out of town time to make the necessary arrangements.  Mom had the obituary run in the newspaper in Grandmom's town and contacted Grandmom's church to let them know as well.  

A couple of weeks later, a violent storm came through the area where I live overnight.  The noise of the thunder actually woke me up in the night, interrupting a dream that I had been having about my grandfather's brother Hilyard, whom I had only seen a few times in my life.  The last couple of times I remember seeing him, he was using a walker to get around; it had been many years since his passing and many more since I had seen him.  In the dream, though, he walked up to me unaided, looking younger than I remembered ever having seen him but so closely resembling my grandfather that it was easy for me to recognize who he was.  He looked at me and said very simply, "Your grandmother and your dad want me to tell you that they are ok," and then, before I could respond, he turned on his heel and strolled away.

When I checked my email early that next morning, I saw that I had a message from my dad's second cousin Carl, Hilyard's grandson, who had heard on the news that the storm had left damage to many homes in my city.  I was touched that Carl was checking in on us; I had not corresponded with him in the past except for the recent message about Grandmom - but I was stunned at the timing of the communication, just about an hour after I had had the dream about his grandfather.  I emailed Carl back and told him that we hadn't sustained any damage in the storm, but, not knowing what he would think if I told him about the dream, I didn't mention it then - but I did a few weeks later at the memorial service for Grandmom.

To be continued ... 

Turkey Sandwich

When I was about ten years old, my parents decided that my family needed to split up for a couple of days so that we could visit both sets of my grandparents over the Thanksgiving break.  We drove the 400 miles to my mom's parents' house, spent the night, and then my mom and my two younger sisters stayed there while my dad, our yellow lab Dobie, and I continued down the highway 300 miles more to get to his parents' house.  

When we got there, my granddad was in the kitchen, with food cooking on the stove and in the oven and in all stages of completion all over the kitchen.  He was the big-time cook in the family; he loved cooking and was very good at it.  As usual, he let me sit on a tall stool and help him stir, measure, and pour, which thrilled me.  The kitchen was filled with conversation and great smells as we prepared and then ate the Thanksgiving dinner.

The next day, Grandmom had to work, but Granddad, my dad, and I stood in line so that Dad and I could ride the merry-go-round that their town sponsored every holiday season.  We ran a few errands and then ended back at my grandparents' house where we sat on the front porch and ate leftover turkey sandwiches that my grandfather had made.  I remember the taste of the sandwiches like it was yesterday; each one was cut into two perfect rectangle halves, on soft white bread and with the turkey chopped and mixed with a little bit of mayo and very finely sliced celery.  It was just the way I liked it.

Two days later, my dad woke me up before the sun was up, and we loaded our suitcases and Dobie into the station wagon for our trip back to my other grandparents' house.  As we hugged my grandparents, my granddad handed my dad a brown grocery sack and said, "Four turkey sandwiches for the road!"  We thanked him, with Dobie lying down in the "way back" of the car, we got into the front seat, and set out on on way.

A few hours later, Dad commented that he was hungry.  The thought of the perfect turkey sandwich was making my mouth water too, and so I climbed over the seat to get the bag of food.  I noticed that the top of the sack was opened, and when I reached inside, I discovered the only thing left in there was shredded plastic wrap.  Evidently, Dobie had helped herself to all four sandwiches as we drove down the highway.  

Dad and I were so disappointed.  We ended up stopping at a truck stop for lunch, which of course wasn't nearly as good.  To this day, I think the best part of the Thanksgiving dinner is eating a leftover turkey sandwich, cut into two perfect rectangle halves, on soft white bread and with the turkey chopped and mixed with a little bit of mayo and very finely sliced celery.  I attempt to recreate Granddad's version every year, but to date I have yet to eat one that is as good as Dad and I thought those sandwiches in the brown paper sack were going to be that day.  Maybe this year ...

The Church Pew

I'm taking an online grief class, and part of the focus of the class is to put together a collection of memories and pieces of information about the loved one who went on ahead.  We have been given a list of fill-in-the-blank style questions to help in the information gathering process; the list includes things like favorite color, favorite subject in school, first job, hobbies, and words of wisdom.  Some of it is easy for me to complete, some of it is hard to remember or to narrow down, and some of it I don't know.  

It's the latter that really upsets me; it makes me think about just how sad it is that many of my dad's stories died along with him.  Luckily, my mom and my siblings can fill in some of the information that I don't know, but, when they have exhausted their repertoire, that's all there is.  And that hurts in a way that I didn't know existed before.

When my dad was in the hospital waiting for the surgery that resulted in his being officially diagnosed with cancer, he was very talkative, around the clock.  Some of what he spoke about were things he was worried about, mainly my mom and his mom.  He chatted about what he hoped to be able to do when he got out of the hospital.  He asked about each of his grandchildren and said he could hardly wait to see them again.  In between these conversations, though, he said a few things that were out of the blue and some that were out of context and maybe even out of the realm of what we could understand.  One of those things he said was that he could see his dad, who had passed away years before, and a man whom he said was his "first preacher" from when he was a little boy and whom he said had a last name of Whitehead.  According to my dad, he could see both of these men sitting at the end of a church pew.  He didn't seem to know what they were doing or what else was going on in that scene, but it did seem to leave him a little unsettled.

Fast forward about 7 months later, after my dad and then his mom (my grandmother) both had gone on ahead, and my extended family on my dad's side had gathered for a memorial service for my grandmother in her hometown in Alabama, which is where my dad grew up.  I asked several of the people who had known my dad as a child, including his brother, if they remembered a preacher by the name of Whitehead, and they all said they did not recognize the name.  The story remains a mystery, and the fact that it probably always will bothers me, a lot.  I wish I could hold onto every bit of my dad that ever was, every memory and every fact, even those that I didn't know yet.  I guess there is a kind of grief for the loss of those things that comes along with the grief of the loss of a loved one, too, yet another thing that I wish I didn't have to know.

Not Knowing: Grandmom's Story, Part 3

Continued from Not Knowing, Grandmom's Story Part 2

In reading the book "Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying," by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly, I came across many things that spoke to me in regards to what my family and I had experienced during the end of Dad's illness.  I read the book with a goal of gaining some insight and perhaps even some perspective about my dad's death, and, in the process, I began to see that there might be another reason for the recent changes in my grandmother's emotional state besides the cognitive decline associated with her medical condition.

One section of the book is about things that may be needed in order for a person to die peacefully:

"Some people realize a need for reconciliation.  Some request the removal of a barrier standing in the way of a peaceful death. Still others need particular circumstances to die peacefully - perhaps choosing the time of their death or the people who will be there.

Realizing what they need, dying people often become concerned; some communicate a tremendous urgency.  Coherent requests usually bring action.  But requests that are vague or indirect may be missed or ignored, leading to frustration, anxiety, and sometimes agitation.  If the awareness of an important need comes late - when death seems to be imminent - the person may delay or prolong the process of dying in an attempt to settle an issue or effect a final reconciliatory meeting.

A person's anxiety, agitation, or prolonged dying can be upsetting for everyone ... Often, the response to agitation is to sedate the patient ... Sedatives may help relieve agitation, but medicines alone are not the answer."

Reading these passages caused me to see some things in a new light, not just about my dad's passing but about Grandmom in her terminal condition, including the fact that our decision not to tell her about Dad's illness or his death might not be the best choice.  According to the authors, "Sometimes a family decides to withhold info about the death of someone the dying person knows.  While this is typically done out of kindness and concern, the truth often brings peace instead of discomfort or upset to the dying person."

I shared that insight with my mom and my sisters, and we decided that Grandmom needed to be told about Dad.  None of us wanted to do it, but we believed it was in her best interest and we hoped the information would help to ease her mind.  As my sister Jennifer recounts, "We were so worried that she would get the idea that he abandoned her, that he didn't want to visit her again, or maybe even that he didn't love her anymore, and of course we wanted to do anything we could to prevent her from those thoughts, which of course were absolutely untrue."  We resolved to tell her the next time one of us could go with Mom to visit her. 

Shortly after that, on the Tuesday before Dad's burial was scheduled on Saturday, Jennifer arrived at our parents' house, and she and Mom went together to see Grandmom.  Here is Jennifer's recollection of what happened when they got to the nursing home:

We rounded the corner and saw that Grandmom was sitting up in her wheelchair, which was parked just outside her bedroom door.  We greeted her, and then I kneeled down right in front of her and held both of her fragile hands in mine.  I said something like this:

"Grandmom, I want to tell you something that might make you sad, but I feel like you need to know, and  I don't want you to worry.  Bill was sick and had cancer.  He went to the best doctors and the best hospitals, but, even as strong as he was, he was not able to fight off the cancer.  He passed away and is in heaven now with God and with Roy [our grandfather, Grandmom's late husband].  He is not in any pain.  You should not worry.  Vicki and Stephanie and Nancy and I were all with him while he was sick, and we took good care of him.  He always asked about you and tried so hard to come back to see you again, but he was too sick.  You were so important to him, and he loved you so much.  We promised him that we will take care of you no matter what. Then, when God decides it is your time, you will get to go to heaven and be with Bill and Roy again."

Somehow I did it without crying -- I just felt really focused on giving Grandmom some relief and definitely did not want to cause her any additional sadness or worry about why I was sad, and so I just talked clearly and slowly and looked right into her eyes and told her.  She wasn't really able to talk much, but she definitely seemed to be listening to me, and I truly think had a look of relief and understanding on her face after she heard the news.  She did not cry.  A little while later, when we left, I hugged her again and told her I loved her and that Dad loved her and that we did not want her to worry. 

In the days that followed and over the course of the next two months, the nurses reported that she was sleeping better and was much less anxious.  She required fewer medications and wasn't crying anymore.  We like to think it was because she understood that her son loved her until he took his last breath and that, given the information about what had happened to Dad, she was able to hold onto the belief that he had gone on ahead but was waiting for her in heaven. 

To Be Continued - Part 4 of Grandmom's Story, Coming Soon

Not Knowing, Part 2

Continued from Part 1

It's not always easy to visit someone in a nursing home; seeing a person that you care about in that type of environment often brings up a lot of emotions, some of which are not very pleasant.  Although I did it as often as I could, before my dad got sick, I thought it was emotionally difficult to visit Grandmom; she had changed so much in such a relatively short period of time, and she seemed so sad, so lost, so much of the time.  

Dad with his mom, on her 89th birthday, one year before she was put on hospice and 13 months before he was diagnosed with brain cancer

After Dad's diagnosis, though, it was even harder, physically - because my sisters, our mom, and I needed to be with Dad - and emotionally - because we had decided not to tell Grandmom about Dad's condition.  When we went to see Grandmom during that time, we had to come up with things to talk about in her presence that didn't have to do with what was going on with Dad, which was very challenging because, truth be told, Cancer and the things that came with it were pretty much all any of us were thinking about then. But we did what we had to do, and we visited Grandmom as often as we could, as Dad made it through surgery, and then went to rehab, and then went to the Brain Tumor Clinic at Duke, and then started chemo.

My family had made the decision not to tell Grandmom about Dad's illness early on; when my sister and I went to visit at the nursing home for the first time after Dad had been diagnosed, we shared the bad news about Dad with the staff there but made it clear that the information was not to be shared with Grandmom as we did not want to upset her.  Then, when Grandmom took a turn for the worse on the day after Thanksgiving, we took that decision a step further by extending the shelter to Dad as we kept the news about Grandmom's decline from him. As we had been doing with his mom, we didn't want him to have to worry or to feel guilty about anything, given what he was battling himself at the time.

Even after the hospice nurse predicted that Grandmom wouldn't "be with us" for more than a couple more days after that, somehow she pulled through, a testament to her strength and a sign of what we later realized but didn't know at the time - looking back from our vantage point now, it seems that Grandmom was waiting to say goodbye to her son, and, not realizing why he wasn't there so that she could do so, Grandmom hung on, literally for dear life.

Me, showing Grandmom one of the cards she got for her 90th birthday, just before she went on hospice care

After Dad's second round of chemo, at his insistence, my mom and my sister Nancy took him to visit Grandmom at the nursing home.  He had been getting around my parents' house using a walker, but he had a wheelchair for longer distances and that's what he used for transport that day.  As always, Grandmom smiled from ear to ear when she saw Dad that day; discordantly, in what I saw as both a relief and also an alarm, she did not seem to notice the wheelchair or the jagged scar on his head at all.  

Not long after that, Dad had to go to the hospital for the second time and was in such critical condition that it was all we could do to manage the care that he needed between my mom, my sisters, and me. My sisters and our children visited Grandmom on Christmas Day, again keeping the news of Dad's situation from her, and reported back that she was doing about the same, holding her own and hanging in there.  Other than that, though, for the ten days we were in the hospital that second time around and during the six days after that when Dad was home before he went on ahead, we relied on reports from the hospice nurse who called every two or three days to report on Grandmom's condition, and we were relieved each time to hear that there had been no change on that front.

Christmas Day 2010

When we made the decision to bring in hospice care for my dad, it was difficult to wrap our brains around the fact that both he and his 90 year-old mother were both on hospice.  The way that Grandmom had defied the odds so far, despite the fact that her doctor and later her hospice nurse had both said her days were numbered - not once but twice, over the few months preceding that time - allowed us to believe that Dad would persevere and beat the odds as well, thus potentially allowing both of them to be with us for some time to come.  Those rose-colored glasses were a very powerful coping mechanism for us at the time, but they were also what created the perfect storm-type of setting for my family to enter into a state of utter shock when Dad went on ahead, less than a week after he came home from the hospital and hospice care had begun.

We just thought it was hard to visit Grandmom before all of this happened; after Dad's death, it was an overwhelming and almost insurmountable feat, for so many reasons.  Again, the shock that we were all dealing with in our early grief made it difficult to put one foot in front of the other at that point; I personally felt as if I was in the middle of a nightmare from which I kept expecting to awaken.  Dazed, confused, stunned, devastated - all of those things made it challenging to do much of anything in those days.  Pretty much everybody that I came into contact with in the month or so after Dad's death knew what my family had been going through, and so thankfully I was spared having to say the words about what had happened out loud:  saying My dad died was something I was not adequately prepared to get through for many months after the fact.  Telling Grandmom that her favorite person in the world, her son, whom I am sure she still thought of as her baby, as someone for whom she was responsible for protecting in many ways, was no longer on this earth, was more than I could cope with at that time.  Even more than I didn't want to tell her, though, I didn't want her to have to know.  Whenever I thought about breaking the news about Dad's death to Grandmom, I kept going back to what I had learned for myself the night before Dad's surgery and what I still believed to be true: not knowing is not always the worst thing.

I saw a story today about an Olympic diver from China whose family kept the news of the deaths of her grandparents and of her mother's battle with cancer from her for years while she was away living at a training camp, presumably so as not to distract her from achieving her goal of winning a gold medal at the Olympics (which she just did). 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY

I realize that the vast majority of people who read that story will think it was unreasonable or possibly even cruel to have kept that news from the young athlete, but I just don't think it's something that can be adequately understood by those of us who live in situations were there hasn't been such value placed on competition and on winning .  I think such values, much like grief, can result in some very different choices being made, but that doesn't necessarily make those choices wrong.  For the most part, all of us do what we think is the right thing to do in the given circumstances, given our resources and our perspective, and I'm sure that's what this girl's family was doing as well, just as we were doing by not telling Grandmom about Dad.

Sometimes, though, lessons can only really be learned by living, and perspective can only be gained through experience.  A few weeks after Dad went on ahead, my mom started getting phone calls from the nursing home about an increase in Grandmom's levels of sadness and anxiety.  Grandmom actually had several episodes of what I can only think were panic attacks; she could not communicate clearly enough to explain to anyone what was going on, and so the only thing anyone could think of to do to help her was to increase her anti-anxiety and anti-depression medicines.  That ended up helping some, but we continued to get reports that she still she seemed distressed much of the time.

Not long after Dad's memorial service, I started going to a grief counselor.  The first thing I asked her in our first session was if she could recommend any books for me to read that might help me.  (Side Note:  That was the beginning for me of a shift from being obsessed with researching treatment for brain cancer to being nearly consumed by wanting to learn more about grief in an effort to cope, something that I continue to do even now.)  The book she suggested was "Final Gifts", which was written by a hospice nurse named Maggie Callanan.  In reading it, I learned many things and gained a new frame of reference, and I also started to think that maybe we were making the wrong choice by not telling Grandmom the truth about what had happened to Dad.

Continued ... Not Knowing, Part 3

Not Knowing, Part 1

One of the things that my dad worried about the most when he was sick and even before then was his mom, who had been living alone in a small town in southern Alabama until the age of 87, when she suffered a stroke.

Kind of like my dad, she lost her independence in the blink of an eye, never to regain it, even though we had hopes that she would, at least to some extent.  Kind of like my dad, she was in very good shape physically and mentally, until her illness struck.  But unlike my dad, in addition to her physical skills, her cognitive abilities also were severely affected as a result of the stroke, and she did not have anyone in her area to take the kind of care of her that was required after that or the resources to have it provided in her home.  And so, as her hospital stay after the stroke was coming to an end, a skilled nursing facility was strongly recommended by the medical staff, and my parents decided to move her to one that was close to their house, one state over from hers.  

The downside was that the move disoriented her more and that, since it wasn't feasible for her friends from her hometown to visit her several hours from her hometown, she ended up being pretty isolated there, at least from people who had been involved in her life as it was before she got sick.  The upside was that my parents were able to check in on her several times a week and to make sure she was getting good care, and the rest of us were able to see her too whenever we were in town.  After the initial landslide loss of function, her memory and her physical status continued to deteriorate, a little at a time.  Eventually she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and she wasn't even consistent in recognizing those of us she had known for all of our lives, but she always recognized her son, my dad.  

Grandmom's first Christmas in the nursing home

Dad and I discussed many times over the years how tough it was to see Grandmom be so changed, so dependent.  She had always been a bold woman who strived to do things for herself and to do her part in making the world a better place.  All her life, she had lived on a fixed income; she did not have fancy things or take fancy trips, but she was grateful and generous and happy all the same.  Before she got sick, at the beginning of every year, she wrote out a detailed budget for herself for the upcoming year and mailed it to my dad.  The few times I happened to see what she'd written, I was flabbergasted at how specific it was and at my grandmother's frugality, and I was amazed that despite the limits of her finances she still committed to tithing to her church year after year.  She was not what one would call a Southern belle; rather, she was much more of an activist and a liberal-thinker for her time who valued individual rights and freedom for all.  

QUITE THE DAREDEVIL IN YEARS PAST:  With her younger brother Freddie, in Daytona Beach, FL ...

... and riding the bull at Gilley's

When Grandmom first got to the nursing home, she needed supervision around the clock and help with some things, but there were some things about her personality that were still the same.  She had always been a competitive person, and we saw shades of that come out in things she did there too; once when we visited her she told us she was the fastest person on a walker in the whole place.  Another time she proudly informed us that she had won the Bingo game there the day before, and she showed us a ladybug broach that she'd won for proof.  She was always so grateful for visitors, even as she became unclear on exactly who we all were, and she especially lit up whenever she saw my dad.

About a month before Dad was diagnosed with cancer, he and my mom sat down with Grandmom's doctor to discuss her steadily declining condition.  She had become completely dependent on others for everything, including feeding herself, and had been having some trouble with swallowing that seemed to indicate that she had had one or more mini-strokes that were hastening her decline.  Because of the swallowing difficulties, she was at risk for pneumonia and she was also having bouts of depression and anxiety, even though she did not seem to be aware of where she was or what was going on around her most of the time.  The physician recommended that my dad, who held Grandmom's medical power of attorney, enroll his mother in hospice care, which meant that she would continue to be cared for in the nursing home but that she would also be monitored by medical staff from a hospice agency who were specifically trained in end-of-life comfort care.  Wanting the best possible care for his mom, Dad signed the papers with a heavy heart; he'd committed to providing for and to looking after his mom years ago and felt in his heart that this was the best choice for her, as did we.

Worrying about her, her prognosis, and her comfort continued to weigh heavily on my dad in the days ahead; in fact, the last text message I ever got from him, which was just before he was diagnosed, was about his concerns for her.  He said he felt that she was declining so quickly that he didn't think she would survive even one month longer.  He said that he was worried about how "the girls" (meaning my children and my nieces, all of whom had visited Grandmom in the nursing home recently but had not seen her in her present condition) were taking the news of her decline; the whole situation was both difficult and sad for everyone involved.  Dad continued to visit his mom whenever he could, as did my mom; thinking about her was a part of their normal routine. 

Dad last visited him mom in the nursing home the day before he was rushed to the hospital and the mass in his head was discovered.  Suddenly, his own health was unstable and his life was at risk, weirdly and shockingly in some ways even more so than his 90 year-old mother.

In his typical way, though, he continued to worry about his responsibilities (his mom being one of the things topping his list) throughout the course of his illness, despite the fact that he was very sick himself.  During his first hospitalization and his stay at the rehab hospital, my sisters and I stood in for Dad, with at least one of us checking in on Grandmom every few days.  It was something we were glad to do; it felt like helping to take care of her was also helping to take care of him.

The first time we went to see her was the day after Dad's surgery.  My sister Jennifer and I went, while Mom and Nancy stayed at the hospital with Dad.  We were still reeling from having just been given the devastating diagnosis less than 24 hours before, and walking into Grandmom's room in the nursing home with a smile on our faces as if nothing was wrong was tough, to say the least. I couldn't shake the anguish that came from thinking about how much had changed in the six days it had been since Dad had last been there to visit his mom, but I felt in my heart that the news that Dad was so sick that he was unable to visit her would be more than Grandmom could (or should have to) handle at that point.  Neither of us is much of an actress, but, for Grandmom's sake and for Dad's, thankfully Jennifer and I pulled it off, and I was glad we were able to spare her the pain and fear that had taken root in the hearts of the rest of us who did know the truth.

After we told Grandmom goodbye in her room, we went to the nursing station down the hall to talk to the nurse who was taking care of her that day.  My mom had been doing Grandmom's laundry, collecting her dirty clothes weekly and then washing them and returning the clothes to her; however, given what we were faced with dealing with at that point, we decided to tell the staff that we wanted to have the laundry done at the facility until further notice.  "I'm Nellie's granddaughter," I said, "and I need to let you know that my dad is very sick and so neither he nor my mom will be able to visit her for awhile.  In fact, I need to give you my contact information and ask that you call me in case of emergency or if Grandmom needs anything."

Behind the desk, the nurse and several nursing assistants all stopped what they were doing and looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.  One of the CNA's leaned in and said, "Are you talking about that really nice bald-headed man that visits Miss Nellie all the time?"

"Yes, that's my dad," I told her.

"He's not sick," she asserted. "He was just up here to see her a few days ago, and he was smiling and joking around like he always does. He's the picture of good health!"

I could tell by the looks on the faces of everyone who was listening that they thought I was mistaken.  I understood their thought process; it was the same one that was going through my head repeatedly, fueling my shock and disbelief as well.  I gave them a brief run-down on what had happened: "He got sick while he was out running last Saturday and was taken to the hospital, where they found out he had a mass in his head.  Yesterday, he had surgery, and we found out that he has brain cancer."  There.  I said it, out loud, for the first time.  I felt sick to my stomach, until the voice in my head told me that it wasn't true, it couldn't be true.  

But it was.  In what would become a pattern from that moment forward, as soon as I delivered the awful news about my dad, I was put into a position of having to try to comfort the recipients of the news.  The second after the words left my mouth, I felt guilty about having had to deliver such a blow.  I've since learned that there is a term for something like this called  'vicarious traumatization,' which happens when a trauma specialist spends day after day being exposed to another's trauma.  But it was necessary that they knew, and the news was out.  "We do not want my grandmother to be told about my dad; please make a note in the chart and be sure everyone knows."  I stood there watching them try to keep their composure, until the nurse whom I had originally addressed stepped from around the desk and hugged me.  When she backed up, she had tears in her eyes, and she said, "I'm so sorry.  Please tell him and your mom that we will take extra good care of Miss Nellie."  I swallowed my own tears, thanked her, handed her a piece of paper with my contact information and instructions about having the laundry done for Grandmom on it, and backed away, before I lost it.  

Thinking back, I wonder if what I thought was true actually was:  did I insist that Grandmom not be told because it was better for her, or for us?  Was it too much for her to handle having to hear the news, or for me to have to tell her?  Was it taking the easy way out in avoiding having to deal with her emotions?  Was it protecting her or us?  I think it was for her sake, and for Dad's, but like a lot of things that went on during that time, I can't be sure.  Whether or not it was right to decide not to tell her that day and in the weeks that followed is something that I have questioned many times since then.  Regardless, though, with Grandmom's care squared away, Jennifer and I left the nursing home and headed back to the hospital.

In a life-is-weirder-than-fiction moment, later that day we discovered that Robbie, one of the nurses that was on Grandmom's hospice service, also worked at the hospital where Dad was.  She heard about Dad from the nurses at the nursing home and came to see Dad in the ICU.  (Maybe she was verifying the accuracy of what I'd said for the rest of the staff at Grandmom's facility.)  It seemed to confuse Dad at first when he saw her there, which I actually thought was a good sign, because it was kind of puzzling to have someone involved in Grandmom's care show up on the scene at the hospital where Dad was.  Robbie asked some questions about what had happened and about what was going on with Dad, and then she told us that she would check in on Grandmom more often than usual and would report back to my parents.  We were grateful to have the help; it eased our minds, especially Dad's, to know that Grandmom would be getting some extra attention and interaction.  

It's funny how what seems tragic can change in a single moment.  As things were, after the news of hospice care having become necessary for Grandmom, my family was grieving.  It seemed terrible to have had to watch her decline as she became more physically challenged and more disoriented.  And now, in the blink of an eye, the tragedy had changed, or maybe it had just widened; our perspective and possibly even our forbearance had been altered by Dad's sudden illness.  I think we just thought that was the one-two punch that we just had to get through, that if we could rally and shore up, things would get better.  We had to think that way; it was the only thing keeping us from falling apart.

To Be Continued ... Not Knowing, Part 2