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"

Follow-up on Foster the Cat

One question I get asked pretty often by people who've read my family's story is this: What ever happened to Foster the cat?  

As I've mentioned, my mom is not a big fan of felines.  We had various pet cats while I was growing up and my parents had a cat named Sport who had passed away a year or so before my dad got sick, but Dad was always more the cat person between the two of them.  

I think I can speak for my mom when I say that there were no regrets about having gotten a cat for my dad after he got out of rehab; his Bucket List had been revised in such a drastic way when he got sick, and there weren't a lot of things on his list during that time that he could do because of the impairments that came from the tumor and because of the treatment he was undergoing.  Getting him a kitten was one of the few requests we could fulfill for him, and we were happy that his wish was able to be granted.  

Dad loved having Foster; in fact, he said that getting Foster was the "second best thing" that had happened to him since he'd gotten sick. ("The first best is having my kids and my grandkids around more," he said.)  He and Foster napped together and hung out together, and, when they weren't doing that, Dad enjoyed watching Foster play.

Unfortunately, though, Dad didn't get better with the treatments; in fact, he got worse, and he was only around for about six weeks after Foster joined the family.  

Mom didn't want a cat.  She had two greyhounds, one of whom was elderly and in poor health, and Foster tormented both of them.  He constantly tried to escape whenever an exterior door to the house was opened, and Mom didn't want to have to worry about him getting lost or hurt outside.  With Dad not around to take pleasure in Foster anymore, we agreed we needed to find a new home for the cat.

But this wasn't just any cat - it was Dad's cat - and, other than Dad's car, it was the first time we had to make a decision of what to do something of his - something he had loved, even if just for a short time.  Something he should still be around to love.  Ouch.

So we didn't want to let just anybody have him; ideally, we wanted him to go to a home with children to play with and to a family that would report back to us periodically about how he was doing.  I felt like it would be like losing a part of Dad if we lost track of Foster, and all of us were already battling against such sadness that I didn't want one more loss to add to the mix.

A couple of my parents' friends offered to take Foster when they heard about our situation, but neither had children and we thought Foster would be happier if he had some kids to play with.  Both of my sisters and I considered taking him, but all three of us already had two cats each and we weren't sure the younger, more energetic Foster would fit in.  

Taking a cat nap in a gift basket

Six weeks after my dad went on ahead, my siblings and I and our spouses and children all gathered again at my parents' house; because my dad had expressed his desire to be cremated and the cremation couldn't be completed before some of the family needed to leave town the month before, we had planned the memorial celebration for a few days after his death and the burial several weeks later so we could all make it back for the service.

That weekend, we talked about what would be best for Foster, and, to our delight, my brother and his wife offered to take him back with them and their two children when they returned a few days later to Philadelphia.  It seemed like the perfect solution; they already had one cat but thought she and Foster would work out any differences in time as needed.  

We were apprehensive about how Foster would behave on the plane ride, but they reported that he did fine. (Don't tell the airline, but he even got to get out of the carrier and sit in my niece's lap for awhile on the flight!)  

Since then, he has adjusted to living with them, and he and their first cat Greta have called a truce.  I know my dad would be glad that his cat has such a great life, playing with my niece and my nephew and going inside and outside as often as he wants, and we are grateful that he ended up in such a good place and that we get to hear funny Foster stories so often.  

At home with my niece, who is showing
him a photo of my parents

Funerals

I went to the funeral service of a dear friend today, probably the fourth one I've been to since my dad went on ahead, a tough thing to do for several reasons, one of which is that it turns my focus back to when we buried my dad.

Before my dad went on ahead, I remember feeling completely at a loss of what to say or do when I went to a funeral.  "What can I possibly say that will make a difference at all?" I'd think, and, truth be told, there were a few occasions when a family member (whom I didn't know) of a friend of mine passed away and I didn't make an effort to go to the funeral.  I told myself that my friend wouldn't miss my presence there, that I would be just one more person in a sea of people paying their condolences that day, and that it wasn't a big deal if I just waited to check in with my friend later.  

But since then my perspective has changed, and I've started thinking differently.  I now know that it is important to make an effort to be there to support the people I care about who are grieving, even if it's hard and even if I am struggling still with my own grief.  For all of my rambling over the past year and a half about what I didn't appreciate people saying to me in my own grief, the truth is that I STILL don't know what to say to another person who is bereaved.  Here's my gut feeling, though: I think those whose loved one has gone on ahead need to hear that the person who died will live on in the memories of and in the hearts of others who knew him or her.  I think it can be helpful for them to hear about what that person meant to others or even just to hear a story that that person has to share about their loved one.  For me, one of the things that I have feared the most since my dad died is that time and the business of everyday life will swallow up the impact of my dad's presence for other people in the world, like he wasn't here or like his life didn't matter to anyone other than to those in my family.  Maybe that is a common thing to fear in a situation of loss, and, if so, maybe reassurance in some form from those who also knew that person will in some way help those who are suffering from a loss.

From my own experience, I also learned that the significance of following-up with a friend who has lost a family member, checking in with them after a little bit of time has gone by, is so often overlooked, or at least it was in my family's case; I think it's something that most people just don't think about doing, or maybe they think about it but just get too busy with their own lives.  I learned how touching little things are as we go through the process of the funeral are, everything from having someone bring extra Kleenexes to someone taking photos of some of the flowers to the strangers along the way to the cemetery who pull their cars over on the side of the road to let the procession go by.  I learned that different families, different situations, and different religious practices result in different types of funerals, and that that's ok; certainly there's no right or wrong way to hold a memorial service or to grieve.  

The funeral today was at my friend's church; the service was very touching and was reflective of my friend's beliefs and her preference in music and verses.  My dad's, though, was a different style altogether.  Before he got sick, Dad had said many times that he didn't want a big service to be held in his memory after he died; he said it embarrassed him to even think about having lots of people gather in mourning for him.  For as long as I can remember, he'd said that he wanted to be cremated, and several times after going to someone's funeral he commented that he would much prefer it if a celebratory type of gathering could be held in his honor in place of a traditional funeral, when the time came.

And so, on the night he died, my mom, my sisters, my aunt, and I sat in my parents' den and talked about what Dad wanted, and the plans were set in motion.  A memorial celebration it was, to be held three days after he went on ahead, to allow for travel time for the many who came from out of town.  Some of the time around the gathering is a blur to me; I see from this vantage point so clearly the shock that blanketed us then and I know that created a haze over some of what was going on.  I remember who came, though, and I will never forget their efforts to comfort us with their presence and their kind words and gestures during the most difficult time in our lives.  The memorial celebration was memorable, in probably precisely the way it needed to be, and it served as Part One of our bereavement process.

Part Two happened six weeks later, when the cremation had been completed and when those of us who lived out of town had a chance to regroup and return for the burial.  One benefit to delaying that part of the process of laying my dad to rest was that my mom, my siblings, and I had a chance to put some thought into how we wanted to have things go.  We'd decided early on to honor Dad's wishes and to have the burial only opened to close family members, and we agreed that we wanted the ceremony to be held at the graveside only and to pay our respects on that day in whatever way each of us decided.  One by one, each of us chose what part we wanted to play as individuals, to honor and to pay our respects.  My mom, my sister Jennifer, and I planned to read something that each of us had prepared in advance; my brother Lee wanted to read from the Bible, and my sister Nancy did not plan to address the group during the ceremony.  As it turned out, though, Jennifer had trouble getting through the end of her reading, and Nancy came to her rescue to finish the passage.  When my turn came, as I read what I had written, I felt my voice shaking, and I couldn't hardly see through the sea of tears that clouded my vision as I struggled to keep my emotions in check enough to get through the words I wanted to say. I thought I would feel some closure, some relief, or some comfort.  All that really happened, though, is that I did more of exactly what I'd been doing since the moment of Dad's passing:  I breathed, I mustered up all the courage I could, and then I pushed forward to do what I knew Dad would want me to do, despite the pain and the confusion in my heart.