When Death Approaches

A bit of a content warning up front:

This is a personal post, as I attempt to process my grandma being placed on hospice this week. As such, it contains discussions of death. If death and grief are triggering subjects for you, please take care of yourself and skip this post.

My parents made the difficult decision, along with her doctors, to place my grandma on hospice care this week.

As is often the case for me, my emotional response was delayed. I took in the news when my mom first told me, but aside from the expected sadness, my reaction definitely felt… small. I’ve understood this would be coming, as she’s well into her 90’s and has been suffering with dementia for years. But even when it’s inevitable, death hurts. It took a few days, but the first massive wave of grief pulled me under this morning, and I’ve been crying on and off since.

Inspiration and Impact

I’m not sure my grandma will ever know just how much she’s impacted me over the years, even though I didn’t grow up near her. My family was military, so we moved often and were never stationed anywhere near where she lived. Still, there was a connection between us, and every visit and interaction only strengthened it. Nostalgia has been a constant companion this week, as memories have surfaced unbidden. Some of those memories are silly, like when she held up a little octopus from her fridge, terrifying the grandkids and sending us fleeing the kitchen. Others are more meaningful, like when she sent me a copy of a book that meant a lot to her and asked me to read it so we could discuss. Or when she taught me how to crochet. Or when she let me interview her for a school project on life in Japan. I learned so much about her during those times, and my admiration of her only strengthened.

She was a woman who left Japan in the 50’s to marry a soldier from the United States. I know not all of these kinds of stories are ones of love, but in my grandma’s case, it was. As she described it, my grandma never quite felt like she fit with her family, and she always had grand ambitions of traveling and creating her own life. She was outgoing and adventurous and my grandpa loved her. I think she may have loved him more than he did her, and he was unfaithful in their marriage, but in the end he always made sure she was safe and cared for. Even after their divorce, he provided for her, and she spoke warmly of him despite his failings.

I don’t claim that any of this is 100% historically accurate, by the way. This is just what I remember from our times together, and my young perceptions of those conversations. But when I looked at my grandma, I saw a strong woman who went against what was expected of her by her culture and her family, forging her own path... as much as a woman could in the 1950’s. She was beautiful, and rebellious in ways that must have taken no small amount of courage. As a child who also never felt like I belonged, she made sense to me, and proved that even those of us who don’t really fit can make a life for ourselves. From the outside, her life may have looked simple. She was married, had two kids, raised them in a small ranch-style home in El Paso, TX, and made gifts for her grandkids. But she formed friendships with the ladies at church, kept an active social life, got divorced in a time where that wasn’t exactly commonplace, and stayed connected to her culture as much as she could, despite choosing to fully assimilate her kids. As far as I’m concerned, she did create a life for herself, and that’s inspiring.

Regret and Guilt

I became very isolated during my marriage, and this extended to everyone in my family, including my grandma. I hardly saw her—maybe a handful of times—once I was married. And by the time I left my ex-husband, dementia had already taken hold of her enough that she didn’t recognize me as her granddaughter anymore. I don’t want to blame or criticize myself for needing this time to heal these past few years, but now that she’s declining so quickly, the harsh reality of impermanence and the cruelty of time are hitting with full force. It’s not like she would have remembered any of our conversations if I’d visited her more, but it still feels like we’ve missed out on something. And I feel like I’ve let her down.

Part of why I wrote When Stars Disappear, was to work through some of this grief. But it turns out, knowing it’s coming, and even pre-emptively processing through storytelling, I wasn’t prepared. Like Bea, I wish I could magically make her remember me. I wish I could pull our memories from the ether and have a few more moments together. I’m not ready to let go. And while I don’t predict I’ll spiral out into self-destruction as my character did, I can fully understand her for it. I never got to have final, meaningful conversations with my grandma before she’d forgotten me, and I’d give anything to go back and change that. But I can’t. And so I have to find a way to move forward, knowing it will never happen. I just hope, through the foundation we established earlier in life, she knows somewhere deep down how much I love her.

Loneliness in Grief

My parents and I have done a lot of mending in our relationship in recent years, but we’ve never had the kind of relationship where we cry and mourn together over things. This is especially true when it comes to my dad. Ironically, he’s one of the most emotional men I know, and he’s not afraid to cry at a sad song or a heartwarming commercial. But when it comes to real vulnerability and communicating through difficult times, it’s just never been our dynamic.

I made a clumsy attempt at reaching out to my dad, having noticed the raw edges of his emotions, and it didn’t go well. His perception was that it felt intrusive and clinical, asking what he was feeling and how he was managing the grief. I’ve been worried about him, seeing the snapping responses and overall distance in his demeanor, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it, and my direct approach was too much. And while I fully understand that, and appreciate that he was at least able to communicate that much with me, it’s hard.

I’m so tired of healing on my own. I want to heal in community. And as much as I wish my family could be that community, we’re not there (yet). I do have other wonderful friends and people I can go to, and now that I’m feeling some of the fullness of these emotions, I’ll probably be reaching out to them. Still, I think there’s something inherently lonely about grief. Even when other people know what’s happening, they cannot know my experience of it, just as I can’t fully know theirs. But, while I must carry it on my own in many ways, I’ve also done enough healing work to know that’s not entirely true. They may not be able to understand the specifics of my loss and my experience of it, but they can help hold and carry me while I carry the grief.

Processing in Private (and now, in public)

Writing has always been a way for me to process things. It’s my first thought when something difficult, overwhelming, or just generally momentous happens in my life. Though it’s gotten better in adulthood, my childhood family didn’t really process feelings. I often found myself crying alone in my room, finding comfort and companionship in books and writing. So, trust me when I say, I have full awareness that I’m doing the same thing, now. I may be 40 years old, but I’m still crying alone in my room, processing through the written word. I guess one baby step this time around is that I’m posting it publicly on this blog. In that way, I’m not doing it completely on my own. For now, it will have to do. And the other baby step will be reaching out to my close friends.

Maybe those aren’t baby steps at all, if I allow myself an objective look at it. It’s progress. It’s growth.

Saying Goodbye

I’ll be visiting my grandma as often as I can, for as long as she’s still here. She won’t remember, and won’t know who I am while I’m there, but hopefully she’ll be able to know she’s loved. And she’s not alone.

Knowing death is coming has its own set of blessings and challenges. On the one hand, it allows time to integrate the information and come to terms with it. On the other, it’s an extended trauma. I’m not sure one is better than the other, and no matter how many times I explore these thoughts in my books, I’m not sure I’ll ever draw a conclusion where that’s concerned. Perhaps it’s because both just suck. Both are a reminder of our own impermanence, and of the reality that everyone we love will someday die. It’s the one universal experience we all have, and I’ve come to believe that it’s difficult regardless of how or when it happens.

Please keep my grandma and our family in your thoughts.

Thank you <3