Grieving a Dissolution Before Death

Each day continues to trudge onward while also furiously unravelling the threads at the seams of my tapestry of life. The days are long and the months are short. Time seems to allude me in almost every way; except one.

Notifications flash one after another on my muted phone during a Library Trustees meeting; it’s about Nana. Today she was tearful and pathetic in the most gut wrenching of ways, confused and terribly alone. I caught a few words before I looked away from the neon green text bubbles - I must look away. For if I don’t look away, the emotions will wreck my face and it’s almost my turn to present for the night. Compartmentalizing my feelings, tabling them for another, more ‘appropriate’ time, I continue my meeting as though nothing had transpired a thousand miles away, with deep pain throbbing in the recesses of my heart.

The meeting went mostly well, and the drive home proved to be a peaceful one - until in the middle of the dark road, I remembered the unread messages. Instead of driving through the darkness, I was now submerged within it, sinking into the discomfort of mortality. The first thought I had was more of a feeling than a thought; a distance. A feeling of being almost so far removed that for a moment, I didn’t know Nana anymore at all. That notion, that feeling unloaded all of its devastation unto me instantly.

Nana has been my rock, my savior, my role model; the only solid footing I’ve had for most of my adult life. How could it be that I do not know her anymore? Simple: I am no longer there. There’s a guilt associated with leaving someone you so deeply care for in the throes of their need. Honestly, in all honesty - even if I’d stayed, aside from the immense difficulties my family would have otherwise continued to face situationally, I don’t know that I’d have the guts to be there for her; to hold her for days, weeks, months, years, until she finally goes into that last fateful night.

Nana isn’t doing so well; not since she was diagnosed with heart failure earlier this summer. Her memory is worse. Her temperament and attention span are short; like a young child’s. The ability to problem solve, to logic her way through various scenarios is dwindling. Slowly, her actual spirit is dimming, fading so unspeakably slowly that it’s one of my life’s greatest tragedies. A tragedy of epic proportions; one that my brain refuses to welcome.

The day I revealed my newly bald head, she didn’t recognize me. Once she did, she was aghast. The act of shaving my hair off became so offensive that she wiped it completely from her mind. The next time she saw me bald, she reacted just as poorly.

“Would you like me to wear one of my wigs?” I finally asked.

“Yes, I would.” She replied sternly.

Normally I wouldn’t change my appearance for anyone; Nana included. I’d already had a conversation where I told everyone that she would have to get used to it, but that day I decided, ‘oh well.’ After I donned the wig, for the rest of the call she relaxed. She even commented toward the end how beautiful I looked and how gorgeous my hair was now. She had cleared away all memories of my bald head and had even forgotten that the hair she kept steadfastly admiring was 100% fake.

What I didn’t realize until those moments was that she no longer has the ability to accept me as I am. It’s not her fault; her mental state from day to day ranges from emotional eight-year-old little girl to confused and depressed ninety-something elderly woman. The energy she used to put into accepting that which she did not care for has dissipated. The need for adherence to polite social norms has disappeared. Today, it’s all she can do to self-sooth. Each day she becomes closer to a frightened child than the commanding, captivating, wise old empress atop the familial throne.

And I cannot accept it. I don’t want to accept it. Yet, I know I must accept it.

The stillness of the dark night consumes the idea of hope. The darkness has its place, too. Alerting us to the inevitabilities of life and death, easing the blow of the return to the circle of life. Hope is for the future. What happens when the future is now and there is not much more of now to go around? Hope dies.

Hope death is like an ego death; it hurts like hell and it’s awful, yet it’s freeing and resolutely transformative. Once the last ounce of hope vacates, peace is welcomed. I am letting go of my last shred of hope. Hope for a change. Hope for peace. Hope for radical acceptance. Hope for a way around this massive fucking grief.

Looking into Nana’s eyes has left me empty for weeks. Glimpses of who she really is, her soul, peak out every now and again and they sustain me, like bread crumbs, until the next time. Each Facetime, each hello, and each goodbye leaves me with a little less of her to hold onto every time. Her soul is transitioning into the deep, beautiful beyond one strand at a time, and I hate it. I’ve always striven to be more of a “just rip that bandaid off” type of girl, who tolerates nary a millimeter of prolonged inevitability. Losing her at a snails pace, one soul strand at a time, is unbearable.

Immediately I think of my cousin, of the burden bequeathed to her by those who would not accept accountability. The long nights of caretaking. The time missed with her children. The crushing emotional weight of voicemail after voicemail of our second mother reduced to a terror-stricken shell of what she once embodied. And then I think about how much more heartache I would have endured had I stayed. The guilt is tremendous, but there is rarely regret. But, sometimes in the lonesome recesses of my mind when I force myself to remember that she will be gone soon, I wonder.

People say to remember your loved ones the way you loved them. But what happens when your loved one is still alive, but is no longer the one that you used to know? An enormous part of me wishes I could sit at her bedside five days a week, bringing her candy and coffee as she beats me at spades. That we would laugh and laugh as we used too, that I could feel the warmth of her love from across the kitchen table just one more time. Even if I were there, sitting at her side, I am beginning to recognize that those days are already gone. Now we are entering into the time of the ocean becoming a drop, and the drop becoming the ocean.

So far away, I don’t know how I can be there for her. I put on my blonde wig, the way she remembers me best. We chat and make small talk as she asks me the very same questions she’s asked every other week for the last three months. The only new ones consist of asking names she’s forgotten, including that of my own son. As this journey becomes harder and harder for me, it is not lost on me that the experience for her is ten-fold. It’s no longer about me, my feelings, or my pain. She did a very good job of making it about me for almost thirty-five years. Now, it is her time to shine, and simultaneously supernova.

It is my turn to make it all about her, to do whatever it takes to ease the discomfort of her transition, to remind her of the love all around. My turn to sustain the heartache in secret, to emit nothing but a strong, united front. My turn to guide her through the dark. My turn to embrace radical acceptance so she can embrace it, too.

I love my Nana more than most people on the planet. There are maybe just shy of ten others I love so very much. This is what makes the heartache excruciating. Yet, I will call on Saturday at lunch with my fake hair on and a warm, welcoming smile underneath a hefty layer of grief because it is what she needs. And maybe, it is also what I need. To see her smile and laugh, the last glimpses of the sun before it gifts its final spectacular burst of generous, glorious light.