Grandpa died today. When Mark and I got in from a run to McMinnville, we had three messages on the machine. He had had a massive brain bleed and wouldn't live more than a few hours. Mark had been headed for bed. He had a rough night last night, one that would usually have taken him to the hospital, but he had decided to tough it out, not even telling me about it until morning. I told him he didn't have to come with me to the hospital, but he wanted to come, despite his fatigue. So we made arrangements for the boys, left a note for Kaitlyn, and set out.
The drive seemed to take forever. I don't why it felt so important for me to get there while he was alive, since he was already comatose, but it did feel urgent to me. And we made it. They had taken him to a private room. He had an IV for meds to make him more comfortable, but no measures were being taken to preserve what was left of his life. He was struggling hard. The idea Hollywood portrays of people "slipping away" when they die is about as far from reality as Neptune is from Mercury. The body tends to fight hard, even when it cannot win. And Grandpa was fighting. He would be still for awhile, and then his body would shake and shudder. He would gag and gasp for air. It was tough to watch. I had seen it before, having been with my other grandparents at the end. But my cousins and my sisters had never seen that, and they kept wincing like they were being physically wounded. Everybody wanted to breathe for him. Kathy kept saying how it seemed like there should be something to do to help him. But we could only be there with him, to hold his hands and rub his legs and talk to him while he did the tough work of shedding his skin.
I know he could hear us when I got there. There was a lot of subdued noise in the room with so many people around, but if someone came close and talked near his ear, his body responded. And when Kathy came and sat by him and began to talk to him, he calmed down. Then he gradually he seemed to be less aware of what was going on around him. Over the next hour and a half or so, his attempts to catch his breath slowed and finally stopped. The room grew quiet but not silent. I put my finger to his neck several times. Each time, his pulse was slower and slower. Grace came in. She had gone home to let out the dog but made it back just in time. I gave her a hug and the chair by Grandpa's head, and she was with him as he slipped away.
Nobody seemed to want to leave after he was gone, but no one knew quite what to do. Then someone suggested that we pray and for a long we did exactly that. Jonathan walked in, and Kathy broke down and crossed the room and let her son hold her. But mostly we were okay. Teary. Exhausted. But okay. We told stories then, gathered around the body of this man we all loved, and it didn't seem at all odd to be in the same room with a dead person. I thought about how that used to be the way it was done. The body was kept in the home, and the family life moved around it -- briefly, of course. But I really think it gives everyone a chance to process both the life and the death when it is not rushed and sterile and removed from sight.
On the way home, I told Mark that I wonder where Grandpa's spirit was when his breathing had stopped but his heart was still beating. It may be my (often overactive) imagination, but after I had given Grandma Grace the chair by his head and moved to the foot of the bed, it seemed to me that I could sense his spirit, not in his body and not yet gone, kind of hovering over us, watching us, concerned for us, but content. And then it was gone.
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