Death and the Holidays

This morning, my husband’s mother called to say she had just discovered my husband’s father had died. He has been declining the past 7 years with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). With the exception of several hospitalizations from illnesses caused by complications with the ALS, he remained home throughout. Hospice people began visiting during the summer. This morning my mother-in-law woke and her husband was dead. She had cared for him intensively during the past seven years.

She phoned at 7:18. I had just gone to bed, actually, had been unable to sleep. I looked at the clock when I heard the phone ring. No one calls us ever this early in the morning. I have been expecting this call for a couple of years. The few times we have gotten a phone call early in the morning I would think it must be her, but it would instead be a wrong number. This morning I looked at the clock and thought, “It is perhaps her,” and it was.

It felt odd that I’d been awake when he died, miles distant, amusing myself with Christmas entertainment. I go to bed late anyway but last night H.o.p. was unable to sleep for a long time and we ended up sitting and watching “Santa vs. Satan” together, and I’d done a little blog of it that I was going to put up later, and may yet. By the time the movie finished he was ready to sleep, was curled up in my lap. He had exhausted himself of thinking and talking about Santa. He went to bed. I tried but couldn’t sleep. I stayed up a couple of hours longer doing this and that. Then I decided it was time for me to go to bed too. I thought that now I’d be able ot get some sleep. I crawled into bed. I put the pillow under my head. The phone immediately rang. Looking at the clock, I was surprised to realize it was 7:18. Marty immediately awoke and was the one to answer the phone. I stared at the clock, listening as he realized it was mother and I thought all right, this is it. He said he would be down there immediately.

Marty’s brother from Mississippi phoned and Marty talked to him. Marty said he thought his brother was already with his mom for Christmas but he was still in Mississippi. I called Marty’s mom back to see if anyone was with her. She asked me to call Marty’s other brother, who she’d been unable to reach, had gotten his answering machine. I hung up and he phoned instead. He mentioned his dad having had the flu last week. We hadn’t known about that.

Now come the details. Marty’s driven the 120 miles today to be with his mom. Marty’s brother from Mississippi is on the way. The other brother has had the stomach flu, was very sick with it last night, but he managed to be able to drive over with Marty.

We opted for me to stay here today with H.o.p., rather than H.o.p. going down there yet. I wanted to prepare him for this. He just turned eight and death and mortality are still disturbing subjects for him. Death and mortality bother him. We talk about the cycle of life and occasionally he’ll cheerfully say that it is part of the cycle of life. Out of the blue. Just like for the thousandth time, out of the blue, he asked the other night why people had to die and what happens afterwards. I tell him that a lot of people think they know what happens after death, but the only thing we know for certain is there is the cycle of life. I tell him that death and mortality bothered me a lot when I was seven and eight, that I didn’t know how anyone could live with awareness of one’s own mortality, that it frightened me, and that there are some questions that sometimes all you can do is try to make them matter a little less by occupying one’s mind instead with the living.

This fall he still would occasionally ask what could be done for his grandfather to be well again. We’ve talked about his grandfather’s health. But now his grandfather is dead and I knew I would have to tell him that when he got up and that over the next few days we would need to prepare him for the funeral. I was thinking I would need to talk to him at some point about caskets, in order to prepare him for that, and I would need to talk to him about burials.

H.o.p. still believes in Santa. I stopped believing when I was five and was the kind of child who would exclaim, in awe, when hearing another child my age still believed, “You believe in Santa?!” It wasn’t my intention to be mean. I just didn’t understand. I had assumed H.o.p. would not believe in Santa by the time he was eight. Santa was something he decided to believe in on his own when he was about three and when he took up believing in Santa we helped Santa happen. I read a number of children still believe at the age of eight. His cousin who is six months younger than him still believes. And H.o.p. still believes.

So, last night we spent talking about Santa. A lot. He is quite excited about Santa showing up sometime during the wee hours of the morning on December 25th. We were watching something and Marty said that wasn’t what Santa was like, and H.o.p. said no one had ever seen Santa so no one knew what he really was like. Something we’ve told him coming back at us. There won’t be time for Santa tomorrow morning. We will need to do him tonight, sometime after Marty gets back.

I’ve been thinking it’s a big thing when you stop believing in Santa, depending on how and why that happens and it can happen naturally in a growing up, prepared for it kind of way or in an unprepared way. I’m just thinking it’s two big things for him to reckon with at once…and I hope he manages to hold onto his belief in Santa for one more year because I’d prefer for him to grow out of it in the “I’m prepared to let go and realize it doesn’t exist” way. I’d prefer for him not to be absorbing his grandfather’s death when he realizes there is no Santa.

H.o.p. is well aware his father’s dad has been ill and for a long while. The past year and a half, H.o.p.’s visits with his grandfather were few and very muted. H.o.p. was always good but his grandfather would become quickly exhausted and kids have energy to burn. H.o.p. would go outside and play, unable to play inside. He would come inside and hang out a while in the family room where his grandfather stayed, where he eventually had too his hospital bed, and then H.o.p. would return outside or wander down to the basement. At Thanksgiving he didn’t say anything about his grandfather being on oxygen. He didn’t say anything about the catheter in his abdomen through which he took some medicine and extra nourishment. He went over quite frequently to give his grandfather a kiss. He kissed him goodbye several times at the end of that visit and gave him as best a hug he could when we left. It’s difficult to give someone who’s unable to move a really good hug. Especially if a person hasn’t been much the type for physical displays of affection (H.o.p. is). You want to give a meaningful hug and kiss and the best that can be done is a half hug. You want to give a good hug but don’t want to make the person uncomfortable. Yet you are thinking this may be the last time you see this person, and here all there is will be a half hug and a kiss. You don’t want to invest in that hug the feeling that you wonder if it may be the last hug when the end and the road traveled to it hasn’t been talked about, when you visit and exchange tidbits of news and you sit and watch while the person watches football and this is just how it is, because that’s just how it is and you’re going to watch football because it has always been this way. You realize there probably never will be a time when you say goodbye or talk about goodbyes. So you exchange more little bits of news and then it’s time to go and you give a hug that you are thinking may prove later to be the last hug, and it will be a half hug, and that will have to suffice. You say, “I love you” and try to measure it so it is not too meaningful but is just meaningful enough, knowing it may be the last time you say it. And it will have to suffice. It’s easy to measure hugs with a person who can hug you back. In an instant you understand by the pressure of their hug, just how big your hug should be. You can’t do this with a person unable to hug back and you don’t want to overstep. So you give a half hug but you make it real firm, if short, with an extra squeeze. Will it suffice for them? You look in their eyes. They are unable to nod. They look back and say they love you too and you figure that’s enough to suffice, you know they are thinking as well this may be the last goodbye. They can’t nod but you do. They thank you for coming. It will need to suffice perhaps for the past 30 years of knowing this person, and it will have to suffice for the fuure.

I almost started to cry there and I thought I would and I thought I’m just writing until I finally dig up the tears. Then I didn’t cry after all.

At Thanksgiving, on the way home we were about twenty minutes out on the road when H.o.p. dissolved in big tired chunks, furious at me for some little thing I’d done, I think I’d taken a sip of his water. He remained furious until we got home and he came inside and suddenly was all right and said he was sorry and fell promptly asleep. He didn’t mention the visit all the way home. Said nothing about his grandparents. He didn’t mention the visit for a long while. I thought, the way he was not saying anything at all about the visit, that there was something going on here.

When H.o.p. got up, I waited a little bit and then told him about his grandfather and that his father was with his grandmother helping her out right now.

“I need to brush my teeth,” H.o.p. said, jumping up and running offf to the bathroom.

I waited a little while then told H.o.p. we would be going down to see his grandmother tomorrow.

“No,” said H.o.p. “I don’t want to be around sad people. Sad is schmad. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want you to be sad. I’m not sad. Look, I’ll be silly and goofy and you won’t be sad any more. ” And H.o.p. began a silly, goofy dance, making faces.

As he danced, the manner in which he danced and made faces, I couldn’t help but see superimposed flashes of skeletal costumes from the Day of the Dead mocking death with their dance.

And he said, “Look, I’m a ghost.”

I waited a little while. Then we talked again about going down tomorrow. And I told him many people he didn’t know would be coming by to be with his grandmother. He said again he didn’t want to go. He said he wanted to be here for Santa. “Sad is schmad! I don’t want to be around schmad people. I’m not going to cry.”

I asked H.o.p. to look at me, to look me in the eyes. He reluctantly came over but avoided my eyes.

I told him it was all right if he cried. I told him if he was sad it was all right and it was all right if he wasn’t sad. “All right,” he said in his natural voice, sounding relieved.

For all I know, H.o.p. may not feel too sad about his grandfather dying, though the idea of death itself is disturbing to him. His grandfather has been ill for a long while and H.o.p. has watched, from visit to visit, the progression of the illness. Sometimes death is anticlimactic.

“Am I only dreaming?” H.o.p. later said. “It would be better if it was a dream and Opa died and I woke up. I don’t want to think about dead.”

His dad called. H.o.p. said he would make silly, funny noises when he talked to him so that he wouldn’t be sad. He got on the phone and made silly noises for a little bit, then said, “Ok” to something his dad said and talked briefly with him then handed the phone back to me.

It thunders. It’s raining. H.o.p. says, “It’s the Thunder Birds,” and runs to the window.

Marty calls, on the way back. He says that after being with his mother today he’s unsure if we should go back tomorrow with H.o.p. His mother suggested we wait. He says they spent the day cleaning things out, that his mother wanted everything out that would remind her of the ALS. H.o.p. talks with him on the phone again and I hear him say he doesn’t want to talk about Opa, that he’s thirsty, he wants some chocolate milk.

Marty’s father, I’m told, had on Monday a good visit with many friends. On Tuesday he learned a publishing deal had been gone through for a musical piece he’d written, an adaptation of some music by a popular film composer for whom Marty’s brother worked as a personal assistant for several years recently. Marty had long said that he thought when his father had the piece published he would die.

His children were going to start arriving for Christmas today, staggered, some of us coming before Christmas and some of us the day after. He died beforehand. Marty’s mother was up at six with him then fell asleep. He died between six and seven.

There had been a small pre-birthday birthday party for H.o.p. at his grandparents’ at Thanksgiving. Things were muted. H.o.p. was quiet. They had given him a movie. H.o.p. wanted to watch it. His grandmother suggested putting back on his grandfather’s football game. His grandfather said no, that it was H.o.p.’s birthday, let him watch his movie. That visit, a new thing, he looked less like himself than he did in pictures I’d seen of him as a boy.

Marty calls again. He is an hour out and tired. He is driving back in the van that is equipped for the wheelchair. His mother wanted it gone. He asks me to get the info for the ALS Foundation to call them and let them know it’s up for sale. There will be no visiting at the funeral home. No graveside service. There will be a memorial service on Wednesday. His father donated his body to science. I realize I have a difficult time with that because I have physicians for relatives and I have heard a couple of stories. Just a couple. But those were about students. I have no idea how his body will be used or who will be using it. I think that I hope whoever it is will treat that body with respect. I have to assume it will be. He donated his body to science, , hoping something might be learned from it that might help someone else. If it does, we will never know. One can hope that it will. I think it is a last brave act. He was a minister and lived with certain ideas about faith and healing. They had prayed a long while for healing. And I think it is a last brave act, donating his body to science.