My Grandmother

My grandmother collects carousel horses and tea cups. She gets her hair done every Wednesday at the salon located on the first floor of her assisted living facility. She never misses mass at the chapel, and she still sings to Jesus like a mockingbird.

I wanted to ask her how she feels about death, but I didn’t. I think I was afraid that she would say she is afraid, and I would not know how to reply. She is 97 and has lived a full life of raising 10 children, 22 grandchildren, and 9 great great children. She loved playing piano and can still remember a few of the old tunes, and reminisces about her performances in the local theatre.

Isn’t it a curious thing, an unsolvable mystery, that we live and then we die. That what we can hope for is a life full of good people and good stories. We will all suffer throughout the human ride, and perhaps the greatest suffering of all is the knowing that one day everyone we love will die. None of us can preserve our life past its expiration date, and we cannot know when we will give it back.

Sitting with my grandmother and the other 30 women and men living at Prince of Peace Assisted Living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, it seemed unfair that there time was drawing ever closer. Singing to Jesus in the Catholic mass about forgiving our sins and bestowing mercy on our wretched souls, I felt death’s presence, stark and unavoidable. Along with the angelic hymns sung in a key my Grandmother can still reach and I never could quite climb too, I felt death leaning against the back wall taking in the scene and waiting patiently for kingdom come.

How does one look at the world they’ve known and surrender to leaving it? How does my grandmother sit in between my mother and me and smile as she receives a wafer called Christ?

Right before the mass, I went to my grandmother’s room. She had photos of her children and grandchildren posted ontop of the cupboards and windowsills. Her ornate chest of wood and glass that held her collectibles fit sweetly in one corner. A TV where she watched the Minnesota Twins play baseball, her keyboard that she played less and less, and few comfortable chairs for her and any of her many posterity that came by to see her.

I walked into her room and saw the altar on her dresser. A virgin Mary Statue, a saint’s prayer card, a candle, and sketch of the white Jesus we were all raised with. Next to her bed there was another altar, one to her late husband, my Grandpa Woody. His name was Merlin Yaroch, but everyone called him Woody. He had the kindest eyes and the widest smile. Even though he passed when I was young, I believe its his compassionate blood that circulates through me. In the way our ancestors do, he taught me about generous love.

There was a photo of their wedding day, a picture of them from right before he passed, and a single photo of him in his mid 20s, right about the time they would have had their second or third child. My grandma woke up to his picture every morning, and went to sleep with him every night. Her eyes still glistened when she recounted how they met and how he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen.

I sat down on her bed and looked at the photos of them together. What a brave thing to keep on living when your beloved leaves their body before you. Perhaps that is the most agonizing of all, when our loved ones get taken from us far too soon. The tears rolled hot down my cheeks as I thought of her holding his hand, saying goodbye. Grief like that can never go away. It is not meant to. There is no getting rid of the feeling of an empty side of the bed, even if another body eventually fills it.

I wondered if my grandmother ever tore through the streets howling for her Woody. If she ever took herself to the riverside and wept until the night fell. I wonder if she called the wise women of the town, those who had suffered through the passing of a partner or child, and asked them to hold circle while she danced like mad in the middle, hissing and spitting like the devil himself was dancing her, letting every part of her down to her bones move with the immensity of her loss.

I didn’t know, but considering my grandma didn’t like to go out of the house without enough jewelry to match her outfit and her hair neatly curled, I guessed not. That made me cry even more. Where does one store their grief when there is no place for it in the culture? Did she have to hide her face behind a handkerchief at the wake, dabbing her eyes as she thanked the guests for coming? Did she have to put on a face as the reality of impermanence and the knowing that she would never again feel his breath on her neck shattered her over to a 1000 pieces, unable to be fully put back together because there would now for the rest of her life be a piece missing.

How do we do this as humans? How do we do this as Americans? How do we shove our grief in a box big enough to contain it, close the lid, and lock it away? Do we not realize by now that our imposed civility, our socially appropriate response to losing someone we love, does not allow us to meet ourselves and each other in one of the most raw and potent experiences of a human life. If we do not allow ourselves to grieve well, we become like a desert with a thirst that cannot be quenched so long as we refuse to pour out what we try so desperately to hold in.

And yet, whether my Grandmother ever felt the safety or encouragement needed to allow her to untie herself from the constraints of propriety and make living wild art of her pain, one thing was true: she loved my Grandfather well past death do us part.

As we sat in the mass and heard the priest talk of eternal salvation for the repented, I felt the relief that must come for my Grandmother, a devotee who never missed a day sitting with her rosary beads, knowing she would see Merlin again. What solace could come from imagining him in a light-soaked field somewhere in the sky, as handsome and jubilant as ever. Perhaps that is what she did with her grief, she swapped it out for a hopeful tale of their inevitable reunion. Maybe, as my grandmother opened the hymnal and sung about salvation, she her heart fluttered with the promise of seeing her beloved husband once again. And this time, death could not tear them apart.

It is a brave thing to live. It is a brave thing to love. When we choose life and we choose love, we are also choosing death. We are signing up for the hardest paradox to reconcile: the more we love in our life, the more pain we will inevitably feel. The more space we give for someone to take up residency in our hearts, the more space we are giving for grief.