And Speaking of Loss...
One year ago tonight my maternal grandmother, Mary Wagner, left this mortal coil. It was no surprise; she was at home, literally on her deathbed, and 94 years old. She'd had a very, very long life - albeit sadly, in my eyes, a rather empty one. She never traveled anywhere, never really did anything, had no hobbies, didn't even read much. But she was my grandmother - not many people have a grandparent when they are 40 years old.
So much of my childhood was spent at her little house in Burbank; she had a kidney- shaped swimming pool that I spent every summer swimming in. We celebrated every July 4th there up until 2006 or 2007 I think - even as my grandmother slid into senile dementia. I had years to watch her slowly fade away. She was incredibly lucky with her health; I've had more health issues in 41 years than she did in 94. She smoked for 60 years but it didn't seem to do her any harm. She failed quickly in the end; only one hospital visit for the inevitable last December. She suffered from congestive heart failure. She slowly she stopped getting out of bed, stopped moving around, stopped eating, stopped drinking. We couldn't really tell if she was suffering; a couple of days before she died, my cousin and mom and I were with her and she seemed highly agitated...as if she was aware we were there but couldn't open her eyes and communicate with us. Who knows...perhaps she was already lost in her own world. Nevertheless, a nurse came in, either on the 1st or the 2nd to give her a few drops of liquid morphine and as I predicted, she was quickly gone.
My mom and I met at her house and waited for the...what? Two young men who came from the funeral home to take her away. Her 24 hour caretaker had taken the pillow out from under her head, and made sure the hospital bed was flat, so she would not be frozen in some odd rigorous shape. She looked ancient...and gone. Not asleep, but gone. My grandfather broke down repeatedly crying, as did her caretaker, who really loved her. We all cried together.
Due to lack of communication and my work schedule and my mother's total lack of sentimentality, I never got to go back to her house after the day of the funeral, when we dropped off my grandfather. That was the last time I saw the house the way it was as I was growing up. My grandfather pretty much gave everything away to the caretaker; my aunt and uncle sold or threw out the rest. I got some Christmas decorations I wanted - simply for sentimental reasons.
It's funny. I had plenty of opportunities to say goodbye to my grandmother. But I never really got to say goodbye to the place where I spent 40 years sleeping over, playing with my brother and cousins, eating breakfasts and dinners and my grandma's famous baloney sandwiches. I never got to say goodbye to that swimming pool, which meant so much to all of us that I think it was mentioned several times at my grandma's funeral service. If you think I'm odd for missing a house, so be it. If you find me peculiar for not being able to say goodbye to cement and wood and brick and stone, to old ghosts in the den, and old, faded board games in the closet, to cracks in an old swimming pool, I understand. I am weird in ways other people aren't, and I accept that.
When my paternal grandmother Patricia died in 1995, also at the age of 94, I was the one who cleaned out her house. My father was failing fast and it would only be a year later that he'd be gone too. I'd spend a fair amount of time at my Nanny Pat's house as a child, but I wasn't nearly as attached to it as I was my grandma Mary's house. Still, when I'd emptied out all the drawers and rid the house of decades of history, I thanked the house for the good memories, and said a proper goodbye. Yes, the house and I had a "moment" so stop laughing! Very rarely I will drive by the house, and it still bothers me that other people live there now. I obviously have attachment issues.
I was so angry that my mom had not allowed me to see my grandmother's house before it was emptied out. I still am to a degree. But there's nothing I can do now. My mom and aunt sold the house; neighbors told my mom the new owners were doing construction on it. Blasphemy! BTW, this house was built by my grandma and grandpa in 1938; I have a picture of it after it was just built - the only house on a large dirt lot. My grandma lived there 70 years. Unreal.
Burbank is the city where I was born; now it's a city of ghosts to me. I don't like going there. It's where my father lived and died so horribly, and both my grandparents died there, in the same month no less, and all my relatives are buried at the cemetery near the city. I refuse to ever drive down the street where my grandma lived, ever again. I don't want to see a reconstructed house, or another car in the driveway. All I have are my memories now. At night I can close my eyes, and picture my cousins and I playing in the pool, or walking down the street to get some candy. I see us running through the house or in the yard on a long, warm summer's evening, or eating Fruit Loops at the breakfast table at dawn while my grandfather sipped his coffee. I see my grandma in her eternal pose, sitting at the dining room table, a cigarette in one hand, coffee cup in the other. I see my grandpa sitting in his lawn chair on the porch and my brother and I played hide and seek in the yard.
I am sad, but I also feel amazingly lucky to have all these wonderful memories. And they are mine, and no one can give them away without telling me, or take them from me until the day I die or my mind starts to betray me. That is my solace. As Benjamin Button says, "Nothing lasts." Truer words have never been spoken.
Photo: My grandmother Mary and her caretaker, Delia, at the last Christmas we spent with her, in 2006
