Just Die Already

Face to face with a stranger, I didn’t know exactly what to say.  “Um…I’m Ian.” She didn’t seem to recognize the name. “I’m a grandson. Are they asleep?” I pushed past her and entered a house I’ve known literally as far back as I can remember. She said something as I headed down the hall to my Grandparent’s room, but I ignored her.

They were not sleeping as it turned out; they were talking to Uncle Kevin on the phone. They looked surprised to see me. I was surprised too. There was no longer just one bed in the room, but two. The newcomer was a hospital bed.

My grandmother was sprawled out in it; she had tubes in her nose. My grandfather was sitting in a wheel chair. This was the first time I had seen them in months. I understood why my mom had asked earlier: “You are going over there this afternoon? Do you need someone to go with you?”

“Perhaps,” I thought, “this would be easier with dad here.” My grandfather stood and led me into the living room. Apparently the wheel chair wasn’t for him. “I’ll be right out,” said my grandmother. “Kerri will help me.”

A portrait taken just before Wayne fell ill and was forced to retire from the mill. 

I went out to the living room with my grandfather, and we waited as the strange girl slowly wheeled out my grandmother, then we waited as she was hoisted into her favorite blue recliner.

“How are you guys?” I asked. “Oh, getting by,” said my grandmother. “But how are you? Tell us what you have been up to! We haven’t seen you since you got back from Washington.”

Wayne was presented these water colors of his first mill in Drain, Oregon after he left for Africa.

My grandfather has a cool office. Before he retired it was mainly a place where boxes were stored. But when he came home from working at the mill, he needed a place to work out his creative juices, so the office was cleared out for him. On the walls were placed all the trophies of his former life: dozens of weapons from his time in the African bush, a large brass sculpture of a bull elephant from Lebanon, paintings of the mills in Drain Oregon, displays of the pencil/Venetian blind/chopstick processes he invented, and the picture presented to him by the crew of the first mill he started.

 I’ve always been impressed by this room, often times in high school I would spend half an hour or so by myself, looking at all the accoutrements of a successful life, leaving inspired to dream and work. As I walked past now, I couldn’t help but notice a walker had been added to the collection.

Wayne and Kathy have an extensive medication regimen that is managed by their hospice nurses and family members. 

I came back a few days later. This time I let myself in. My sister was visiting and a different nurse was there. “So this is the grandson who lives just a few minutes away but never visits his grandparents?” the nurse loudly commented as I sat down. I didn’t really know how to respond. 

Kathy leafs through old Ranum family albums as her beloved dog peaches sits by. 

They were all about the annuals that day. The Ranum annuals were something my grandmother’s family had been doing for a long time. Every year all the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas from that side of the family (or at least the ones who remembered) would send in letters and pictures telling how they were and what they were doing. They were also filled with old photos and drawings from my grandmother’s childhood. This particular day they wanted to show me a photo of a ten-dollar bill. Upon close inspection I noticed the signature on the bill belonged to my great grandfather, whose bank had issued the bill in 1918. 

Despite his weak state, Wayne still helps Kathy to her wheel chair on occasion. 

My grandmother wanted to sing some songs on the piano. The nurse wheeled her to the instrument while my sister and I hunted down the old hymnal. I sat and sang “Softly and Tenderly” and “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” with her. “Here,” she said after we were through. “I’ll play you something.” She started in on a circus-y melody but stopped after only being able to complete a few notes. She tried again. And again. She looked at me with a very old expression and said, “I’ve been able to play that song since I was five years old and now I can’t.”

Kathy has played piano her whole life, but is starting to lose her skills. 

About a month before, all their kids (save my uncle Kevin who lives in New Hampshire) were gathered around our kitchen table. They had come to talk to a social worker about “options.” Grandpa had just put grandma on hospice. Towards the end of the conversation, my mother, in a moment of passion, stated her feelings quite bluntly: “Kathy always says ‘I just wish I could die; I’m so miserable.’ I want to say to her, if you want to die so bad, stop eating and just die already!” I can’t say which shocked me more, my mother’s statement, or the fact that no one disagreed with her.

Kathy reads "My Mother's Chequebook" to a captive audience. 

“Go get me that black book off the shelf,” my grandma ordered to my sister. My sister obediently fetched the book for her grandmother. It was an ancient volume of Edgar Guest’s poems. She began to read a few humorous poems to us, but especially to the nurse, who apparently enjoyed poetry and yet had never heard of Edgar Guest. The nurse laughed a boisterous laugh at the poems.

 

I don’t think very much of Edgar Guest. He’s a populist and he caters to the lowest common denominator. My grandfather says he is the Norman Rockwell of poets, and that’s true, except Norman Rockwell had some talent. However, sitting watching my grandparents, who I used to know like the back of my hand but now seem almost like strangers to me, go about their day, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a particular stanza of Guest’s:

 

“Oh, the fun is froth and it blows away, and

many a joy’s forgot,

And the pleasures come and the pleasures go,

And memory holds them not;

But treasured ever you keep the pain that causes

Your tears to start,

For the sweetest hours are the ones that bring,

The sorrow tugs at your heart.”