Seeing is Believing

I watched my grandmother die two nights ago. At 3:45 in the morning.

She'd lost conciousness hours before, so all we had to go by to make sure she was alive was to watch that fragile chest rise and fall. Listen for the gurgling as she rattled in another breath. Her lungs began to really fill up with fluid a few days ago, and she'd been sounding terrible. Could hardly speak. Didn't have much of an appetite. She sort of stopped eating altogether. Couldn't swallow water, much less one of the thousands of pills she was supposed to take at whatever time for whatever ailment.

Right after dinner, on the night she died, she started thrashing around alot in her bed. She kept pulling at the peach fuzz on her head that's grown back since they stopped the chemo. She kept nearly crying and saying "I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin." She started talking nonsense, told us to take all those sentimental pictures of her family down off the wall because she "didn't want to look at them anymore." She said she saw Sassy running past her bed over and over. Sassy was at our house, in her kennel, 4 miles away.

When it got closer to the end, as her body relaxed and she started to get comfortable, she started muttering. To whom, I don't really know. I know it wasn't to my Aunt Suzy, who'd been sitting next to Maw Maw for hours, crying, singing to her and telling her she was a good mother. No, Maw Maw wasn't talking to Nanny (I call her Nannu, not Aunt Suzy). In fact, she'd ripped her hand out of Nanny's, rather violently, over and over. I don't think she knew what she was doing. Her eyes kept rolling in the back of her head, she kept swinging her good leg back and forth in the air.

She kept looking at the ceiling, at something we couldn't see, and saying "I see Billy and William. They're not close, but they're coming." William was her husband, who died 8 months ago. Billy was her son, who died 21 years ago. He had only been 23 at the time. She kept saying this, I kept looking on, horrified, my mom and Nanny kept crying.

I was frozen, and reminded so much of the time 8 months ago, when I'd been in that exact room, in that exact spot, witnessing the same exact thing. Except with William, my Paw Paw. It almost felt routine now. How sad, to become accustomed to watching the people you love die. Slowly.

Right before she fell asleep for the last time, the very last thing she said, was "Okay, God."

Now, my mom and nanny and everyone in the room thought not much of it, but me.....no, I remembered when Paw Paw started talking with God like he was there in the room. He started with all that right before he went into a coma, which had shortly preceeded his death. I closed my eyes, felt the moisture pooling in them, held them back for my mother's sake, and said goodbye to Maw Maw. Then I went outside, which is where I always seem to run, to cry. By myself. I sat down on the curb where I'd sat on New Year's Eve. Then, I'd watched the fireworks between bursts of silent sobs. Now, there was nothing to look at. Nothing broke up the complete pitch blackness that pressed down on the bubble of earth that was within my line of vision. It was audibly dark, which sounds like nonsense, but that's the only way I can describe it. The street was even more deserted than it had been when I was out on this curb 8 months ago, crying about Paw Paw. 4 houses had been demolished since then, and the street felt lonlier.

I rocked back and forth, staring at my hands, feeling it, that thing I felt during the ordeal with Paw Paw. I felt "it" pushing on me, pushing on my back, right below my neck. Pushing me into the gravel I was sitting on. I was outside, by myself, and I allowed myself to be weak enough to give way to it. I curled up on the ground, and I cried. I felt pitiful, laying there, my feet freezing, my toes going numb. I'm almost embarassed to type it now, but I have to tell someone. The tears just kept rolling sideways down my face, over the bridge of my nose, dripping into my hair. I kept thinking about everyone I knew in Baton Rouge. All my LSU friends. What they were doing while I was doing this. Johnathon and Geoff, hopefully together somewhere and with Nicole, having fun. Doing something together. Michael, with Melinda most likely, happy to believe he was probably happy too. Chelsie, happy wherever she was with Julian. Sara, with her family. Kelly, doing her nutrisystem somewhere in New Orleans. I stopped crying at some point and just thought about everyone I knew, individually. Hoping everyone was at ease. And then I thought about Chad. And then, I thought about Chad. And I thought about Chad. And Chad. And that made me cry again, for reasons completely unrelated to Maw Maw and the fact that I was curled around myself outside and in the dark, crying.

When I went back inside, she was asleep. With her eyes open. She looked pained. Her lips were pulled down in the corners at angles I previously believed impossible for the human face. It didn't look like a peaceful sleep, and on top of it, she jerked every time she managed to take a pitiful breath. We counted them. 10 breaths a minute. 8 breaths a minute. The average person takes 15 or so breaths a minute.

At 3:30, her breathing started to spike. 15 breaths a minute, 16 breaths a minute. 18 breaths a minute. She was panting. Her eyes started to "bruise," which means that they were pooling with blood. Her irises and pupils were lost in the reddish black that covered everything you could see between her eyelids. It was frightening. I've seen it millions of times in video games and movies, but actually having to watch someone's eyes bleed is..........

13 breaths a minute..........7 breaths a minute.........4....................


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.........................3 breaths................................................


.....waiting for her to breath felt like an eternity. Having to sit there and watch. Stare at her chest unblinkingly. It was traumatizing. I got tunnel vision, I was staring so hard.........................................................................................................I could barely hear the rattling of her lungs over the loud thumping of my own heart. I felt like it was scratching its way out of my chest.

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.......................eventually, I stopped staring at her chest.

Her eyes were open still. They were black. Her mouth had sort of relaxed itself, it was just hanging loosely over her dentures.

I kissed her on the forehead. She still felt warm. Still felt alive. I heard my various aunts and uncles and cousins and close friends of the family crying and sobbing around me, the noise just swirling up into the air and evaporating. I didn't really care what they were saying. They reminded me of those noisy churches where the people run on stage and beg to be saved, and everyone's hollering and fanning themselves and screaming up at "the Lawd." It was ridiculous and I chose to ignore it. Ya know, just shut the fuck up and let her go quietly.

I didn't know whose hand was gripping my shoulder while I leaned over her body, and I kind of shook it off. I didn't want anyone to touch me. My entire concentration was trained on the sensation of my fingertips brushing over her skin. I was trying to make a memory of it, trying to do it so softly and deliberately that I'd never forget it. I didn't hear anyone call the police/coroner/ambulance, but someone must've, because at some point they all started to show up, asking us who this is and what type of medicine that was and could you sign here and how are you related.

Fuck 'em, I went and sat on the couch for a while and excercised this talent that I have of making myself completely deaf whensoever I choose. I sat there, deaf, and watched my mother. She was the only person, other than me, who wasn't allowing herself to cry. She bustled in and out of the room, phone on her ear, bag of pills in her hand, give them to the ambulance guy, argue with the ambulance woman about who knows what since I was deaf. Pat Aunt so and so and Uncle who and whatnot on the back, move on. Drop anyone's hand who tried to hold her's for too long. She didn't want to be touched. Just like me. I got up and followed her, suddenly HAVING to be next to her. Crazy how fast emotions change.

I only saw the police man's mouth moving, sort of, while I stood like a loyal Golden Retriver behind/next to my mother. I think he said "sorry about your loss" or something like that. The coroners, coming in with their spiffy business suits and wheeling her out of the house, covered in that white sheet just like I'd nightmared about when I was ten. It was almost exactly as I'd imagined it.

They let us say our last well wishes and what not to her right before they covered her face up, and I swear to you, I SWEAR, she was smiling. Her lips were pressed against each other, and I hadn't seen her face so serene and at ease since before Paw Paw got sick. It made me smile.

Of course I've cried since then, I was good at holding it back while I was there. It just hurt, having to keep swallowing that lump. But I did it, because I think....I think it's more comforting for other people to hug someone who's composed during something like that. I like to believe it's like hugging a rock, or something else as stable. My sisters have always thought of me that way, and it surprised me that I became that for alot of other aunts and uncles who I presumed would be stronger than me when the time came.

I believe in God now. I have to, after seeing that. I'm not going to become some crazy God crusader, and I'm not going to look on atheists with disdain. I just....I'm convinced. After seeing what wasn't there with Paw Paw, and seeing what wasn't there with Maw Maw now, too, I realized it is there. Something is there.

I just think it's one of those things you have to see with your own eyes.