Death

November 11, 2000

DEATH

In a small family, you don't get much practice in the mechanics of death. Practice wouldn't help in handling the impact of the loss itself, but it might give you more peace to deal with that impact. I stopped having a husband when he passed out, broke a hip, had hip surgery, a stroke, and pacemaker installation in about two weeks, so I began 4 years ago to get used to living without conversation or discussion about decisions. After nursing him at home for three years, with seldom a full night's sleep, when the doctors decided he should go to a nursing home, I was so tired that at first I didn't feel much about anything. Tired or not, I was channeled into Medicaid paper work and spend-down. If you are a Depression child, and have lived frugally for 59 years of marriage and child-raising, it is purely startling to be told to spend $52,000 in 2 months. It also changes your attitude about lifetime savings. (My father's lifetime, in this case.)

Then we settled into the nursing home visiting routine. You have to deal with the sorrow of seeing your person miserable, plus the sorrow for all the other patients, the lady who sings sweetly and softly to herself hour after hour, the one who calls "Mama, help me!" endlessly, the one who talks but no sound comes out, and then over and under all, the horror of realizing that you may join them any day, age 80 being past spring chicken season.

And then one morning the head nurse called to say my patient had collapsed. I spent the day with him, and by late afternoon he was falling asleep every few minutes. The nurse called again the next morning to say he was gone. My first reaction was just happiness for him because he had been so miserable for the whole ten months since he had left home, not in pain but in quiet anger at his situation. His cremation had been prepaid and it didn't suit family schedules to have the Memorial Service until a few weeks later, so there was nothing for me to do, I thought. Only to choose gravestones, go back for proofreading, arrange for a foundation for the stones, and the burial, talk with a caterer for the first time in my life, pick up the remains and sign more forms at the funeral home, meet with the minister to plan the Memorial Service, contact relatives, beg housing for them, fill out forms for beneficiary changes, turn in an insurance policy, collect the lovely sympathy cards for reply some day. In books, the new widow cooks wonderful dinners for the incoming relatives, and serves coffee all day. In fact, I don't see where there was a minute for this. A great friend took in five of the family, and we ate out.

I was apprehensive about collecting the remains, and was surprised to find that having that package was a comfort, as if I had him home again, in whatever form. I rather liked having him home, but thought it was unwise to leave him for someone else to come upon suddenly, and so I called before the ground would get hard for winter. Today I watched the cemetery manager bury the box. First he took a dark red velvet bag out of the little brown bag I carried from the funeral home. Out of this he took a white cardboard box. Out of this he took a shiny black plastic box and that is what he inserted into the hole he had made ready. I watched while he replaced the soil, cleaned up the extra soil, and replaced the rectangle of sod he had laid aside earlier. The stones are yet to come.

The offspring had agreed, by e-mail and phone, that they did not want the velvet bag at the Memorial, and that they preferred burial to scattering. We thought we would like some small spot in the world to have father's name to go back to.

The Memorial Service was beautifully done. Friends came and enjoyed the pictures. Cousins met for the first time since the last funeral. The first born accompanied the minister's beautiful voice for solos and a hymn. The other two spoke movingly about their father. I thought about the fact that they had lost a parent, an entirely different experience from mine of losing a partner.

It's been 5 weeks now, and I am still having trouble realizing that he is really gone. No matter that he was always gone a lot, traveling for work or for tennis matches. No matter that I left for work while he was still asleep, and worked late while he heated up his own supper. No matter that I liked having the house to myself when he first went off on a trip. He was always gong to turn up soon. If I went off, I knew he'd be here when I got back. This is different. This is strange. While he was in the nursing home I started sorting things in his room, half- heartedly. Now I realize that I was reluctant to give anything away, because he might ask for it, or he might come home again, at least for a visit. Now I work at sorting until I come to his Eagle Scout insignia, or his map collection, or some other thing he will never use again.

The happiness for the end of his misery lasted about 3 weeks. Then I began to feel forlorn. I thought that I had done my major grieving when he had the stroke, and perhaps I had, but it wasn't this empty feeling that he's really gone. I keep thinking of things to tell him, then realizing he's gone. He was deaf, but I could write notes to him with big felt tip pens, and he could answer. We could still share the Sunday paper, even if he only read headlines instead of the 3 hours' reading he used to enjoy. I wish I'd been with him when he died. I wish I'd been able to stand longer visits. I wish we'd had a story book marriage. I wonder if there is such a thing.