Today I was set to buy a ticket to Chicago so I could hold my grandmother’s hand before she passed, but she died while I was on my morning walk with Joey. When I found out, I lit a candle and I used one of her old plates for my breakfast. The candle was intentional, the plate was not.
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Now I’m on a plane, after a day of logistics to score a last minute ticket before going across town to have pizza with my dad and pack enough for whatever this trip will end up being. I’m always astonished how quickly people can move in the wake of death. I deeply admire the ability to march down to the funeral home and arrange a burial. It’ll be a Catholic ceremony that will likely mirror my grandfather’s service so long ago. Is it 10 years already? I remember only because I was working as a hostess and had to explain the sudden death so I could switch around my shifts. My parents went to Chicago for that service, now my dad isn’t up for travel and I am on the plane alone. Chris is meeting me there, rerouting his flight from Zurich to land at O’Hare instead of LAX. At first I tried to convince him not to come, to take a break before he travels to his next job. But nevertheless he persisted and now that I’m zooming at 30,000 feet I’m very glad to know I will not be alone. Of course, I’ll be with family, but I’ve always been the odd one out by nature of my title as the California Cousin.
I dropped that badge for a single summer when I was fifteen, after my mother’s memory lost the files marked “daughter” and she told me to leave the apartment. Ever an obedient child, I walked out carrying nothing but my cell phone. I was on a flight to Chicago the next morning. In my memory, I teleported to the midwest: there is no sliver of the flight in my mind, which I find surprising because it was the first time I’d traveled alone. Maybe my third time on a plane. I couldn’t tell you if I cried or if I stared out the window the entire way. I can bet that I didn’t sleep a wink, even though I could not sleep the night before, wrapped in blankets on the floor of my LA grandmother’s studio apartment. That void of memory reminds me what it must feel like to be my mother, with an unforgiving chasm of amnesia stretching though her personal record.
So here I am alone on this flight to Chicago. I closed my eyes for take off. Bigger planes will quake with a high strung shimmer, but the domestic crafts offer a distinct low pitch groan. The Boeing 737 hoisted itself from the tarmac and pitched straight over the Pacific, revealing the tan sand coastline.
On days that I am set to travel, I take Joey to my parents place and they use my car to drive me to the airport. Today when I arrived, I gave my dad a hug and he asked if I was excited. I admitted that excited wasn’t really the word I’d reach for but I was ready. I rounded the corner and found my mom tidying the bed. I gave her a hug and she asked if I was excited. I blinked twice and repeated my statement like a politician offering carefully constructed thoughts to the press. I felt my mind swivel. Was I supposed to be excited? What ingredients did I need to reframe this event? Where could I buy them before my gate closed?
I remember feeling nauseous when I watched my grandfather’s coffin lowered into the earth. This physical reaction caught me by a surprise, visceral as though I was standing on the bow of a ship looking for a spot of land in choppy waters. I will take tomorrow as it comes. Even if I am not entirely emotional about this death, I will likely cry. I cry for most dynamic things. See: Weddings, Pets 2, Oceans 12, that one episode of Friends where Chandler proposes. Any attempts at preparation will be swept away by the wave of feelings flowing from communal experience. Gathering for grief is unpredictable. It’s the sort of swell that knocks at the back of your knees when your eyes are busy scanning for your towel, your umbrella, whatever else seemed pressing for a day at the beach. Instead of bracing against the tide, I’m trying to just float for now and accept that I’m in the water.
Last night I went to yoga, despite having no room in my schedule. I booked last second on class pass, hoping this action would open a window in the fabric of space and time just big enough for 75 minutes of movement. Yoga has been in my life ever since I can remember. My parents would roll out yoga mats in our little living room and put on a VHS tape with beautiful people in flowing cotton practicing an ashtanga sequence. As a kid, I would dance around their mats. In later years I would protest the workout because I couldn’t stand the sensation of fire in legs and arms. Eventually I found my way back to it, learning my body through the repetition of poses. After a few years of focusing on higher intensity exercise, I could feel my muscles longing for yoga. I’m back on the familiar rectangle of my black rubber mat, its perimeter a sanctuary. As I move through the poses, every cell in my body knows just how to align and breathe. Yesterday we spent a lot of time in twists and balances, before finally relinquishing our weight to the earth, spreading limbs and closing eyes.
In the stillness, I could hear the tide of grief rolling in the distance. Suddenly it came for me, enveloping my body. My grandmother was 94, the last decline in her health was rapid and she left overnight, her body found vacant in the morning. In many ways, it’s the perfect departure. The sadness I hold is only for the time that I wasn’t able to spend with her and the times I didn’t call.
I was trying to get to her one last time, but she died right before I could buy the plane ticket. A woman who never liked fanfare, I feel like she was floating somewhere between worlds when a transmission came in: I was going to spend all of my credit card points on an open ended ticket. In the realm beyond the veil, of souls and all their unknown tendencies, I think she shook her head and pursed her lips. It wasn’t what she wanted. The night before she passed, my uncle and his youngest son visited her bedside. They flew in from Tucson and she managed to pull into consciousness after days of floating in a fog. Then they left her bedside and she carried herself through the portal that closes behind you and stays shut 99% of the time.
Was this timing:
A. Intentional like my candle?
B. Unintentional like yesterday’s breakfast plate?
Knowing my grandmother’s sharp sensibilities, I’ll go with option A.
That’s all for today.
xx
James
I love "her body found vacant in the morning."