Thoughts I Had As My Grandmother Lay Dying

1. When you call 911, as my sister did when my family realized collectively, all at once, that my grandmother hadn’t been heard from for just a little bit too long, they send a police officer and firefighters and EMS. It created a seasonally appropriate light show right there, in front of our house.
   My cousins, siblings, and I watched South Park the night before. It was an episode ‘skewering’ ‘p.c. culture’ and Black Lives Matter, where the police stop working because the citizens hate them for accidentally shooting children too much.
   As the cop walked with purpose through our house I thought, like a dumb, stream-of-consciousness South Park joke, thank God we’re not wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts, because then maybe he wouldn’t walk so fast.
2. When we realized my grandmother was missing and what that could mean, my oldest cousin yelled, FUCK, in a hard, all-caps way. I momentarily thought, come on, she’s fine! She’s the heartiest woman I know, one whose strength is quiet but fierce, who presses on even as her health falters.
3. It was the day after Christmas, the morning all the assembled family was supposed to be leaving, so I was wearing my white girl slob look: Fair Isle pajama pants and a novelty Wildfox sweater, with the wide straps of a sports bra hanging out.
   Putting it on, I knew it wasn’t the kind of apparel that my grandmother would particularly approve of, but she was never, ever judgmental about her children’s or grandchildren’s choices.
   I wished I was wearing anything else.
4. Some while later, after the EMS had been working feverishly and doing CPR but the constant, unchanging beep registering no heartbeat continued, it slowly dawned on me that she had already left, maybe even before we called for help. This realization didn’t quite take hold in a real, tangible way just yet, but tears started leaking out of my eyes anyway.
5. I had never seen a dead body before. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But it felt like an important thing to do, the kind of thing you look back on and feel a pang of regret no matter which option you chose.
   Then I thought, she looks so beautiful.
6. She died surrounded her family, I thought, already drafting a well-worn obituary line. But it was true. There we all were, together for the first time in years. The gravity of that fact was lost on no one.
7. I thought, being a medical examiner is an insanely awkward job. This small town Wisconsin boy was standing in my family’s cavernous living room, shifting nervously, fulfilling his legal obligation to supervise the bereaved family before a formal handoff to a funeral home.
   None of the adults (which are most of us, now) could be roused from their disbelief and raw grief to follow social protocol and make polite conversation with this man. It struck me that this was absolutely fine, and maybe even the Right Thing To Do. I chatted with him anyway.
8. It dawned on me that my Mom’s birthday is going to suck now. Like, forever. Her birthday, Dec. 27, will forever fall on the day after she suddenly lost her best friend.
9. Days before, over breakfast, I was bloviating about how a certain ‘proximity to death’ as a young person makes you appreciate life more than your peers. I’m not sure what started it, or what broader point I was trying to make. But I thought, you are such an idiot.
10. I thought about how I still owed my grandmother a thank you note for the money she gave me, without any fanfare, at Thanksgiving. It was enough to create a nest egg from my struggling savings account. I thought, there are so many things I still wanted to say to her, so many things I wanted to thank her for.
11. Over and over, at intervals as regular as a pulse, I had a simple, grateful thought: I’m so glad I didn’t kill myself. Freshman year, or senior year, or any other time things have felt irredeemably bad. How much a death, even a ‘natural’ one at the ‘right’ time under the most ideal circumstances breaks the people closest to it. How selfish I was to ever forget my family.