Losing It

There's a phrase used at hospitals for a terminal patient who is about to go. They're "circling the drain". Such a description is, oh, what's the word? Hummm. It's not romantic, exactly. Colloquial, yes, that's the one. Pleasant and descriptive, it takes the edge off such an unpleasant eventuality. So much easier to think of someone as a piece of flotsam, suspended in the bathwater, moments away from a softly audible "gulp" and then a fun-filled water park ride through a network of pipes, perhaps some bleach at the behest of the local Water Works Department, and finally, the East River.

Certainly the doctors and nurses who look down upon the ailing and fading grandmother understand that there is a human story under that paper thin hospital gown. After all, how could they not? There's a likely gaggle of wailing family begging for answers and scientific justification as to how the hell this could have happened. "This is America, damnit, and there's no excuse for aging! Don't tell me Nana isn't going to make it. Fix her up and let us take her back home. Produce that time machine you've been hiding and return to me the spry 70 year old sass-pot who loves to dance and tells me stories of her boyfriends before the war."

But then the sad realization for the gaggle. Nana's not coming back. She's, oh, how do we put it? She's circling the drain. The inexorable marching of time.

I've burned through 28 years, and can't get away from the feeling that these grains of sand are too quickly falling through the hour glass. I sometimes think it might be easier if all of us knew the exact date we'd be called back from recess, forced to give up our Earthly bodies and move on to whatever comes next.

I'm 1 for 2 in the Dying Nana Department. The day my father's mother passed away, we were getting ready for dinner in the kitchen when the phone rang. I suppose as a function of the fact that the children were 18, 16, 16, and 14, we were all milling around and basically in the same room. Any time the universe has shattering news to deliver, it's easier, I assume, that the primary interested parties hear it simultaneously. This was before the widespread adoption of cell phones, and I imagine the Reaper was happy to save on long distance charges.

In this particular case, the Reaper was my great uncle, T-Mac. Before Jennifer Lopez was JLO, Alex Rodriguez was A-Roid, and Tracy McGrady rose to basketball stardom, ascending to such a lofty nickname, my grandmother's brother was named Tyson MacRae. The original T-Mac dialed our home and I answered the phone. Without even a moment to think about why this seldom heard voice was calling, T-Mac asked for my father and I passed the receiver. My dad almost immediately sank down into a chair and made a sound I'd never heard from him before. To be quite honest, I'd give up climbing for the assurance that I will never have to hear him so instantaneously demolished again. I remember thinking that he sounded like a man had kicked him in the ribs with a steel toed boot, the air so forcefully coming out of him while he struggled to control its exodus.

My father, standing, unflappable and always in control of what he'd say and do.
My father, slumped over, turned inside out.

As we'd all come to understand in those next teary, demoralizing few minutes, my grandmother, GiGi we'd called her, had died of a massive heart attack while waiting for her luggage to arrive at the baggage claim of the San Fransisco airport. In a very public setting, she'd clutched her chest, lost consciousness, and died before she fell to the floor. I find it interesting to think that somewhere in the world are at least several people who remember a day in August, back in 1999, when they witnessed a woman pass away. There they stood, extras in this scene, without even knowing it.

In a way, this was easier than having a prolonged decay. I had visited my grandmother earlier that summer and remember the final time I'd seen her. Again, an airport, this time in Dallas. In those bucolic days before we knew of the maniacs planning our violent demise, a grandmother could walk to the gate with her grandson and wish him safe travels back to Colorado. The grandson could look back for the laboring woman, her aging lungs struggling to keep up with the demands for oxygenated blood. He'd see her seated on a bench, alive now, but fading. He'd know, somewhere deep down and yet unspeakable, that this was the last time he would see her alive. But at least he could come to such a sad realization at the gate, on the safe side of security clearance.

A few weeks after waving goodbye at the airport, I'd return to Dallas with my family and we'd bury Gigi. I'd speak at the funeral, shake T-Mac's hand and try to act like a man. If memory serves, I would largely succeed. Sadness certainly prevailed at the event, but I felt a level of understanding with the order of things. I think I could reason the loss with the knowledge that I'd said goodbye, and that it was time for her to go. I'd come to peace with Gigi's circles, and just in time.