My grandmother, Carol, died at 7:16 pm on Saturday, January 13th, 2018 — she was 83.

I spent the last week of my grandmother’s life visiting her at night after work.  Although my loved ones had already been doing so for months.

I spent the last 15 hours in her home, with my family, waiting for the inevitable.

And, there are so many things that struck me during that time; beautiful moments entwined with disturbing images, shock … so much shock …and love.

I find it interesting how much you can feel ‘love’ when death takes place.  It’s so thick in the air that you can wrap it in your hands and strangle it into oblivion; … and suffocate with it.

Our egos are shut down, our vulnerability as human beings laying bare our souls — such is the desperation to convey a lifetime worth of unsaid’s.  And when I walked into my grandmother’s house that last morning — the beauty of HER, of the love my uncle, my mother, and my godfather felt for her in those hours shook me.  I felt like a child again … watching them down the hall from my grandmother’s bedroom … unaware of anything but that moment, of being in THE moment.  There was nowhere else to be … and it felt as if we had all the time in the world as we sat guard over Carol, waiting for her last breath.

I’ve never been so swept away by love the way I was those last hours of her life.

But I realize now we held her here for so much longer than necessary.  Who could leave this plane with so much pouring out and spilling onto one?

I don’t believe in heaven, or God, but I believe there is something else — I’ve felt it — you can feel it.  The silence of death, of impending death, louder than anything I could compare it to.  In that silence, you feel the energy of a million lives … all converging together in that terrible space of time.  And, the power of it overwhelms.  Death is frightening and beautiful; everything and nothing.

Carol’s passing was the most beautiful event I have ever been a part of.  Her death was like a piece of music.  Each person a different instrument, with a different sound and depth, and yet, we moved as one.  Each heart was breaking, but was given over to such empathy that we moved seamlessly in and out.  I have never felt more connected to people than I did that day to my own family.

Times are dark; life is relentless, and it is easy to forget what love actually feels like, what it looks like.

Now, the struggle is the loss of time, and the marching on of life.

As I scour through Carol’s archive’s I come across photographs and newspaper articles with quotes.  I hear her voice, and there is a moment where it is as if she is beside me, and for a fraction of a second, the pain of her loss disappears.  Just a second.

It’s an awful feeling to want to share something with someone and not be able to.

There is an indescribable feeling that comes to me while I time-travel through her life; it is more than just sorrow.  I feel my own mortality, and my own mother’s … my children.  The realization that this life we have is so short, and precious … and we let so many meaningless things bog us down.

The tidal wave crashes over me and sweeps me away into the dark corners of my thoughts – I think of the sadness and total loss my mother is foraging through, and my aunt, of wasted years … of times forgotten and remembered; mostly I think of my uncle.  The burden of this cost is incapacitating; I know this without sight or word from him.  I know the loss of his mother has diminished his time with his own infant … now a toddler … I know this because I was in his place.  And, the guilt I still feel (almost 5 years after my own father’s suicide) eats at me daily; the inability to be there emotionally for my then 1-year-old — my mind wrapped around this ‘thing’ I could not ‘get over’, nor fully reckon with.  Time has been unforgiving to my uncle — he gave up his world to try and save his mother’s.  Now, she is gone, and he is left with fragments of a composition, random notes floating on the page with no rhyme or reason.  And, I wonder will his child eventually be the composer that pieces him back together?  Will she fill in and restore what he has lost?  Will she be the music calling him home?

I think of my Godfather Angel, my grandmother’s husband.  I never understood what the purpose of a ‘Godfather’ was until I watched THAT man love my grandmother.  I didn’t understand what it meant to be loved by a man until I spent those last hours watching him watch her.  The care, dedication, and the sacrifices he made – how his purpose, too, has finally been claimed.  The loveliest moments pressed upon her lips, her forehead, cheek … watching him hold her hand and whisper sweet nothings into her ear as she winced in pain.  All that he did, his gentleness, without reciprocation, because of his love for her.  I can only imagine the loneliness and emptiness that must haunt him.  Watching Angel has been a lesson in love, and if my grandmother were conscious [in any existence], I know he became the love of her life.  And I am in awe of him.

My grandmother is lost now to a world I could not follow, yet everywhere I search, I find pieces of her.  I see her in my sister’s smile –, in the shape of my aunt’s eyes — I feel her in my mother’s hands … in their shape and softness.  I see her face in my niece’s face.  I see time.

How do we reconcile death?  How does one endeavor to let go of each loss and move forward?  I cannot seem to do so.  I feel each death bear itself upon me; the gathering of each body a weight on my chest; I am suffocated by feelings, by loss, by my thoughts.  And, I know that these feelings and loss are not mine alone.  I find little comfort except in the idea that this existence is just a transitory one … That our consciousness moves to the next, and we will once again be reunited.  The idea that love transcends space and time is a small comfort to me, but the ability to give back that small comfort to the people still here seems impossible — A feat beyond my capabilities.

We are left behind by those we love … forever searching for them, trying to fill the hole they leave.  I know in this lifetime we will never be able to fulfill that quest.

Perhaps the pain we feel with each loss, every ghost that haunts us, each passage we slip through, that every tear shed, and every utterance of names long forgotten by others, in fact, brings us closer to those we long for.  Maybe … just maybe … it is the pain that keeps them with us — even while our memories of memories slowly dissolve.

In that, I feel solace.

I hope then — that I never lose this pain.

My grandmother was a beautiful soprano; music was her life.

On that last day, my uncle leaned over and said softly, “Mom, it is time to go on stage now …”

Oma …

“…we will see you after the show.”