Thank You, Nellie

My maternal grandmother died this morning at 8:00 a.m. My mother sat with her through the night, and when she stepped out to grab a cup of coffee, my grandma made her exit.

She had been telling people that grandpa, who passed away just over a year ago, has been coming to visit her, and that she is ready to go join him. Even with increasing confusion due to dementia and other health issues, she knew when it was her time and let us know.

And now she's with grandpa again, at least as we understand these things, and I'm happy that she doesn't have to hang onto a life anymore that she was ready to leave.

My urge is to curse this whole life/death/rebirth business while, at the same time, I am grateful to it for letting us exit when we're done. This grief thing is a funny business.

Thank you for your life, Nellie Bartel. It was a good one.

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PS. I also wrote this poem: "We All Straddle the Line (on the loss of my maternal grandmother)".

I Am Not Allowed Detachment Now

For the last two days, I have had a tightness in my chest. I'm distracted. I'm depressed with a twist of unplaced worry.



I thought this was my usual fall weirdness, the kind I feel every year that translates the skittering of leaves outside as a death knell for all that is well and good in the world. Something about that self-diagnosis didn't sit right, though, and then the inside of my mouth began to ache.

The inside of my mouth nags at me when I am feeling some kind of non-physical pain to which I am not paying the proper attention. I am the local queen of denial around these parts. I often won't notice that something is up with me until my anxiety has inflicted me with numbness in my extremities, apocalyptic dreams, and painful outbreaks.

It's not like the reason for my anxiety was hiding under any rocks. I am travelling to my hometown over the weekend to spend time with family and attend my grandfather's memorial service. He died, he's dead, and I obviously have feelings about that which I am not expressing. I know this, because the roof of my mouth just ahead of my throat is raw and red.

This used to happen to my throat at church every Sunday when we sang hymns. Hymns fester the sorrow out of me, and there will be more than a few of them this weekend. Goddamn.

I used to be able to avoid everything all the time by chasing down the bottoms of pint glasses, but now that I can't do that anymore, my body won't let me get away with the avoidance. It sent me a rash of canker sores when he died. They bloomed into broad, white heads that bled when I sucked at them in my sleep.

I am not allowed detachment now, if my actual, flesh-and-blood mouth has anything to say about it. Goddamn.

It's Done.

I knew it wouldn't be long, and now it's done. My grandfather passed away yesterday morning at the age of 93 just three weeks shy of his 70th wedding anniversary. My grandmother was having a clear day, and she was able to sit with him through it.

Thank you to every single one of you here and elsewhere who have said kind things to me over the last few days since I mentioned the beginning of this thing a few days ago. It's been a strange limbo to sit in while I have waited for a family member to pass on three hundred miles away, and you helped to keep me present and connected.

I didn't mention it yesterday, because I didn't have words for it yet. My heart didn't get it yet. I still don't have words, and my heart feels like it is waiting for the other shoe to fall. I don't think either of these things will sort themselves out until I experience proof of his absence.

All I have right now is this: I love you, grandpa, and I'm glad that you are free.