IN MEMORIAM

The maternal grandmother died this morning around 7:00 a.m. She continued to live and breath on her own for thirteen hours after they removed the ventilator that was breathing for her. I was able to be with her until 3:00 a.m. in the morning. This is an open letter to her.

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The city of Seattle sleeps, and beyond it the suburbs, and beyond them the farms and pastureland of the Cascade foothills. The evening is covered by a blanket of clouds, but there is no rain tonight—this is the respite from the rain that came and the rain that is to come. The night air is crisp and cold, and I have forgotten my jacket in the rush to get to the hospital to see you one last time before you depart. The cold air that I draw into my lungs makes me feel alive, and reminds me that I am in a different situation, a different place than you. The air you breath is warm, hygienic, delivered via a tube to your mouth that awaits it, held slightly agape.

The attending nurse swabs your lips and inside of your mouth with water on a sponge. When she doesn't do it, your son, my uncle, tenderly does the same. I cannot help but think of the sponge of vinegar and water offered to Jesus during his execution. This is your moment to die.

For us, it is a moment of weeping and lament. It is a moment of remembering who you are, even as you are still present to us. It is a moment of laughter, briefly, and, once again, it is a moment of tears. We talk to one another, and then we are silent, absorbed in our own thoughts. We meditate on our own deaths, our own mortality. In you we see ourselves. We weep for the loss of you, the impending loss of our selves.

We are lulled into brief moments of sleep by the ragged rhythm of your breaths, the hum of the oxygen in the machines attached to you.

The city sleeps, too easily, from our perspective. You sleep, welcomed and warmed by a morphine haze, by the damage done to your brain. We awake, tired and weary, watching the neon blips and lines on the monitor above you, trying to interpret their meaning, when we know what they mean. However, it helps to pretend otherwise.

There is no pretending, though. This is real. These are the hours and minutes of your death.

May God bless you and keep you in his care Grandma.