A death in the family
My wife, Amy, asked me to post this update that she wrote:
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A beautiful end to a wonderful life.
That’s how my mother described my grandma’s passing tonight (Friday) at 9 o’clock.
I’d written before about how, at grandma’s request, the family had been singing hymns to her for the past few days.
Tonight, it seems, they sang to her from 6 p.m. on, right up until she passed.
The signs were there. The end was near.
And the end was peaceful and painless — and filled with the hope that accompanies the faithful’s departing.
Blogging it out
My wife, Amy Raymond, wrote this last night, specifically intending for it to be posted on this blog. Amy is the assistant news editor at The Oklahoman and the editor of Viva Oklahoma, the company’s Spanish language publication. She’s also my favorite person.
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I am writing this now before the end arrives.
The health of my grandma, Irene Schmidt, has been declining precipitously in recent days.
I spoke to her on the phone on Sunday. We stayed away from a trip to Kansas because I had a cold and didn’t want to spread it. It was an incidental conversation. And it could be my last with her.
I’ve been waiting for the phone call — the one with the bad news and funeral plans.
Thursday night, I got a different kind of call. Bittersweet might be the best way to describe it.
There was the health update — she can barely drink and isn’t eating anything. She’s not able to talk very much but has gotten in a few zingers.
She said she had thoughts in her brain that wouldn’t come out. My cousin who was there visiting said she could get a new one of those in heaven.
“Put me in the front of the line, then,” my grandma said. ”I want a good one.”
Not being able to get thoughts out must be tough for a woman who readily speaks her mind.
She seems to be handling things OK, my mom says.
My grandma is 92 and a woman of great faith, so she’s ready for what comes next.
It’s that faith that was the rallying point Wednesday and Thursday for those in my family who are overseeing her care in these last days.
A chaplain asked my mom and aunt if they wanted to sing a hymn Wednesday. They’d been away from my grandma’s bed, but she heard singing and asked them to move nearer.
The chaplain bailed after about three hymns, my mother reports, but the others sang “every old church song you could ever think of” for about an hour and a half.
My grandma tried, unsuccessfully, to clap along with the singing.
And Thursday, she asked for and got a few more hours of song and the joy that comes with it.
My grandma is 92 and a woman of great faith, so she’s ready for what comes next.
I just hope the rest of us are, too.
Another story drawing to a close
I haven’t posted anything on here for awhile. Maybe you noticed.
It’s been hard to find motivation lately. Chapter 3 was not well-received in some quarters, which wasn’t entirely unexpected, I guess. But it’s never fun knowing that you’ve upset people, especially when doing so was the furthest thing from your mind.
The main reason I haven’t written, though, is that Jim is only one of the people in my life who is facing death. And while Jim has gotten reasonably good news the last two times he’s seen his doctors (and now has a new treatment option that could lead to more good news), Irene Schmidt has worsened. We’re told she probably has less than six weeks left.
Irene, you may recall, is my wife’s grandmother. She lives near Wichita, KS, and has had a long and full life. She’s a great woman, lean and persnickety, who spent her life working on a farm and taking care of her husband, who died years ago. She’s plain-spoken and honest. She seems surprised by kindness and uncomfortable with praise; her thrifty practicality and work ethic sprouted from the tough soil of world wars and the Great Depression. She was born shortly before the Spanish flu pandemic began in Kansas and spread to kill tens of thousands worldwide, and now — in her last days — she’s watched the overwrought accounts of swine flu.
She has cancer, of course.
If she were younger, the doctors might have tried to fight it. She considered that option, but at 92 chose instead to make her final months as comfortable as possible. So the cancer has taken root. Her belly is fat with it, as if she is carrying a grotesque baby. The end is near.
I knew when I accepted this project that Irene’s death would be a part of it, that my sadness would be dwarfed by my wife’s sorrow, that I’d have this sick, hollow feeling each time I saw my wife’s eyes cloud over and threaten rain. I knew that. But there’s a sort of hopeless paralysis that I didn’t expect. People talk about the grieving process and the circle of life, but it’s hard to take solace in science when people you care about about disappearing into their graves.
In the past six months, I’ve gotten to know Jim and his family — borrowing their hardships in order to share them with you. I’ve lost a niece I never met and felt powerless to comfort my brother and his wife. Soon, I will lose Irene and support my wife through her grief.
I don’t like this whole circle of life thing. And these days, I just don’t have a lot to say.
