The Opposite of Death |
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I can't concentrate.
I find myself sitting at intersections once the light has turned green.
I can't sleep.
All I could see when I tried to fall asleep was Gramps and the hundreds of mental snapshots my memory took throughout the weekend.
It's too much to really process right now. My parents keep thanking me for being there. Everyone keeps thanking me. How could I not be there? There was no one else. No one else was around.
He's still alive -- slightly improved -- but I won't allow myself to harbor any false hope -- I will keep with me instead the voice of the doctor on Sunday when he said, "Less than ten percent." As in his chances.
People go through horrible things in life. Natural disasters. The death of children. Car accidents and disease and murder and rape and unspeakable, tragic things that have never happened to me.
Knowing in my brain that this experience with my grandfather has been much less difficult than things other people have gone through doesn't make it any easier for my heart to grapple with it. With the memory. Of him as he clung to life and of myself as I broke down time after time, in the stairwell or in the bathroom or numerous other places where no one was around.
I know I won't be watching ER this week, even though everyone wants to find out what will happen to Carter and Becca. I mean Lucy. I don't see myself watching it ever again.
I keep listening to Sunday in the Park with George. It's been on nonstop in my car for trip after trip to the hospital. It's been a comfort somehow. The strangeness. The dissonance. Something about the voice of Bernadette Peters seems to be the opposite of death.
I'm not making much sense. I'm just so tired.
I went to the hospital during lunch, where I found my dad and his two brothers, in the same room at the same time with their father for the first time in years. I left because it has been so long since that's happened, and because I know it's not likely to happen again any time soon.
I don't ever want to see blood again. Or syringes. Or tubes and bags and electrocardiograms. Or the clock in the waiting room as it measures the minutes between the strict visiting hours. I don't want to hear any more screaming, any more beeping, any more crying, any more labored breathing. I don't want to smell antibacterial soap. Or rubbing alcohol. Or shit. I don't want to touch my grandfather's hand when it is cold and swollen and lifeless. Or the square silver panel that I press to open the doors of the ICU. Or the ballpoint pen I use to sign form after form of permission for the nurses to insert some catheter or another.
I don't want to remember throwing the ER curtain open to scream for help when he was trying to get out of the bed, trying to hold him up as he was about to fall, about to rip out every tube that was stuck in his arm or his nose or his chest or his penis. Or when he tried to rip out his Foley catheter. I don't want to remember the sight of the blood in his stool as it dripped onto the white floor, but I do. I remember. And I want to forget.
How can I forget?
My parents, my uncles, my siblings -- everyone who wasn't there -- they will never know. They will never know what it was like. And I can't even try to tell them, because I am too tired. And I will sound like I'm trying to be the big family martyr, and I'm not. I wish it had not been me.
I can be grateful that my life has been blessed and lucky. That I still have my parents and my siblings and my friends and that I have never had to lose anyone or go through anything seriously traumatic. I am. I really am.
But I will never forget this weekend. It changed me. I will never be able to explain it, but it did, and it changed me in a place that is so deep inside the core of my being that no one will ever be able to see it. Except for me. I'll see it when I try to fall asleep at night. I'll see it when people praise me for taking charge like I did. I'll see it when people look at me sympathetically and ask if there's anything they can do. I'll see it when I look at pictures of my grandfather, when he was silly and sassy and well.
I'll always see it. I can't seem to see anything else. It is me right now. It is scared, it is sad, and it is alone.
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