I had to find out for myself that my father’s mother, my last surviving grandparent, was on the verge of death. My girlfriend called me to see how I was dealing with it and, after a minute of very confusing conversation, realized that I wasn’t yet informed of the situation. When I phoned my house, my mom told me to call D.J., my dad, who was driving through the night from Maryland to Michigan, to tell him I loved him and just to talk to him. My father and I have always been close; she assumed that such a phone call would be easy.
“He’s your Dad, just call him and tell him you love him.”
I wanted to, I just didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t let the imminent tragedy affect me, hadn’t let it sink in. It was a busy night and I could get around thinking about it. I knew my dad would not have this luxury and I didn’t want to imagine, much less find out, what it feels like to drive for eight hours at night, alone, towards the death of someone you’ve loved before you could speak. It was easier not to call. He would be fine and I couldn’t say anything that would help. I guessed I was afraid to find out how he actually was, afraid to hear my own father’s voice.
When I did see him next, in Michigan, despite everything he was smiling, enjoying the company of his brothers and sisters, glad to see his family again. I was relieved.
I had big plans for the weekend: my girlfriend was coming to visit for her birthday, we were going to see one of her favorite bands, I had a paper due, but I knew without reservations I would be traveling tomorrow. I spent eight hours on a bus from college in New York to my immediate family in Maryland, and at least twenty in the car to my Grandma Betty’s in Michigan, all in the course of four days. The family came together with amazing luck. People traveled from both coasts and Europe, and did so without hesitation. Despite the necessary troubles, the culmination of family was nearly flawless. Twice, people coming from the West coast and others from England arrived at the airport within minutes of each other. Since my father had driven up before us, we had two vehicles to shuttle around our relatives.
Once together, my dad’s side of the family operated as one unit. The awkward duties involved in losing a parent were dealt with by everyone cooperatively. No one slacked off or tried to assume too much responsibility. In dividing her belongings, there were no disagreements—if anyone wanted something, they would simply state that they felt it should be theirs—if two people felt strongly, one always acquiesced that it had more meaning to the other. Once my aunts and uncles had taken what they wanted, Betty’s grandchildren, including me, got to pick through what seemed less and less to be my grandmothers house. Since my brothers and I had spent more time at Betty’s than any of my cousins, it was decided that we should have first pick. With a sort of astonished numbness, I noticed that these things were no longer Betty’s, but simply taking them couldn’t make them mine. I hesitantly selected a few items: a couple decorative glass spheres, an ornate box filled with lavender, and several books. Every book from Betty’s shelves was phenomenal and as I filled a box I realized how many of her books I’d read—finishing a novel every time I visited for a few days. At the end of the weekend, once everyone had a chance, I grabbed a book, Yoga for Women, which my girlfriend would enjoy. I debated momentarily the ethical implications of taking something my grandmother had left behind, and giving it as a birthday present, but decided that if none of her lineage had chosen it, this would be the next best thing.
We all knew for some years that Betty had been buying savings bonds in her children and grandchildren’s names. She spent whatever money she had left at the end of each month on bonds for one person, rotating through a list of her loved ones. Betty was not rich, but managed to surprise us all one last time. Taken at their face value, she left about twenty grand in U.S. savings bonds to each of her children and thirty-five hundred dollars worth of bonds to each of her grandchildren.
The night we arrived, eighteen of my Grandma Betty’s family went out to dinner at her favorite local restaurant. Betty had been a mother to six children, three girls and three boys. Five of the six were in attendance and had brought some of their family. Susan, her eldest daughter, was here with her husband and their two offspring. Betty’s youngest daughter, Meg, had also brought her two teenage kids. Meg’s oldest son, Duncan was sitting on my left, and I can’t remember who was on my right, probably because my attention was being demanded by Duncan. He and I are close to the same age and had both started college recently. The conversation was constant and lively. The warmth of being with people you’ll never see enough of surpassed the chill of loss. If I were another customer in the restaurant I would have guessed it was a family reunion, not a family mourning.
Before her death, in her declining health, my grandmother had written this.
“7-7-03
I should be cremated -- inexpensively as possible. With any savings
have a party and drink a toast to me. I rather like the idea of
sprinkling the ashes somewhere gardeney -- it is, sort of, like being
as one with the universe.
If the idea bothers anyone then bury me. It is not very important.
If anyone wants to give money have it sent to Belle Isle.
Betty M. Waddell”
The wake was held in the tiny garden of Betty’s tiny house. Any other backyard would have been a backyard, but this was Betty’s garden and had been my entire life. Now it was filling with people who had known this place or wished they had been close enough to have known it earlier. There was little of the awkwardness that is usually felt with such mixed groups of people—some of whom knew each other as well as people can, some of whom were taking the chance to get to know each other better, and some of whom were meeting for the first time. My cousin from England, who shares my first name, I hadn’t seen from the time he was seven. He had since proceeded to grow into a fourteen year old with an adult personality. Talking to him was like getting to know a complete stranger; but with the luxury of just getting to know him, not having to get to know him.
They didn’t have the memories of this place that I possessed. Twice a year, every year, I had seen this garden—either in the summer, bursting with life, all morning glories and black-eyed susans; or at Christmas, silently, blindingly peaceful, through the window above the kitchens sink. Now it had a different kind of serenity. Not an aesthetic kind, but a beauty created from the people being reverent and needing each other, expressing themselves simply yet sincerely.
With tears in our eyes and glasses of wine in our hands, we started the informal service in her garden. It began with readings by some of her children from books that Betty had loved, or that she had a part in others loving. A long passage from The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle was the first and, for me, the most memorable. The magic and humorous canter of the book, which I had started reading one summer at Betty’s house, was a perfect form of reverence. A few people spoke, choking on their words, about the amazing effect that Betty had on them. It seemed as if every person whose life intersected hers was profoundly affected by her infectious love of life and easy-going, unassuming way of relating. My uncle Mike sang and played some songs on the guitar that Betty had always enjoyed. Everyone cried intermittently, some squeezed each others hands or hugged and patted each other on the back. I gripped my mothers hand as she grabbed my shoulder, starting to sob as Mike sang sweetly over the chords.
As he finished, my dad asked me to hold up a book of sheet music so he could read along as he played the piece on the flute. I have not heard my father play the flute for what seemed like years. I have never heard him play so eloquently. The Sonata in A Minor by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, a piece I was totally unfamiliar with, moved me to tears. With my hands occupied, a tear crept over my cheek, dropped from the precipice of my chin, and plummeted into the redness of the wine between my knees. By the time the flute left his lips, I had begun to realize my loss, for it is out of this kind of selfishness that mourning starts. I realized that I would never have a real Christmas again, not without Betty, at her tiny house. I would never again hear her Australian accent, or eat a holiday meal at the huge wooden table in her kitchen, or sit around her living room all night while she dozed off in an arm chair.
My aunt Jenny, who hadn’t been able to come out from her home in Portland, Oregon, listened over the phone as my aunt Meg held it towards everyone who spoke and performed. Something about the scene struck me as overwhelming; beautifully poetic and melancholy. Meg, kneeling on the grass, crying delicately, was holding the phone in the air, trembling slightly as her son and daughter leaned against her on either side, comforting her and themselves.
We toasted to Betty and drank deeply. People broke off into smaller groups to discuss exactly how marvelous a person Betty had been to them.
I would like to include more dialogue to convey the wonderful way my family converses, totally at ease and light hearted, intellectually and over all sincere, but most of the actual words escape me. What are preserved are a few vivid, flash-bulb memories and the emotions. We ricocheted back and forth between enjoying seeing each other and hopeless mourning, but settled between the two on a bitter-sweet feeling of being a family. Being a family because that’s what we are, because that’s what Betty wanted us to be, and because being a family, whether we knew it or not, was what we all needed.
Later in the evening, we convened again in the garden to honor Betty’s burial wishes. Her children decided the ashes were to be split between the six children, and each would sprinkle them in their own garden. Six small, ornate boxes of Betty’s were selected. The entire family watched by candle-light as her ashes were separated between them. The rest were sprinkled around her garden. As they were being divided, one of the youngest members of our family asked,
“What is that?” pointing to the bag of ashes.
“That’s what is left of her body,” he was matter-of-factly answered.
“Oh…so that’s like, her skin?” he asked quizzically.
“That’s everything.”
His apprehensiveness turned to curious excitement, “I want to see….Where are her bones?”
Most of us couldn’t help laughing. The precociousness yet brutal reality of his questions offered a bizarre form of comic relief.
With tears peeking from behind his glasses, my dad chuckled a little too hard, and as the gathering cleared he wandered close. We hugged and shared and understanding moment. Having been in New York for college, it had been a long time since we had a good conversation; but there were no words just then. One of his brothers or sisters caught his attention and I walked off towards a glass of wine and a group of my cousins.
Kristin, Uncle Mike, and some older women who had known Betty through a respiratory ailment support group spoke quietly, all condolences and comforting. Betty had smoked in her youth and developed serious lung complications in age, precipitating her departure. After a few minutes of small talk Kristin pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse, squeezed one between her lips, leaned down toward her cupped hands and paused, noticing the glare of one of the older ladies. Without malice or resentment, just subtle pity, the woman said slowly “You better enjoy that.”
About a month before her death, Betty’s six children had noticed a change. Her normal cheerfulness was somewhat dampened. She complained about her ailments in a way that she never had before, by acting at all affected by them. She had never seemed to let anything get to her and it was now obvious she was in pain.
Betty had always insisted on being totally self-sufficient. She had worked in sales at a department store near her for more than twenty years, only being forced to retire a few years ago when the store closed. She mowed her own lawn and took care of her house completely on her own. When I would arrive on Christmas, a tree that she had brought home herself would be waiting to be decorated.
Noticing a decline in her demeanor, her children discussed her getting help. They explained to her that they wanted to give her more freedom, not less, by having someone take care of the difficult chores, giving her more energy to do the things she enjoyed, but she took offense. Much out of her normal character, she told her children that they had far overstepped their bounds, and said that she was so upset that they were collaborating behind her back that she did not want to speak to any of them for a month. Less than a month later she died.
In a diary of hers she had written only one comment about the entire incident.
“My loving children are conspiring to help me. Am apprehensive”
Most of Betty’s life was spent in devotion to her children. She grew up in Australia and met my grandfather, Dick, when he was stationed there during WWII. He was a photographer and served his country without ever entering the line of fire. They had a loving wartime romance and Betty was soon pregnant with her eldest daughter Susan. Before Dick was transferred to a new region of the world, he and Betty were married. She soon set off to America to live with a mother-in-law that she had never met, have her first child, and await her husbands return. She took a ship through dangerous waters; several times her ship was under alert due to the proximity of Axis war ships. While shuffling through a cardboard crate, I found the paper work she used to travel through the Panama Canal. I once asked Betty about her voyage, about what it must have been like to leave home, crossing oceans under dangerous conditions, while pregnant, to a place on the other side of the globe, to live with people she had never met before. Betty talked about it as if it were nothing, recognizing that it was exciting, but never once acting as if she had been terrified. She apparently hadn’t questioned it for a minute, had just done what she needed to do, and was totally willing to leave her home, possibly forever, to go start her family. She had an ease of personality, an unquestioning confidence in life, which could not be broken by anything.
On her deathbed, as her children scrambled from around the globe to be near her, Betty held on. She was not expected to make it through the first night, but she seemed to be waiting for something. Once all who were coming had arrived and her children were there at her side, she slipped away. The social worker said she felt that Betty had been waiting for them all to arrive, waiting to be with the people she loved. She died the same way she did everything else in life: pleasantly and without making a fuss. It was not long, desperate, or agonizing; she simply slipped into death, looking very much herself, almost silently. In the last month of her life she had driven her children away, almost as if to make a space to die in, so no one would have to suffer with her as she deteriorated. She had very specific wishes about not being resuscitated and not lingering on life-support and perhaps she was worried that with six children someone would take over these decisions or force her into assisted living. Betty died exactly the way she lived, on her own terms.
Late Sunday or early Monday, I’m not sure exactly when, my little brother fell asleep. His snoring blended in with the road noise. Before I could finish a page, I would either lose my place or stop and start a conversation with my dad. Talking kept him from noticing how miserable all the traveling had been.
“Susan mentioned that you and she had a really nice conversation.” DJ said after some silence.
“Yeah, it was nice; I can’t remember the last time I talked to her.”
“She said you talked about your writing class”
“Yeah. You know she’s writing a short story right now too. She was really interested in my writing class because its theme is the Ugly American and she’s an American living in England….We talked a lot actually, it was nice.”
“She’s written a few novels. She hasn’t gotten them published.”
“At Betty’s house, Nat pulled a copy of that ‘Health and Beauty’ book off the shelf.”
“Oh, the do-it-yourself book she wrote.”
“Yeah, he didn’t know Susan had written it and just grabbed it and asked what it was. Michael and Katie and Alex were all sitting around waiting for him to notice the author, but her name wasn’t on the cover so I just told him…How did she get into the beauty stuff, it doesn’t seem like her.”
“I don’t know exactly what she started doing, but at one point she was doing these make-over things at malls for an expensive make-up company. Some lady would win a contest and get a make-over at the department store. They’d make a big show out of it. She has done a lot of writing about health and beauty. She met Michael somehow through that.”
“I really don’t know much about Susan’s branch of the family. She mentioned some stuff about her past, just in passing. She had a husband before Michael?”
“She was married for a couple years. He died in a car accident.”
“Oh, really…that’s tragic. At least they didn’t have any kids, did they?”
“No, they had only been married a couple of years. A few years after that she met Michael. She was really excited about it, I told her to go for it, but he lived in England and she was in New York and had made a name for herself. Eventually she moved over there with him.”
“She mentioned a breakdown or something, Was that after her first husband died?”
“No, that was later, when she was with Michael. She talked candidly about it with me a few years back. Breakdown is such a cliché term, it doesn’t really say anything. ”
“What was it about?”
“She said that everything became wrought with meaning, she became paralyzed by thinking about what every little thing meant.”
“That’s odd. In this book I just read, The Sheltering Sky, this character talks about how she takes everything as omens, meaning something. She doesn’t really live with free will, she appears to, but she’s just balancing out the omens of each day with each other and determining how she’s supposed to act.”
“Yeah, it was just like that. For a while she was on some medication, she wasn’t herself and it was hard to talk to her. Michael actually got frustrated with the family. People were being awkward about it and not communicating. He wanted us to realize, ‘she’s still your sister, just talk to her.’ They said she would probably always need medication, but she became herself again.”
“When I heard about Betty, it was the night you were driving up, and Holly told me to call you, but I just didn’t. I don’t know, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how you’d be.”
The Pennsylvania turnpike hummed underneath us, the headlights pulled us along the long slow curves of the highway, and faraway brake-lights disappeared and reappeared methodically over the invisible hills.
“It’s ok, it doesn’t matter…You know, though, in those kind of situations, where you feel like you should do something, but avoid it, out of uneasiness, just because it’s an uncomfortable situation, you might wish that you had the made the effort. You can end up really regretting not calling.”
"Sorry for the historical mistakes; I should have done better research I suppose. Make a note of the mistakes to accompany the story on the web-site if it seems necessary."