Death and Casseroles

I've been MIA this week, I know. I got a call on Wednsday that my grandmother had a massive stroke and was now paralyzed on her left side. She has been dying ever since, a process that can take a really long time, she is now in a coma and awaiting the next phase in the dying process. (update as of 9:24pm on Tuesday, she has now passed away, and we are both relived for her to be no longer suffering, and completely heart broken by losing her)

My family has gone through five deaths in three years, most on my dad's side of the family. Lily has been there through all of this, she has witnessed the crying, the soft talking, the funerals that are INCREDIBLY boring for her. The two things she has taken away from all of this are
1) an incredible love of casseroles and
2) an almost obsessive facination with death.

Lily asks me every day, about every person in her life, when they will die, if they will die before her, when/if she will die, will she be a ghost, will she get to see GGma or Papa when she dies, where heaven is, and what kind of casserole will they bring me when she dies.

Is it wrong to ask a 4 year old to shut up? yeah...it is.

When my dad died in 2007, Hospice gave us a great little coloring book on loss, and death, explaining to kids that when someone gets very sick, and dies, they just aren't there anymore. They might go to heaven, but we don't know for sure, all we know is that Papa isn't with us anymore, but he still lives in our heart. While this seems easy enough of an explanation, it just leaves kids with more questions, especially kids like mine.

She isn't afraid of death by any means, which I suppose is a good thing, she is just curious, and loud, and full of awkward questions and statements when we are all sitting here, trying to just be sad.

I had this whole fantastic blog post about how I deal with this planned, but now I'm just too sad, and I don't feel right letting it sit much longer, becuase i won't ever want to finish it, and I refuse to let death take away my blogging, its all I have right now keeping me sane.

Anybody have any good tips on answering the awkward questions of gothic 4 year olds?

What Dreams May Come

 I recently came across this entry in my myspace blog and thought i would re-post it, the dream is still so vivid, and the memories of the loss of my dad are still right in the fore front of my mind.

 

Lying down with my daughter i wasn't looking for a message or some sort of other worldly experience. I had hoped, as many mothers of busy toddlers do, to get her to take a quick nap and hopefully sneak away to get something important done that i had been putting off, like the mountain of dishes piling ever closer to the ceiling in my kitchen. blog myspace a dream I had about a year ago, about my dad who I lost about 2 years ago. I found this on my actually  This is

As i lay next to her warm, wriggling body, and hummed to her softly, my eyes grew heavy and the humming becomes deep and thick. It was a sleep that came on like a coma, sudden, and hard, leaving the sleeper blissfully unaware that they had even fallen asleep.

I am not a person who regularly goes to great lengths to remember her dreams, I sleep, i wake, i eat, i work. I rarely have the time it takes to fully recreate and analyze my dreams and I'm sure if i did i would only find out that I am narcissistic and self absorbed and have a fear of heights, tight places, and Jeff Goldblum. These are all things i am painfully aware of and i don't need to go delving into my subconscious to better understand them. Today, for whatever reason, my subconscious felt it was unable to be ignored any longer, It required attention, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, my dreams were clear and vivid and in full color, i could feel the touches, hear the words in the voices of those in my dreams and even smell the familiar smells as though i were standing right where my REM sleep has taken me.

The little wriggling body and the quiet noises of a house abandoned on a lazy Saturday hold me in my slumber and fall deeper into my pillow, my dreams coming in without announcement and leaving me relatively unscathed, the final dream in what i am sure was a nap full of images wakes me, suddenly, painfully, as though some beast is lying on my back, preventing me from leaving this dream and i am sobbing, and I remember as though it were still happening.

I can see ahead of me a monorail, much like that used in Disney Land, speeding past me holding hundreds upon hundreds of people. My sister Rachel and I look ahead at the gate listed "Seattle". We were facing a decision.

"Lets get on the other monorails, we can go to all of the other cities, get off and check out their gift shops." I say hopefully.

Looking to the right, i see gates labeled with every US City of consequence and multiple European, Canadian and Asian cities represented, all teeming with activity. People file in and out and i almost watch from above instead of straight on, as the people walk from and to the the monorail in perfect form, all dressed in jeans and white T-shirts.

My sister and I are out of place, I'm wearing my green tank top and jeans, and she is in a brown and white silky top that she often wears. We watch the activity from our line to Seattle, and think on our choices.

"I don't know if we should, we will probably end up lost stuck in Denmark and out of money, besides, i think I over drew my account at the last shop." she mulls over the possibility, a longing look toward the monorail bound Greece gives away her true convictions.

"Lets at least see what they have here, I'm sure its only crocs and cameras, but i'm curious and this line will take forever. " i look down the seemingly never ending line to the Seattle gate, while every other line moves, in and out at a dramatic pace, trains enter, stop, empty, fill, go, again and again at every gate, the Seattle gate stands woefully in wait.

We pull away from the ranks, pushing against the wall of bodies all looking to move forward as we yearn to go back. The bodies hold us there, ignoring out pushing and shouting, they stand strong unwilling to separate or yield.

Rachel sees a small clearing in the vast expanse of Seattle bound white T-shirted stomachs and chests, and we bolt for it. We escape in a nod to Indiana Jones sans the fedora and make our way to the gift shop the bodies seemed to want to keep us away from.

The shop looks like a typical airport, theme park, generic gift shop. Shot Glasses line the wall, all clear, T-shirts are neatly folded, all white, all plain, in front of me, posters, blank, are carefully arranged in the poster display wrack awaiting your purchase. I see a startling lack of color, of depth. There is no indication as to where exactly we are. I pick up a photo album with a white glossy cover and a lack of writing and thumb through the blank pages. I see the postcards arranged neatly in the racks and again, am greeted by a sheet of glossy white. Rachel lightly fingers a blank wooden picture frame and asks me, "where exactly are we do you think?" and i take a minute to ponder.

"not exactly sure, maybe we should get back in line." and we leave the shop, unsatisfied with our bit of adventure.

"I wish we could go to those other places, it would be amazing to just hop trains and visit the gift shops in these other places." Rach muses at the idea of beaded handbags, silk wraps and novelty T-shirts, her eyes sink low to the ground as we remind ourselves that we can't take the trains, we have a job to take care of.

"we have to get the garden planted for daddy, he needs to see the tulips and the tomato plants, and we need to help out mom in the house and i have to get back to work and check in with Lily and get her to school on Monday. I know it was kind of my idea but there really isn't a way we can hop trains, i have to get back to daddy." we look at each other with knowing eyes and make our way back to the Seattle bound train, now moving in perfect time with the other trains, arriving, stopping, unloading, re-loading, and going.

We arrive at a white house, not a house i have seen before but a small white house with blue shutters and a half dug garden on the side yard. Rachel and i take to the soil, tilling with our bare hands and shoving large bulbs and sturdy seedlings deep into the earth. We plant in a panic, our malaise near the end of our visit to the blank gift shop subsiding in favor of dirt flying panic as we plant flower after flowing in every conceivable color and shape. We tend to tomatoes and lettuce and squash, all flowering, sprouting, and shrivelling in the blink of an eye. We watch as the bulbs thrust frantically into the earth immediately bloom and then die with in seconds. The hanging baskets and tender seedlings blossom, grow tall, turn brown, and wither to nothing. The frantic pace continues until i look at my sister, dirtied and bleeding and scream,

 "WE HAVE TO PLANT THIS FOR DADDY, HE NEEDS THE FLOWERS, WILL JUST PLANT THE DAMN FLOWERS?!" and she yells back to me, "I AM PLANTING THE DAMN FLOWERS AM, BACK OFF, THEY WILL GET PLANTED!" as well and the dirt flies I hear a phone ring in the distance. I am hesitant to leave my project, the garden is at the same time breathtaking and rotting, alive and dead, unable to meet itself in a place of agreement as to the state of living or dying it wishes to maintain.

I grab the phone and smell the blunt, thick smell of earth on my hands as i bring the reciver to my ear, it is coupled with the stink of decaying plant matter and I feel suddenly very ashamed.

"Amy, its Dad, what's going on?" this is the way our conversations would start. He announced himself, he desire to hear our voices masked by casual inquiries into our day to day goings on. At this point i would normally avail him of the trials and tribulations of my day. He would nod, occasionally interject an important piece of advice, but mostly just listen. Today, i couldn't work the nicieties of the everyday into the phone call. As the words, "...whats going on?" left his end of the reciver my eyes filled with molten tears lying dormant behind closed eyes.

"I am trying to get the garden planted for you daddy, the fucking flowers, they bloom, they die, they bloom they die, nothing wants to stay alive and I can't make it work. I want you to see the tulips and taste your tomatoes and trim the rhodie but i can't make it work daddy." and i cry. the tears burning my sleeping eyes pour forth, powerful and strong, and my sleeping body nearly awakens with the force of my tears.

"Honey, you don't have to worry about Grandpa and me anymore, we are going to be okay, and you, my Amy, are doing just great." he tells me in his own voice, this disembodied phone voice that speaks to me, and tries to assuage my fears, and then, for a moment i can see him. Standing tall, and strong, the great tree of a man he was, and i can smell him, that smokey scent of Carlton 100's and that other smell, the smell that was uniquely him, the smell i can't duplicate no matter how hard I try. And I start to run to him, my sobbing body reaching for him and with the strength of my tears and heaviness of my sobs my sleeping mind wakes up, pulling me from the nearby arms of my dad.

My eyes fight to stay closed, tears burn the inside of my lids and the weight of sleep is still heavy on me, one half of me pulls to re-enter REM sleep, but he is gone, the scent is gone, the decaying but still living garden is gone, and i am somewhere between sleep and awake and he is gone.

He is gone.