The Passage

Granny holding me, right, and my brother in her lap, 1971.

The body that has carried the soul of my grandmother around this earth for nine decades lays dying in a hospice bed in Columbia, South Carolina. There. I said it aloud. It doesn't make it any easier to accept or process.

We all call her Granny. Its a West Virginia thing. Her slow decline from the clever and sharp witted woman who featured so prominently in my upbringing began roughly a decade ago. The insidious plaque of Alzheimer's paving her neurons, robbing her of memory and cognition. The sparkle in her eyes that I will always remember slowly dimming, the furrows in her brow as she tried so damned hard to grasp that recollection that eluded her. When she first began to look at us and call us by every one of her children's or grandchild's names before she arrived at ours it was hilarious, "Butch, Marsha, Josh, Matthew, Ramie, Benjy!" But then, not so much.

My father and his blessed stoicism and my lovely Aunt Marsha have shepherded my Granny through this long transition. My cousin Ramie has been there doggedly throughout. My mother and Uncle Mike the veritable rocks where the spouses needed them. None of their tireless efforts or the sheer will and determination could stop the inevitable decline. From the home my Granny built with my PaPaw, to the small apartment near Mike and Marsha's, to the small retirement bungalow near Mom and Dad, to the retirement home back in Columbia...and finally to the Alzheimer's unit, they were all there. And still are. Watching. Waiting.

You see, Granny has been through this herself a few times. She helped my grandfather with the long and deliberate transition of his own mother. I have vague memories of my great-grandmother laying crabbed and crippled in a nursing home bed, whispering quiet prayers for Jesus to come take her away. We weren't as enlightened about end of life issues back then. I'm sure Granny's decision to have a living will was formed over the regular visits to that bedside.

Granny and PaPaw at Matt's H.S. graduation

Cruel fate brought my grandfather's massive stroke soon after, leaving him in Granny's care. Stubborn, hard-scrabbled, to the very end she refused to put him in an assisted living facility. She nearly killed herself caring for him, allowing the visiting nurses only the most basic duties. She took care of nearly everything else. Our grandfather was left with only a couple of words after his stroke, one of which was 'shit'. I remember one time when Granny was bustling about the kitchen, surely making me one of my beloved BLT's, and I was shaving my grandfather with an electric razor as he sat at the table. He looked up at me, knowing full well what he really wanted to say and not being able to, shook his head, smiled and muttered, "Oh shit." My Granny's stroke took her past even this slight ability to interact with her world.

It hit her over almost two weeks ago. A massive brainquake that has taken nearly everything that remained of her. The physical vehicle of her essential self is now so damaged that it can no longer sustain itself. This has left my father and Aunt the responsibility to carry out the dictates of that living will on behalf of the family. I am thankful for their strength, that they are going through this directly for all of us. Yesterday morning they moved her to the hospice unit. The workers gently and with great care removed the last artificial means of sustenance and support, made sure she is comfortable...and now we wait.

Granny has lost the ability to meaningfully interact with those around her. I've been told she rarely opens her eyes, and when she does the person she was is no longer evident. Her body, that fragile vessel, has finally failed her, shutting her window to the world. As its critical functions slow towards the inevitable stop, I cannot help but wonder what is happening to that essential self within. I want to imagine that, laying in the fog of palliative ease, she is sifting through the memories that remain. Traveling backwards in time, lightly touching upon each treasured moment. Does she start with our family reunion last year? The point in time where all her beloved children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren but one were together at last? The last time my grandfather said something that made her laugh out loud while he came in through the screen door from working in their garden? The nights that she let my brother and I stay up late to watch Chiller and eat popcorn off TV trays? The time while camping that they had an animal talk and my brother freaked out yelling, "Thnake! Granny, Granny its a Thnake!" I know that's one. She's told that story a hundred times.

She must be going back before that. The pride of seeing my father and Aunt graduate college and become wonderful people giving back to the world. The last brick being laid of the home she built with my grandfather. Being one of the trend of women that lead the way into the professional workforce in running the shipping department of the Nickel Plant. Getting a postcard from my grandfather while he was away flying torpedo bombers in WWII on the day my father was born. Falling in love with my grandfather and his rugged good looks in his football uniform. Seeing her mother set the Sunday table in Salt Rock, WV where her father ran the country store, her many beloved siblings by her side.

I  imagine her, sitting her her own mental theater, these moments scrolling across the screen. And her smiling one more time.

Love you, Granny. Thanks for everything. All of it. I wouldn't change a thing.

Goodbye.