On death and dying

Ruminating on loss and loneliness too much these days.

Too much time spent to myself. Too much time in my own head. I write these blog posts, remembering times in my life with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight. The present, however, is much more blurry. The Therapist and I dug into this on Friday evening and I'm still reeling from the session. The point being, change is needed; big, massive, earth -shattering change. The question is: how do I affect this change? I don't have the answer, just questions. Always questions.

In my second year of grad school I was deep in rehearsals for Douglas Carter Beane's play 'As Bees In Honey Drown.' I saw the original production off-Broadway and had been fairly unimpressed with it. However, I was keen to direct a comedy; this play was highly castable in a grad school environment; and I was drawn to its themes of ambiguity, masks and fairy tale. Which of us doesn't want to recreate ourselves on a daily basis? I was also fascinated by its portrayal of the 80s art scene in NYC. A world that, through Tama Janowitz's 'Slaves of New York', I had hoped to be a part of upon my arrival. Needless to say, that world was gone by the 90s. But it still fascinated me.

And like Beane's main character, Alexa Vere de Vere, my personality and sense of humor had been shaped by leading women in the entertainment world: Roz Russell in 'Auntie Mame', Tallulah Bankhead in 'Lifeboat', Audrey Heburn in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's', anything starring Marilyn Monroe, and any old Bette Midler recording. How do these icons find us in our youth? What is it about them that calls the young gay boy? What is their allure? I would think it's something in their ability to be tough and vulnerable; to say what's on their mind in a funny, off-the-cuff kind of way; their ability to reinvent themselves while still retaining something that is essentially and viscerally them. I aspired to that. Perhaps, I still do.

So there I am. In New Jersey. Directing Beane. A week before tech and opening. My grandmother had fallen a few weeks before. She had been taken to the hospital with a fractured hip. A fractured hip turned to pneumonia. Pneumonia, after a lifetime of smoking and several bouts of struggling with lung cancer led to the inevitable. Gram was transferred to hospice and I had to go home to see her, immediately because it wouldn't be long now.

They say bad things come in threes. Gram's impending death was the third event to prove that theory true. 9/11 had rocked all our worlds that September. An indirect result of that event was the final break-up of my romantic relationship with Present Ex. Still on wobbly feet, I was forced to confront the end of the life of a woman who touched me and meant as much to me as my mother. Gram lived around the corner from us my entire life. She took care of me when Mom started working. She taught me to cook, to clean. She bandaged my cuts when I fell. She took me shopping. She took me, every summer, to the farm on which she grew up. She taught me compassion. She tried to teach me to be tough. She chased me around the house, wielding a wooden spoon to whip my behind when I misbehaved. And she made me laugh.

I don't know when it is that people become aware of their own mortality and the mortality of those close to them. I assume it's different for everyone and I would also assume that some never do. In undergrad, on visits home, my heart would ache at the sight of my grandparents framed in the white doorway of their front porch, waving to me as we drove away. I was convinced every time that I wouldn't see them again. And I was filled with joy every time I came home and there they were, waiting for me to return. Pop on the porch. Gram in the kitchen, putting food down on the table in front of me the minute I walked in.
And nothing bet Gram's cooking. Raised in a large Polish family on a farm in upstate Pennsylvania, she had moved to Philadelphia to become a nurse. She met my Italian grandfather, an Army Sergeant, and they fell in love. What was a Polish girl to do? Learn how to cook Italian! And she did. Kick ass.

She and my grandfather also loved and accepted their gay son. And loved and accepted me and Present Ex.

When Mom called me at Rutgers and told me to come home, my heart dropped. I had thrown myself into my work at school in an effort to not think about it. Sometimes I was successful. Sometimes I wasn't. But with Gram in hospice, there was no way to avoid it anymore. Mom, of course, wanted me to take the train in. She didn't want me to drive to Philly in an emotional state. While I understood this, the plan was to skip classes and drive in for the day so I would be back in time for rehearsal that night, knowing I would miss important time at school soon for the funeral. So I opted to drive, blasting the Indigo Girls all the way. In times of trouble, lesbian harmony is a lifesaver.

The hour-long ride went by too quickly and as I approached St. Agnes Hospital on Broad Street I had to pull over. I was hyperventilating, my hands were shaking and I could barely see for the water welling up deep in my eyes. I didn't want o do this. I didn't want to see her here. I wanted her to die quickly and without my having to "prepare" for it. But here I was and Gram was conscious and aware. I needed to see her. Being a former nurse, she knew that things were coming to an end.

I drove my car up and up the long, winding ramps of the hospital parking lot. There wasn't a space to be had, except on the roof. I thought, How many people are here? How many people are dying here? How many people are being born here? And wasn't it fitting that she had come back to the place where she worked for so many years for her own care. I parked the car and tried to force the tears out but they wouldn't come. Sometimes the amount of control I exert over myself is beyond even my own understanding. The tears were there, but they wouldn't come.

I took the cold, steel elevator to the hospice level. The smell of the hospital made my stomach turn. The sounds of ventilators and heart monitors echoed in my head and I walked blindly through the automatic doors. When they closed behind me, the sounds abruptly stopped. This place was quiet. The machines hummed silently but they weren't set to work as hard as possible to keep patients alive. These machines were set to maintain. I stood in front of the nurse's station and saw my mom and my grandfather silhouetted in front of the window and the cold grey sky beyond. A nurse asked me a question but all I could hear were the sounds of her voice, not the words. Mom looked up and saw me. She wiped tears from her eyes as she came out and she hugged me hard. "Try not to cry," she said. "She knows it's bad but seeing you is going to reinforce that. We don't know how much longer she'll last."

Is she awake? Is she aware?

"Yes. Talk to her. She knows where she is."

I don't want to go in. I can't go in.

"For her."

And, like a little boy again, Mom took my hand and led me into the room. There was another patient in the first bed, an African American woman who looked worse than I thought a person could. She was surrounded by family members and the hospice nurse who was cracking jokes and taking pictures. I wanted to punch her. She had short, spikey red hair. She floated around the room as if nothing was wrong. She put her arms around people as if she knew them. She whispered intimacies in their ears. She cajoled them into taking pictures with the stick-figure loved ones in their bed. And then there was Gram. She was in bed, hardly raised, her hair white and whispy and her figure as close to emaciated as I'd ever seen it. Gram had always been weirdly solid and wiry. Now she was weak and old. Her glasses were too big for her face. Her life was too small for her body. She smiled when she saw me and I bent down to kiss her on the cheek. The skin was rough and dry, malleable like an old rubber band. I made myself not pull away. I went around the bed to hug and kiss Pop who looked at me sadly but full of strength. "I'll go get you a coffee," he said.

"Talk to her," Mom said.

And I sat down beside her, and I took her hand and I babbled. I looked in her eyes and talked about school and rehearsal. And all the while, her thumb rubbed the back of my hand. It didn't matter what I said. She wasn't listening to me and either was I. it was just about being there.

After a while, my brother showed up and Mom took us to lunch at the local diner. We weren't yet at the point where we could laugh and smile and share funny Gram stories. We were each of us alone in our private grief. And I wondered how alone was Gram? What was she thinking? Was she replaying her own life events over and over in her head? Was she scared? Was she ready for it to be over? What did she see when she looked at me? The last time I had seen her, I kissed her goodbye as she sat on her chair in the living room, watching TV. She said. "I don't want to die until I see you settled." I laughed and said, Then you're never going to die. I work in the theatre. I'm never going to be settled.

But here we were. She was dying. I was farther from settled then I ever had been.

After lunch I hugged my brother goodbye and watched him, suited up for business, get into his car and drive to the bank. Then I walked Mom back to the hospital. I didn't want to ask the question and, blessedly, she answered it for me without my having to ask, "You don't have to come back up." I hugged her hard, whispered 'I love you' and told her I'd call her when I got back to Jersey.

On the ride home, I tried to make myself forget what had just happened but I kept sensing Gram's thumb stroking my hand. I wished as I had a thousand times before when she was struggling with cancer that I could somehow transfer my health into her sick body. I wish I could have given her the gift of my life, even if it meant forsaking some of my own. I would have.

I went to rehearsal that night. I smoked too many cigarettes even though my grandmother was dying as a result of lung cancer. I opted not to talk about what was going on. I couldn't call Present Ex and cry. We weren't at that point yet. I had nowhere to go but into my work. Fortunately my work involved direct contact with other people. My self-destructive, hermitted nature could appear later, at home. I thought about the play; the play, the play. The play was, indeed, the thing. It was healing to disappear into the crazy world of Alexa Vere de Vere and her schemes.

The next day, my grandfather procured a hospital bed for the house. Gram didn't want to be in hospice any longer. The day after that, she was discharged. The next day, she passed away quietly at home at six in the morning.