i can’t believe i’m posting an entry on my friendster blog for this. but i guess i just need to make an announcement that’s unofficial and has room for my thoughts right now, to the majority of the people in and around my life.
my grandpa, who would have been 96 in april, died last night. or this morning. in his sleep. luckily, he was at home.
he had lived with my family for my entire life+, moving with us wherever we went, going on our ’round the world vacations, and being a visutskie fixture. one that alternately divided us and bound us, but everpresent and (we assumed) everlasting.
i just realized that it’s friday the 13th; nice.
last week he had emergency surgery to remove a strangulated testicle (uhhhh, basically a hernia of sorts) and i like to think he just didn’t think life was worth it with only one left. he went through the procedure fine, and was recuperating in grandpa fashion (flirting with the nurses and eating jello happily) but had to get a catheter inserted later, a very painful and stressful procedure for a man who has had quite a few invasive, painful medical procedures. not to mention removal of some of his stomach and esophagus due to cancer - some 35 years ago.
my brother reckons that the stress of this procedure might have weakened his heart. i can’t believe that i’m hearing that this was potentially preventable and it may not have had to happen.
my dad is flying home from singapore.
the thai maid will, i guess, be flying home.
funeral is monday or tuesday.
i don’t know what’s next.
**edited to add**
it was not at home, but in a hospital in pembroke, but in his sleep. my mother was the last person to see him, and felt quite guilty for not being there, but assumed that he was alright. my mother often inherits people’s last breaths…she was there for the death of my aunt (g-pa’s daughter) who had been in a coma for a few weeks dying of cancer. the sun of a new day was streaming through the windows, so my mother sang a hymn she remembered from school (later popularized by cats stevens, with no god-talk), “morning has broken”.
i was a pallbearer, along with my brothers and a cousin. if it is january, if there is snow and ice on the ground, and if the church is built on a hill overlooking the vast expanse of the ottawa valley, i would recommend to whatever family may be under these circumstances to insist that there be MORE THAN FOUR pallbearers. though i didn’t find the casket particularly heavy, the weight of the possibilities for horrific failure as a pallbearer will be an unbearable burden. i could not breathe as i stood in the lobby waiting to follow the priest and procession. i was standing by my father and did not want him to erupt in the open floodgates of repressed rage and grief, so i choked on no air.
shortly after this, nerves still unsteady, body shaking, breath inconsistent, i had to give a reading, from the book of paul to the corinthians. though i’ve been in this church several times in my life, never at the pulpit. i cannot explain the stress this can have on a raised-roman-catholic-but-now-completely-deviant individual such as myself, in such a place of grand scale and importance.
my father did break down, after we placed the casket in the hearse and had to watch as it drove away. my brother made a final grandpa-related joke and the choked tears were freed in gulps of guilty but necessary laughter. one last shake of the fist, respect for the ol’ bastard, and the knowledge that we’d get a chance to say goodbye once more in the spring.