Robodad

In recent months, my wife’s grandmother had become weary of life. This was revealed by something she said to me at the beginning of it all, about six months ago: Old age is a curse, Aaron. and I don’t know why anyone would want to live forever.  You get tired, and your body breaks down.

She had been retired for some years, and had enjoyed reading and cross-stitching until her arthritis and poor vision made those few pleasures unattainable.  Then she did what so many old folks do when there is nothing to occupy their minds…sit by the window and obsess about what the neighbors do or don’t do…  Complain to all who will listen of her pains and aches.

The extended family had become annoyed with her complaints and pettiness.  I did not.  When we visited, we brought our children, her great grandchildren, to fill her empty rooms with their noises and needs and sniffles.  She glowed when we were there, forgetful of her pains.  I never saw the embittered old woman everyone else seemed to see.

At the time we had our talk about immortality, she could barely move around the house with the long and unwieldy oxygen tubes.   Over the next months, as her lungs grew weaker, she grew less capable of moving; even a few feet was a tiring chore.

Then came the fall which broke her back, and the subsequent surgery.  We all knew she needed a nursing home to help her recover. But the surgery did not help the pain, and her time at the home there was spent zonked out on painkillers – greeting visitors with head in hands and eyes closed, barely aware of the people who came to see her.

A few additional maladies and hospital visits later, it was obvious she was not healing.  She finally decided enough was enough, and she stopped taking food or drink.  Her frail and tired body began to shut down.  She had given the hospital orders not to resuscitate her.

Then they took her off the oxygen.

That night, my wife Ellen rushed to see her at the hospital.  Her grandmother could not talk, but her eyes moved, and her breathing was strained and gasping.  My wife talked to her for a long time that night in the hospital room.  She told her she loved her.  She cried.  She talked to her grandmother of the sleepovers they had together when Ellen was little, and her grandmother would put her hair in curlers and make her chocolate milk, and they would both sleep in those unbearably uncomfortable curlers.  Ellen talked about her favorite lullaby to sing to our son, and she sang it to her grandmother there in the hospital room.  Edelweiss.

That night, Ellen came home and cried and cried.

In the morning, we got the call that it had happened in the night an hour after Ellen left.

As I carried her coffin, I can’t help but think that she’s much lighter than I thought she’d be.

Rest now, Isabelle.