Do go gentle into that good night
posted in Family, Illnesses |John Donne Dylan Thomas says, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.“ In general, I agree; don’t give in, don’t give up, keep on keepin’ on.
At this point, though, I’m sure he was talking about people dying young.
I remember, oh so many years ago, when my grandfather W. finally died, it was such a relief to him and to everyone in the family. He had been suffering from heart attacks and emphysema and Parkinsons’ Disease for so many years, in and out of hospitals, the EMTs regularly called out to jolt him back into wakefulness when his heart stopped yet again. Grandma W. had been coping with this for ten years, and even though we had plenty of family in the area who tried to help her with everything, it was wearing on her.
I was in my mid-twenties when the phone call came from my cousin, in the middle of the night. Grandpa had died. And while I was sad that he was gone, I remember distinctly feeling very happy that finally, finally Grandma would be able to take a rest, a break, turn her eyes outward from the cocoon of the family home. She had a lovely year or two afterwards–my aunt and uncle moved her out to California to be in their area, her meds were adjusted, with the majority simply being tossed out, and she was making new friends and socializing like crazy. Then she, too, died.
Here I am, twenty years later, coping with a different grandparent in a different situation.
Marguerite is 104. She comes from a line of people who live long, healthy lives. Her brother was in his 90s when he died; her two sisters both made it past 100 themselves. Her husband died more than 30 years ago…
She has been a constant in my life. Not as much for me as for my cousins, whose yearly all-summer visit was one of the few pieces of calm and normalcy in their lives. But, nonetheless, she’s always been there. A wonderful grandmother for small children; not-so-wonderful once the kids hit adolescence and start having minds of their own. Once we all made it through adolescence and our early 20s, we were able to come to grips with how Grandma operated, and we all made our peace, in one way or another, with her.
Which is to say: We love her. We may not really like her quite as much as we’d all like to like her, but we all love her. Fiercely. Because she’s an amazing woman.
She was still driving until her late 90s. She was still bowling at age 99. She was still playing bridge at the assisted living center–and beating the other players–just two years ago. She just kept keepin’ on, getting slightly frailer, but mostly being astonishingly hale and healthy and doing her puzzles every morning.
I spent a year living with her during the weeks shortly after OmegaDad and I moved to Arizona. I got a job down in the Valley of Death, but our house was near OmegaGranny, ninety miles away from the job. So I’d wake up early on Monday mornings, pop into the car, and drive down to my job, then Monday evening would drive to Sun City and spend the nights through Thursday…then, Friday night, would drive back up into the (small) mountains and meet up with OmegaDad for the weekends. He, in the meantime, was driving 100 miles the other way, on pretty much the same schedule.
Yesterday was my last day in Arizona for a while. OmegaGranny, the dotter and I visited Great-Grandma in her nursing home. She is so frail. She was lost in her mind, trying to figure out why her husband was stepping out with another lady…and I reassured her that B. loved her totally, and that she must be mistaken. When I asked her if she wanted me to lotion her hands and arms, she agreed, then fretfully told me that I’d have to wash them first, because they were all covered with squashed bugs (the little black spots again). So I went into the bathroom, wetted down some heavy paper tissue, and came out to carefully wash the non-existent bug juice off her hands before applying the lotion.
This is the woman who kept three little girls squealing with delighted terror at ghost stories featuring herself and her sisters. This is the woman who won prize after prize for her flowers at her flower club. This is the woman who took some gold wire and a disposable furnace filter and somehow managed to make a darling angel out of the separate pieces. This is the woman who trekked to Australia in her 80s, who flew to British Columbia every summer to see her sisters until her late 90s, the woman who sewed her own wedding dress and made smocked clothing for her granddaughters, the woman who put on elaborate plays with her brother and sisters, the woman who was taught for a year at home during the 1918 influenza epidemic, the woman who moved across country with her husband because his job demanded it…
And on and on.
This one is really shaking me up.
Part of it is the realization that I can’t help my mom. I’m 4,000 miles away. It’s so stressful for her, and I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it better. But I can’t, and she can’t. No-one can.
Right now, all I can do is hope that my grandmother’s amazing body will just decide to…stop. Right now, I wish her: Do go gentle into that good night. Because the time for raging, raging against the dying of the light is past. Because I wish her rest, and peace, not this drifting in and out with phantoms of a non-existent past bothering her like this.
