Prompt #2: What was your first encounter with death? Was it a person or an animal? Did you have any rituals or otherwise “do” something with you grief? Or did you even understand what was going on?
My family didn’t keep pets so animal death didn’t really enter my equation–and my Grandpa Menter died before I can remember. So my first experience with death was when I was seven years old and my aunt delivered her daughter Melinda–stillborn.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table, crying and crying and crying. Of course, I’d never met Melinda, never had the opportunity to. But I grieved for her, for my aunt and uncle, for our family.
In my young grief, I’m not sure I was the best comforter, but I wrote my aunt a letter nonetheless. I wrote of my sorrow and grief-but I also told her I was praying that she would have another daughter, a daughter just like Melinda to fill the hole.
The funeral was just a blur for me. All I remember was being cold, standing outside in January.
My second really memorable experience of death came much later, when I was already in college and my Grandma Menter died.
She’d had Alzheimer’s for years and we’d had some forewarning of her decline as she moved from independent senior living to assisted living to an Alzheimer’s ward where she eventually went on hospice.
We’d visited her the weekend before, said what we knew would be our last goodbyes. She wasn’t eating or drinking at that point-she was clearly at the end.
The news came for sure on a Wednesday, over my lunch hour, right before my health aide class. I must have cried a little or something, because I ended up telling my instructors that she had died–and they encouraged me to go home. I pooh-poohed them, said nothing was to be gained by my going home. But I could only handle half of the class and ended up leaving before the three hours were up.
I’d expected to be ready, you see. I’d had plenty of time to settle into the idea that Grandma was dying. The Grandma I’d known as a child had left long ago, leaving a new Grandma more like a child than an elder.
But the preparations for the funeral brought me to the end of myself.
I couldn’t help. I couldn’t do anything. My parents and aunts and uncles were busily making arrangements and I could do nothing.
My siblings, all of whom had dealt with their grief long before Grandma died, went to a movie.
I felt helpless in my grief, guilty for not having done more when I could, angry that I couldn’t do anything now, even more angry that none of my siblings seemed to care.
I’d always been close to Grandma. I didn’t know it at the time, but Grandma attributed her decision to finally move to Lincoln (where her sons and their families were) to a conversation she’d had with the pre-teen me. Whatever I’d said had convinced her that yes, it was safest and best for her to be near us.
She’d started going blind before she moved, but we noticed the dementia progressing rapidly once she got to Lincoln. It got to the point we worried that she was eating properly. I went over to Grandma’s townhouse and cooked for her. She fell in the bathroom one day and I went over to help clean her up and make sure she was okay. While she was at the senior living townhouse, I was a caretaker and companion of sorts for her.
And then she went to assisted living. I didn’t visit her there, only saw her when we picked her up for church activities on Sundays and throughout the week. Anna and I picked her up for our home group, and laughed along with her while she shared her slightly rambling stories of childhood.
She wasn’t in assisted living long before she had to move further. We were blessed to have gotten a spot at a wonderful Alzheimer’s facility in town–wonderful for my Grandma and for the rest of the family, I know, but devastating for me in a way I didn’t realize until after she’d died.
You see, when Grandma went into the Alzheimer’s care facility, she ceased needing me, at least in my mind. I couldn’t do anything there for her. There were professionals there doing all the stuff I used to do–feeding her, helping her walk, pushing her wheelchair, helping her to the bathroom. I was helpless, so I withdrew.
I still saw her once a week when we picked her up for church and took her to dinner afterward, but our interaction was changed. She didn’t remember me by then, barely even remembered my dad. She knew he was important to her, but could only come up with “relative”, not “son”.
When she died and I could do nothing with the funeral, the weight of my helplessness in those last days fell upon me. I wept and wept and wept, blessed by the help of others, but feeling guilty at the same time.
I did nothing. I did nothing. I did nothing. My mind ran it over again and again. I left her before she died, left her in degrees. And now she was gone and I’d left her.
I still look back with sorrow on how I withdrew from Grandma once I could no longer help her. But I also see how God used my grief surrounding Grandma’s funeral to chip away at my self-reliance and make me realize my need for him and for the body of Christ.
In my grief over my helplessness and how I’d failed to do what I still could have done (be a companion), God reminded me of my utter helplessness in so many things. He reminded me of how I fall short of holiness. He reminded me that I need Him.
