Tonight I'm going to a funeral home. A friend of mine lost her wife on Friday and the visitation is tonight. Going tonight is going to be hard, and not just because she's gone before her time.
One year ago today at this time, I was driving from Kitchener to Toronto to get some clean clothes, and then drive back for my granddad's funeral.
Granddad was always a giant in our lives. My parents split up when I was still a baby, and until my mom met and married my stepdad, my family consisted of my mom, my brother, and my maternal grandparents. We lived across the street, ate dinner together every night, spent almost every weekend together at the cottage where Granddad took us fishing, taught us about boats and snowmobiles and how to stack wood. But Christmas, well - that was something else entirely. See, Granddad loved Christmas more than any other time of the year. He would decorate the whole cottage with wreaths and garlands, with train sets and tiny villages that grew every year, with snowglobes and ornaments and musicboxes and toys. It was, in a word, magic.
My grandmother died in the summer a few years ago, and Granddad had been having a series of health problems since. Last year at this time he was in a palliative care facility - we knew he didn't have very long, but he was expected to last into the spring or early summer. At his urging, my parents went ahead with their annual Florida trip for Christmas. I was staying at my brother (J) and SIL's place and spending the days with Granddad at Freeport. Having just gone through a truly horrible breakup, I was happy to be able to focus on making his Christmas a good one. Truth be told, it couldn't have been a better day. I had spent most of the evening with him on Christmas Eve, then went home to sleep and came back with presents and stockings in the morning (thanks Mom). We opened our stockings and presents until almost lunchtime, Granddad exclaiming over each new discovery and trinket, and pausing for naps as required. And then there were visitors. My siblings and their partners, and friends that he'd made over fifty years of practice and community service provided a steady stream of people in to wish him Merry Christmas and spend some time talking.
We had Christmas dinner there together, off our hospital trays, and I brought him some eggnog with spiced rum (after wheedling the nurses just a little bit) and we talked a lot. We talked about things that happened when I was a little girl, memories of my grandmother, about life and what it's like, how it can be hard and hurtful and beautiful, about how much he loved all of us. He slept more as the day wore on, and had a bad attack of pain in the late evening, which brought with it a lot of nurse-activity and a few very anxious moments down the hall for me. About ten o'clock he was sleeping steadily and I was physically and emotionally exhausted, so I took my leave and went to spend the night at my brother's.
I arrived at his apartment and we'd just sat down and had a drink when we got a call from the hospital telling us to come back now. We got there to be told that he's taken a turn for the worse and they didn't think he'd make it through the night. The head nurse called my parents in Florida and they were frantically trying to make arrangements to get home. J and I took turns sitting with him through the night, the other one catching an hour's sleep on the couch in the lounge down the hall.
This was the longest night of my life.
Granddad had sleep apnea, which means that he stopped breathing while he was sleeping, sometimes for as long as thirty seconds at a time. Sitting beside him, holding his hand, I just kept willing him to keep breathing and talked to him. He never really woke up, but sometimes he'd smile a little bit, or nod his head, or squeeze my hand. In the morning my SIL and my stepbrother arrived, and she took us to get some breakfast while he sat with granddad. We sat with him through the day until my parents arrived at seven, brought from the airport by my stepsister and her fiance. I've never been so happy to see them.
They sent us home to bed. In the morning we got up and were in the process of getting dressed to go back to the hospital when our mom called and told us that he was gone.
I miss you, Granddad.
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wising I was outside
sad
flat
eeeevil
