I Met Death

Trigger warning: death, dead body - very detailed

When I walked in the room, I turned around and walked back out because I didn’t recognize the woman unconsious in the chair, head hanging forward. She didn’t look like my grandmother at all. But I peeked back into the room and saw that it was full of her things: her night table, her back scratcher, her hand mirror, her paintings and our family photos on the wall. I walked back in the room slowly. I got closer. I crouched down and looked up at her so I could see more of her face. I recognized her sun spots, her hair, her eyebrows, but I still didn’t recognize my grandmother. I touched her arm and said “Hi Oma, its Zoe.” No sign that she heard me. Her breaths were quick and steady. Her body rose abruptly with each inhale, and fell again just as quickly. A nurse came into the room and gave her pain killers through a picc line in her upper arm. Oma lifted her arms and threw her blankets off and then was still again. I sat and held her hand for a few hours. I talked to her every once in a while, not knowing if she could hear me. At one point it looked like she tried to open her eyes. I put her hearing aid in her ear and again told her who I was. Still no reaction. Because she wasn’t using her bed, I slept in it. I woke every time nurses came in to check on her, about every hour. Each time I listened for her jerky breaths. Around 5 am, two nurses adjusted her in her chair. Her breath changed. When the nurses left, I sat up and listened. Her breaths became more spaced out and began to rattle. She only took a few more. I wasn’t sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I looked hard at her chest, searching for movement. Nothing. I touched her face. I kissed her hands. I put her hand on my face, the way she used to do, but it didn’t feel right. Her lips started to turn purple and her finger tips blue and cold. It was sad to see but I wanted to confront that discomfort. I kept touching her cold hands; I tried to close her eyelids but they wouldn’t stay closed. I called my sister in Australia and put her on speaker phone - we didn’t talk all that much but it was nice to feel like she was in the room with me. I sat there for an hour before another nurse came in. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to tell someone… but I didn’t want to leave her side.

My brother, father, little sister, and my father’s wife arrived. We sat with her a while longer. We left to let the nurses clean her up, as they said they needed to do. I went to my fathers house, where he was car shopping on the internet. He and my brother were discussing and comparing electric cars. People grieve in different ways and this was not my way. I left in a hurry and walked back over to the care home. Oma wasn’t in her chair anymore and, for a moment, I thought she was already gone. But she was in her bed now. She looked more like herself, lying on her back, gravity pulling her cheeks toward her ears. She wasn’t wearing her dentures and her gums, nearly white, seemed to be swollen and showing through her parted lips. She looked so very dead. I touched her cheeks which didn’t feel soft anymore. I stroked her hair. I put my face on her arm. I wanted to fully feel the stillness and coldness. I sat in the chair she died in and looked at her. I used to sit on the couch next to her and look at her for hours. She would insist that I must be bored. I wanted to soak her in: her wrinkles, her eyes, her smell, her voice, her stories, the unbelievable softness of her skin, her sweetness, the way her palm felt against my cheek, her love that she gave without condition or expectation. I sat there looking at her body until a woman from the funeral home arrived with a body bag on a stretcher. She asked if I’d like to stay while she moved her. I said yes. She strapped her into a machine and lifted her body up. It pushed her shoulders forward and together. She looked so uncomfortable. It was odd to see her body jostled like that; how limp it was. I lifted her legs as the machine lifted her torso. Her legs were swollen. Her feet cold and stiff. The woman asked me if I needed anything before she closed the bag. I rushed over and kissed Oma’s cold cheeks again and again as tears collected in my eyes and streamed down my cheeks onto hers. There was a nurse in the room who started to cry as well, and she was clearly surprised to be crying. “I didn’t even know her long, but she was so lovable.” she said as she hugged me. The metal teeth of the zipper interlaced over Oma’s feet, legs, stomach, chest and face until she disappeared behind the blue corduroy. I thought to myself that she would be pleased with the style of her body bag. I followed her out; I watched her loaded into a grey minivan and driven away.

My oma, Hendrika, was the love of my life. As far as deaths go, this was a good one. She was 94. She was ready. She wasn’t in pain. I got to be with her as she passed on - which I had raced across the continent for. But there is no easy way to lose someone you love this much.