For All Souls
For All Souls Day, Allison Jung writes of her grandmother's death from the perspective of her 17 year old self
A decent family situation is easy to take for granted. With no glaring issues, my parents still together, and the confidence that my family would be there if I needed them, I’ve always liked my family enough, but never known them for anything more, never really appreciated them.
About two years ago, my grandmother started getting really tired all the time. She was having trouble carrying through her daily routine. Soon enough, we found out that she had cancer. Cancer… another thing I had never really thought about before. Sure, I know thousands of people die from it each year. But it’d always been such a myth to me—something that happened to other people, but nothing I would ever see.
It took a while to sink in for me, the cancer and everything. My mom would drive an hour to DC each week to visit with my grandmother, but I didn’t really see the pressing need. Nothing was going to happen to my grandmother. She’d always been there, and she always would be. It was just cancer.
Things got worse. For a while my grandmother was in the hospital, getting chemo and PT. I would hear updates on her status, but it all seemed so trivial. I thought about her fairly regularly, and wondered how she was doing, but I knew she was going to be fine. Even when I visited her in the ICU, it didn’t make things real. She seemed a little tired, but mostly fine. Plenty of people recover from cancer; it was really not that big of a deal.
And for a while it wasn’t. Her cancer went into remission, and things more or less went back to normal for some time. Not that they had changed much, for me, in the first place. I would see my grandmother at family gatherings and on holidays, like always. My grandfather seemed to be holding it together alright. Everyone was very thankful that she was doing well—and don’t get me wrong, I was too—but like I said, none of it really had an impact on me.
Sooner or later though, the cancer came back, and it was worse this time. All but one of my mom’s siblings live in Maryland, and my aunt who lived in Nevada at the time started visiting more and more frequently. I guess this started to put things in perspective for me, that this cancer really was something serious, but it still didn’t worry me. I just knew that she still had time.
As my grandmother’s situation worsened, so did everything else. My immediate family was beginning to experience the effects of my mom’s grief, even if we couldn’t understand it. She was home less and less; we had to start pitching in a bit more around the house. And even when she was home, she was never really there; it was evident her mind was elsewhere. While this was perfectly understandable, it was extremely frustrating. I couldn’t understand what my mom was going through, and I felt like there was nothing I could do to help. I was just in the way, another chore she had to take care of at the end of an already exhausting day.
Without my mom home to make us spend time together, I hardly spoke to or even saw my siblings. We are each content doing our own thing, but after a while, I started to miss them. My dad was busy with concern for my mom and taking care of everything she usually does in addition to his regular tasks. So this is how my family responds to tragedy, I remember thinking. It’s ripping us apart. I wished I could make my brothers and sister see how much pain my mom was experiencing. That we needed to do something. But they seemed not to care. Of course, for all I know I could have come off the same way to them.
It was this separation that really started to make me think about family. Just the simple way my mom had made us eat dinner together each night, or made us come home first instead of meeting somewhere, so we could all go together. As much as I usually resent the time I’m forced to share with my siblings, it had made a world of difference. It had at least given me a place, even if it wasn’t one of which I was entirely proud. I’m always the late one, the bitchy one. I don’t really enjoy the immature games my siblings play and they’re often embarrassing in public. I feel like the outsider in my family, but at the same time, I know it’s different when I’m not there. I know they appreciate me as I do them, even if they wouldn’t admit it. And I’ve spent many an enjoyable occasion with my family. We know how to make each other angry and annoyed, but we also know how to make each other laugh. My dad and I, for example, can simply look at each other and we’ll start cracking up, knowing exactly what the other is thinking. It’s moments like those that began to disappear as my grandmother became sicker.
My mom, meanwhile, was spending more time with her siblings. I was jealous of them, wishing she would spend it with us instead, but I knew she needed their comfort. They were all going through the same thing—losing a mother. I admired how they were rationally able to discuss death. Funeral plans, aftermath—they didn’t deny what was happening, but instead acknowledged it as something they needed to deal with, and something they needed to—and could—pull through together.
It came to the point where I myself was starting to understand what was happening. I could see that my grandmother was really sick, and was really dying. Suddenly I felt like I had missed out on so much; I hardly knew her. Sure, she’d always been part of my life, but when had I really taken the time to see her, to talk to her? I went with my mom a few times to visit her. My grandmother was thin as anything, pale, and nearly bald. Sores covered her fragile body and her face was writhed with the perpetual afterthought of pain. Now, it was too late to talk to her, too late to hear her life story and learn from her the secrets of the world.
A week or so before she died, we had a Mass in my grandmother’s honor at her house. Stationed in a chair at the card table my grandfather had crafted, all I could focus on was the little tear in my pant leg. I kept playing with it, running my finger over it, hoping it would somehow stay pressed shut. Like I could mend it, just by covering it up. I felt positively horrible, like we were sitting there at this Mass, sending her to her death. Up until this point, I only really knew my grandmother through the stories my mom had told me. But then I started remembering things about her, like the way she could sit there, quiet and ladylike as anything, and one subtle, fleeting glance would tell of her disapproval. She was so polite and gentle about it that you were never even sure whether it had really happened, but either way you knew you had been put in your place, her unyielding patience and prudently chosen words (or, more often, her generously loving silence, allowing you to figure it out for yourself, even when she knew better than you) never faltering. Apricots. Ladybugs. And the way she would laugh, the joy that filled her eyes flitting out from the corners of her heart, running to tug on the pant leg of everyone in its range.
I looked at my grandfather, too, her loving husband of 47 years. He was wearing the same green polo shirt and wrinkled khakis he’d had on the last time I’d seen him, and he sat on my favorite couch, his eyes fixed tenderly, concernedly on my grandmother for the entire duration of the service. Whenever I think of him, I always remember how when we were younger (and even sometimes now), every time we saw him, he would give us the biggest, strongest hugs ever, picking us up and swinging us around. I always found them slightly painful as a kid, sometimes amusing, but just mostly embarrassing. But I realize now that the reason why my grandfather hugs us so violently is because he loves us. He’s not exactly what you might call a “softie,” my grandfather, and this is the manliest way he knows how to tell us that he truly cares. And I started to see this big web, this huge, supporting family my grandmother had fostered, and I started to really respect her. She was such an amazing woman, building such a strong foundation of love in her six children and theirs. Something I had always taken for granted.
As I sat there at Mass, I started crying, silently. I was the only one as far as I could tell (crying, that is), and had to excuse myself during the Peace Offering to blow my nose. Never in my life had I expected it to take the death of someone I didn’t even realize I was particularly close with to teach me about love. And there I was, watching my grandmother in her final days, feeling like it was too late to thank her.
On July 3, 2007, we went to visit my grandmother. No one would say for sure, but we knew this would probably be the last time we would ever see her. This was our chance to say goodbye. We spent some time with her as a family, and eventually, one by one, we each spent a moment alone with her to tell her we loved her. She was so weak that she couldn’t talk, or even open her eyes. I remember listening to the intermittent hiss of the respirator, watching her entire frail, bruised body heaving as she took slow breaths. Her skin was so thin that I could see the blood fluttering through her veins with each exhale. I was so afraid to say anything, because I wanted to make sure I said it right.
Finally, I took her hand and just let myself go. I started by thanking her for the late birthday present she had sent me—a book of Japanese fables and some silk Japanese scarves. I told her how special they were to me, because she had always been so supportive of and interested in my love of the Japanese culture. I told her how I remembered at the beach one time, she was watching just my brother and me, and she told us some bizarre story about a Japanese baby that she used to always tell my aunts and uncles. I wish I could find that story again, but I don’t know if it would be the same without her telling it anyway. Then I told her exactly what I knew. To paraphrase, that she had left behind an amazing family—if only she could see how strong they were being!—and that everything was going to be okay. She was going to be with God in heaven and He wouldn’t let her come if she had not yet fulfilled her earthly purpose. Even at the time of her death, I knew she was too selfless to worry about anything other than how her beloved family was faring.
And I started to pray over her. Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Our life, our sweetness, and our hope! My grandmother grunted. It was brief and quiet and pained, the most she could muster the strength to do, but I knew that it meant the prayer was bringing her peace. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs, mourning, and weeping in this valley of tears. I started crying, wanting to apologize because my tears were falling all over her delicate, ailing face, but forcing myself to continue. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary! I choked, wanting to do anything but go on, wanting to do anything but finish this final line, but I knew that I had to be strong for my grandmother. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
I told her I loved her and raised my head, wiping the tears from my eyes. Over in the corner of the room, the hospice nurse offered me a tissue and asked whether I going to be okay.
“Yeah, I’m okay, thanks. Everything is going to be okay.”