A Complicated Funeral

I know I said I'd start from the beginning, but I may as well put the most recent events first while its still fresh. This is something I'd written the day of my Grandma's funeral as a way to just get out what was on my mind.

"""Today is Thursday, July 29, 2010. Five days ago at around 5:30 AM my Grandma, Dorothy Nell Lam, passed away. Cancer was the culprit. Hotchkins lymphoma or something like that. She'd beaten it once a few years back, but it wouldn't take no for an answer. She'd found another lump sometime last year and by Thanksgiving was making preparations. Preparations to fight, to move closer to Dad in Wichita Falls into an assisted living facility; and preparations for the end that she knew was soon coming.

Thanksgiving wasn't exactly normal, but normal holidays had long since passed for the Lam side of the family. We were all scattered and hardly ever got together anymore. But in 2009 we all got together again. Most of us anyway. The kids: my dad Mike, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Becky. Some grandkids: myself and my brother Dallas who also brought his wife Lindsay. Laurie (Jim's wife) and their two kids Tyler and Sadie, of course. Dads friend/girlfriend... whatever she is... Billie came too. The house was full and that usually makes for an entertaining event, whether it be arguing/bickering/discussing, or just laughing and telling stories new and old. This time it was mostly the latter.

But, by Christmas Grandma and Grandpa were down at Dads house while he was trying to get things in order to get them into the new facility there in Wichita. There was too much to do and Grandma's pain was worsening. She'd somehow fractured her pelvis in the last few weeks. She'd lost some weight and always looked tired, kind of like she had a migraine. I took care of Grandma and Grandpa while Dad made a run down to their house 300 miles away to get their stuff as well as getting it all set up in their new apartment. Everything went slowly. Everyday I saw the agony on her face grow and there was nothing I could do to help. The fact that the day after I had gotten there a blizzard had blown in and shut several counties down didn't help matters much either. By the end of my time there I'd had at least one big breakdown. Though it was not in public Dad did find me during my meltdown and didn't quite know what to do. See, I am a lot like him. I knew I was slowly breaking down but I wouldn't let it show. Only those who knew me really well could tell, could hear it in my voice and in my hesitations, my silences. Then it came out anyway whether I liked it or not.

January was the last time I had seen Grandma. She was a little thinner than normal, but still looked pretty normal to me. I had talked to her on the phone several times over the last few months to check on her and see how she was. Each time I hung up it got harder and harder to make myself call her again. It would be a drastic audible decline every time we talked. Then I get too busy and forget to call. Or when I would remember it would be too late or I couldn't talk because it was the middle of the day and I was working and the kids would be loud.

Finally I got the call last Wednesday from Dad that she was in the hospital again and it wasn't looking good. We'd almost lost her in June and here we were again. I had thought it was cruel of them (her kids) to not just let her go then. She had made it abundantly clear to everyone in the family that she was ready to go Home. She was old, had lived a long, full life and was tired of hurting. Grandpa always said the same thing, too. But, again, I understand why they did what they did. It was their mother. They were trying to save her, help her, give her one more chance. I can't imagine what it would be like to make such a decision. Heaven forbid.

Friday night after I got off work I drove the 330 miles from Austin to Wichita and went straight to the hospital. The Hospice lady was there and Dad was signing some papers. Aunt Becky hadn't slept much in the last few days and it showed. After talking with them for a few minutes they took me back to her room. Nothing could have truly prepared me for that sight. It didn't look like her at all. If I hadn't gone in with my family I would have thought I had gone into the wrong room. I had to really look at her face for a minute before I finally saw her nose and the shape of her eyelids were her own. Her body was swelling because things were shutting down and backing up in her system. But her face was sunken in and all her wrinkles were gone. She was bald, but that didn't bother me so much. I'd seen her that way before. Her breathing was labored and fast. It sounded like it might hurt.

They told me to talk to her, to tell her that I was there and that I loved her. I could hardly speak. I said, “Hey Grandma. It's Crystal. I'm here.” But that was all I could do. My voice cracked and strained as tears welled in my eyes. This wasn't her. It was, but it wasn't.

Memories of my childhood flooded through my mind, comparing the woman I'd always seen to the person laying in the bed. They didn't match. How could Grandma, my Grandma, have changed so rapidly in such a small window of time?

Aunt Becky said something about her being the last of her siblings to go and she was about to meet them soon. I asked her how many she had and they counted them off to me. One sister and four brothers. I remembered last year coming down one weekend to see them at the lake, sitting on her bed as she showed me old albums she'd put together over the years. I had been telling her about things I had discovered about myself over the past few years, but still didn't understand why I was always so different than everyone else in the family. I was a writer, a photographer, I love to learn about history and family history, to know where we all came from. Thats when she showed me the albums. They were old pictures of her family, her brothers and sister, parents and grandparents, her grandmother's old house, along with some articles and short stories she'd written. I remembered her showing me a picture of a man with musical instruments around him standing outside a building that was his studio; she told me he was her brother, but I couldn't remember his name.

I asked Aunt Becky and Dad which one was the musician and they had no idea what I was talking about. I told them about the album; they had no idea it even existed. Later I was telling Aunt Becky a little of what I remembered was in one of them, about the stories and articles; she was bewildered. She had no idea her mother wrote.... This information killed me... They didn't know their mother at all. No one did. As a writer myself it is the best way for me to express myself, an outlet, even if no one ever reads it. It helps me to figure out who I am and why I am the way I am. Of course, everyone is different. Grandma, like all the other Lam's, was very private. I am too save for a few chosen people. I just found it heart heartbreakingly sad that her own children didn't know these things. Maybe, she told them; maybe they didn't think it important enough to retain? It wasn't interesting/or involving them after all. Or maybe, she never told them because it was something that was only for her.... I don't know.... But, thats a BIG thing to keep secret. To me at least.

Anyway, I went to work the next day and I was a zombie. Tuesday was a little better, but not by much. Wednesday they finally settled on Friday for the funeral and Thursday for the viewing. So this morning I drove down to the lake (I'm trying not to call it Grandma's like I always have; it just doesn't seem right). When I got here around 9:45 or so I learned from Uncle Jim and Laurie that Grandpa had been taken to the hospital in Burnet last night and admitted because he was peeing blood. Dad and Aunt Becky were still up there.

If I had been standing it wouldn't have been for long. Thankfully I was already sitting in Grandpa's chair. I couldn't believe this. This couldn't really be happening, could it? Not even a week since Grandma's death and Grandpa's heading that way too. Even though I had never been extremely close to that side of the family this was a blow. It feels like.... like when I had my car accident. The world seemed to slow down, but that didn't make me any faster. I had knocked my head so hard on my head rest that it stung and nearly knocked me out cold. I was dazed. Yes, dazed is a good word.

I'd seen my Dad cry for the second time in my life on Sunday and I didn't know what to do. I had learned from years of being around him and his family that you don't cry, at the very least not in public. And here he was welling up with tears as he watched his mother die. I couldn't blame him, of course, but it was like culture shock. It was not in his character to do such things. Without warning my eyes were blinded by tears as well and I rushed out of the room. It was all too much to bare.

So here I was, Thursday, the day before Grandma's funeral and Grandpa is chasing after her. His voice echoed in my mind as I sat there. “She's gone,” he had told me Sunday afternoon when I had gone to see him, to tell him good-bye before I left town.

“I know,” I told him sadly.

“My Reason is gone,” he said.

“You're reason?”

Without look up from the floor in a dead voice he answered, “My Reason is gone. My Reason died today. My Reason for getting up in the morning, for breathing...”

I felt the tears forming behind my eyes again. I looked over at him sitting next to me on the bed and his were tearing up too, and red-rimmed as well.

A few moments passed in silence then he looked up and said “There she is. Isn't she beautiful?” I didn't know where he was looking at first, but then I saw it. It was a picture taken of the two of them around 1980 or so, a portrait, surrounded by pictures of all their grandkids.

I couldn't help it, the tears spilled over and my voice was strained as I said, “Yes she was.”

I came back to myself, sitting in Grandpa's chair."""

That was all I had written. It had been a looong day and it was nearly 2AM already. To update on Grandpa he was kept in the hospital for a couple of weeks, nearly losing him several times, then moved back to a hospital in Wichita Falls. He's steady now, but still very sick. Prayers are always appreciated.