I'm Laboring through Middlesex, which is a good book but is a slow read. My body still hasn't quite adjusted back to West Coast time so I feel like its 2 in the morning.
As I was reading the book I was reminded of my grandfather. I think about his life, his time living in Saginaw and Detroit, my father being raised in Farmington and his recollections of the riots. I remember the stories of World War 2, of guardian angels and close calls. Stories of Australian women who taught him about sex, and Filipino prostitutes (he wore condoms on his fingers as well. . . )
Then, I am reminded more and more of his old age and failing health. A person who seemed so vital when I was a young, slipping more and more into old age. No longer wearing his hearing aid to participate in conversation. I remember the strokes and how a little more film and gloss went over his eyes. And then, finally his death.
I remember it well. My father and I groggily slid into his Infinity I-35, and drove early in the morning to Redmond. We arrived and his body had already began to take on the pallor of death. A sick green-gray paleness that is never quite right in the movies. I sat in the living room, where his bed had been moved to, and watched as my aunt Caroline and my father, the two eldest children, washed the body of their father.
"We need to get him clean for when the nurse arrives" my aunt said to my father. I sat in one of the high backed chairs of my grandmother's antique dinning set and tried to connect this death with my father. I wanted to know how he felt. How a usually jovial man and my father felt about the death of his own father.
I felt cold and numb. It was Christmas Eve-Eve, as my family referred to it. December 23rd. I had been messaging a woman from The Stranger and we had talked over the phone for a few hours, I felt a little guilty when I thought about her.
I tried to think about my grandmother Murray's death just a month and a half before. How I felt about yet another death. In the year and a half prior I had lost 5 people I cared about. George, my cousin B.J., Lance, my grandmother Murray, and now my grandfather Prebo.
I wonder, more ofter now as I understand getting older with every day, what happens when we die and why people are so sad? "They're in a better place" we hear so often. An almost empty phrase to cheer us up from the inevitable. We will all die. Every last person you have ever met will one day die. One day my father will die too. I will play "Desolation Row" at his funeral, something he requested of me at age thirteen when I first started playing the guitar. And even now I realize I may die before my father.
But the question still remains. "What happens when we die?" I have had dreams in which my loved ones have visited me, to talk about their death and the afterlife. They seem optimistic. These dreams are often riddled with bizarre symbolism.
I had a dream of my grandfather and cousin. We walked through a park. While we talked about life and death a huge Korean wedding went on in the background. Tibetan monks made a mandala and swept it away just as quickly. There was a burial at air. I think of these dreams and I hope for the best.
I read books like "Spook" and watch paranormal shows. I hope that these strange occurrences are proof that my loved ones live on.
But I know what I felt when I watched my father and aunt wash my dead grandfather. I felt the bleakness of life, what Sarte called "La Nausea." I felt as though nothing mattered and that life is sadness and pain, and that finally we watch as everything and everyone we love either slowly fades away or is taken in one swift action. Stroke upon stroke wore away at my grandfather and when we died his two eldest children cleaned his bed sore covered body to give his a final dignity in death. His grandson watched, disconnected, alone in his thoughts of his father's and finally his own demise.
Later on that day, after finally having a cathartic keen, I called Drew and asked her out on a date. We went out the day after Christmas. It was probably the best first date I have ever been on. We drank, but not to excess, and had dinner. Afterwards we watched "Beach Blanket Bingo" and made out. I caught a cab home. Life continues. Almost two years have passed. Drew and I, though having minor break-ups are still together. I am at once shocked at the fact that two years have passed since my grandfather died.
I don't know how I feel about death right now. I don't know what happens to our "Immortal Soul." If we do have one I don't feel good about my soul's status. I'd like my soul to feel brand new. But, for right now I feel optimistic. I'm not yet 25. My father is 61. I was not born until he was 36 years old. So much life to go, yet it feels so sudden.
When my father does die I will respect his wishes and play "Desolation Row." As it has and will always be our song. He sang it to me as a lullaby when I was a baby. We sang it together on long road trips to Natchez Pass for cub scouts and on our trips to Salmon La Sac. We have sang it together many times around campfires and bonfires and in living rooms. One day, possibly on a usual gray rain-streaked Seattle day I will sing it alone in front of a hundred or so people. And life, everywhere else, will go on.
