The Art of Dying

Stroking her hands and fingers, I rubbed the cool lotion on grandma’s thin skin. Her wedding ring slipped into my hands, no longer tight against plump fingers. Seated on the bench next to her cot, we talked in the alcove by the living room window. Outside, the Georgia Mountains rose atop the fog. The moonlight seeped through the fog and sneaked into the room like a child postponing its bedtime. Our hands clasped, my grandmother and I chatted about my school, my feelings about teaching, and the absence of a man in my life. Her voice was slow, not calculated, struggling. I did most of the talking. I reminded her of past Christmases where she would spend hours shopping, wrapping, baking, and decorating the house for her four children and twelve grandchildren. I told her she made Christmas magical for me, as a child. She smiled a smile unlike the one I had been used to. Her face sagged, no longer rounded by the indulgences she ate. Her skin and teeth were yellow, evidence of the barter between her and the chemo. It promised a healthy future if she gave up her quality of life now. I saw that tonight. Chemo was a cheat and my grandmother was losing her life and her future. I watched her tiny body rise and fall. Her limp arms and legs lacked muscle definition, much like an infant’s. The heavy blankets spread over her spoke of her constant body temperature—freezing. To everyone else, the cabin was like a vacuum, sucking the wood-be cool winter air out and replacing it with hot, rotten air that often smelled fermented. Or, maybe it was just her. It is true that cancer rots a person from the inside out, but people don’t tell you about the stench that results from the slow physical decomposition that cancer induces at the end of the person’s battle. Now, as I sat by her side, I felt guilty for thinking those thoughts. I still wanted out. I remember wondering if this was what seeing a person die was supposed to be like. I wondered if it was normal to grow tired of the waiting process, miserably slow and inevitable.

I would imagine that authors approach the subject of death timidly, having an idea in mind but not certain as to how to convey it. Authors grapple for the right words, pictures, symbols, or metaphors to unmask the guise death wears, often to no avail. It seems as though such representations of death is like the desire to describe the Gradn Canyon. It is like the chasm between seeing the Grand Canyon and reading about it. No matter how many times you read or look at pictures of the natural wonder, you can never fully appreciate its grandeur until you are at its precipice, blinking into its rugged abyss. Reading, seeing pictures of, and hearing about death are completely different from witnessing it. Perhaps we do not hold enough value of death. It is easy to gather that our society does not consider death as a part of life, but as the robber in the night that breaks in and steals our futures without warning.

Romeo and Juliet sacrificed their lives in romantic desperation to be reunited in death. Suicidal lovers make death look sentimental and sweet. Sylvia Plath wrote about death because she thought it a beautiful experience. She longed to die. Plath writes “…death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” Plath ended her life through suicide. For her, the process of dying and death itself was more intriguing than living life. Surely, Plath was disappointed in finding that there were no grasses waving above her head, or the ability to discern today from tomorrow. Death is a mystery sought to be explained through different lenses.

I have seen paintings of aged men or women sunk into a bed, looking lifeless, surrounded by loved ones whose cheeks glisten with tears. Paintings of Christ on the cross range from simple to gruesome representations. Some artist paint him as defeated, head bowed. Others arrange his features to show pain, blood coming from his body, and angry red skies. If one were to try and understand death simply by looking at art, conflicting images and ideas would result in confusion. Is it serene and peaceful or horrific? Most artwork and movies are content in showing only certain parts of the dying process, either focusing on the pain and suffering or saturating the audience with feelings of remorse and sadness through different images. Because of these conflicting images of death, I didn’t know what to expect to see or feel or hear when I saw a person die. Would I burst into tears? Would the skies darken? I wondered what a normal reaction and situation would look like. Like a taboo subject only appropriate behind closed doors, the truth of how witnessing death feels was left unmentioned.

While grandma lay there, the atmosphere in the living room was quiet and expectant, patient. Her attitude about death spoke volumes about who she was. In essence, her death was her last opportunity to show her personhood. At one time, grandma’s stubborn nature was a subject of aggravation for her family, but as she laid there, her children praised her strength and endurance. She hated that she was dying and verbalized it no matter who was in the room. Knowing she wasn’t ready to die made it difficult to sit by her side chatting about my future when I knew her thoughts were on how she wouldn’t be there. Her words would turn from angry and stubborn to sentimental. Whenever she drifted between the chasm of consciousness to the space between life and death, she would start to cry. She didn’t realize that we were with her, watching. Her body would grow still and the only sound was the ominous hum of the fluid moniter. Gently, we took turns wiping her wet face, wondering what she was seeing or thinking about that would cause her tears. In these moments, she was unreachable, trapped inside the alluring darkness.

Seeing a woman who once had more energy than a five year old slumped in a cot, waiting to die was neither solemn nor horrific. It was unusual and strange. I hadn’t expected it to be so anti-climactic. We knew that cancer would eventually take her life, so her dying wasn’t a surprise. Still, we envisioned her death as something of the future, not the present. As her family we were weary of wondering if she would die today or tomorrow, we were constantly waiting to hear a change in her breathing. Perhaps ironically, we would try and do things like cook, clean, or watch a movie in the living room. At one moment, we all played scrabble and words like “pain” “struggle” and “die” were avoided. Nobody wanted to be insensitive. But, more than that, we didn’t know how to behave. We weren’t trying to escape or disrespect my grandmother’s dying, but we didn’t know how to sit and wait for days. When my cousin’s young children came, their naivety about the situation felt harsh. The laughter that echoed in the quiet cabin juxtaposed my aunt’s and uncle’s hushed tones. Despite their ages, my parents were just as confused as I was about what to do, my grandfather perhaps the most confused of all. How to watch a person die while maintaining some sense of normalcy throughout our day had not been something that we were taught.

Three days before her death, I sat by my grandmother’s side, reading to her from the Bible, and giving her water out of a straw. It was only the two of us. The house was quiet and the glow of the lamp near her bed cast a shadow on her white face, outlining her hallow cheeks. Her dry, bald head rested against her fluffed pillows, occasionally dropping to one side because of her weakening muscles. Near her bed, red, green, and gold trimmed church baskets lay discarded on an unsteady card table, aching to be carried out to the trash. The only other sign of Christmas was the tiny nativity window cling placed on the picture window at the head of grandma’s hospital bed. When the sun hit it right, the Star of David suspended above the angel would illuminate and cast a rainbow of colors in a corner of the window seat. But, it was dark now, and the rainbow had faded away with the sun. As I sat there, rubbing her arms with her “dream angels” scented lotion and looking at the Star of David, I realized that I was experiencing death in reality, not the way it was shown in books or art. It was slow and the atmosphere in the room was wearily expectant of what was to come. It was lonely. I was very aware that time hadn’t stopped just for me and my family to be with my grandmother or grieve over her death. I knew that for my friends back home, this was a normal Christmas. It wasn’t going to be like I saw in movies, where the characters and scenery freeze during the climax. Voices weren’t amplified, there would be no doctors yelling “stat!” or nurses peeking sympathetically into the room, asking if we needed more time. We were in my grandparent’s cabin in their living room—the hospice cot set up in front of a window and her iPod turned on to her favorite gospel songs. It was expectant, as if we were waiting for a life to start, not end.

After grandma died and the funeral home came to get her body, the image of her being carried out would become a recurrent theme in my dreams. The funeral director bent down over her body, felt her neck for a pulse, and used his stethoscope at her chest. His eyes avoided hers as he confirmed she was gone. Her yellow form sagged as they rolled her onto a stretcher, her head lolled to the side, as if her neck weren’t attached to her body. She was wheeled out of the house, eyes still open, one last look at the life she had lived and the people she had loved. It was silent. Looking back, I think we were all stunned at how carnal it all seemed. Our mother, wife, and grandmother was flopped onto a stretcher and wheeled out like a piece of furniture. The door closed and we were one person less. We stood for a bit, waiting to see who would make the first suggestion to move from the room.

After grandma died and I again encountered portions of literature describing death or saw art or movies depicting a death scene, I was dissatisfied with the portrayal. I analyzed the scenes or description and responded with reasons as to why it was wrong. My grandmother’s death wasn’t anything like I had seen or been warned about. However, just like I had experienced with literary and visual arts, her death was juxtaposed with conflicting images. It was unique and private but felt very wrong. It was peaceful and painful. It was beautiful and scary. Having only been removed from that experience for two years now, I have come to the slow conclusion that maybe literature, the arts, or people aren’t intentionally trying to mislead about the truth of death. Maybe the producers, like me, struggle to put into words or pictures what the experience is like. I too wrested with relaying the intimate details of seeing her die. I would describe one thing, but then decide that wasn’t quite right and end up starting over. My aim was to keep trying to write or create a masterpiece that represented death’s reality. For me, I found that perhaps the point of writing about my grandmother’s death wasn’t “to get it right, but simply to get it written” (Thurber). I am relieved that I am not supposed to get it right. Perhaps this is why authors write about life experiences, it is cathartic and helps them have a clearer understanding of the experience. If I keep producing things that though not quiet exact, have some truth in them, then one day I will have written it all. The account of my grandmother’s death may one day be fully and accurately written, but until then, I just keep writing.