Breaking hearts

So, with the distance of nearly a week, I can start to catch my breath and deal with it all. First, I got to break my girls’ hearts last Tuesday by telling them their grandma had had a stroke (it happened on Monday, but we thought things were stable, and held off telling them until their mom was back from a trip). But she was lucid and able to speak, and we thought she was going to get better. Everything was pointing that way when she had a second stroke on Tuesday night. One of her daughters was already here and the other made a mad dash across the country. We had time with her, though it was really too late.

And so we came home to where the other grandma was dutifully taking care of the girls, and we waited until we had suffered a wretched sleep to wake them and break their hearts again.

She died on Wednesday night. For a number of reasons, the calling hours weren’t until Sunday, and the funeral on Monday, which left us with several days to try to fill with something other than grief. We went to see “The Legend of Zorro,” a completely over-the-top slice of cheese that was note-perfect for our moods. We also saw the new Warren Miller film, since we had planned on doing that this weekend anyway, and there was no reason not to lust after deep powder just because we were in mourning.

The calling hours, followed by another calling hour, a protracted service, and then a mercifully short burial, were nothing other than an endurance contest. A number of our friends and our daughters’ friends came to the calling hours to pay their respects, which was wonderful and really helped to lift the girls’ spirits. But in general the overall experience seemed designed to wring maximum grief from the already bereaved, coupled with an infomercial for a religious product already possessed by those who wanted it and not at all desired by those who don’t. The girls skipped the service and joined us at the cemetery. It was bright, sunny, warm (60s) and lovely, probably the last beautiful day of the season.

I started with death too young, I think, and had too many losses in my teen years not to have been pretty messed up by the whole experience. My father died when I was 25, and I don’t think I’ve gotten over that yet. Still, the last 20 years have been kind enough — I lost three grandparents in fairly short order, but that just seemed the nature of things. I was sorry my children wouldn’t grow up with them, but I had never expected them to. But I never understood what it would be to see grief through my children’s eyes — to have to tell them they had lost someone who (as much as she drove me crazy) was wonderful with them, who connected them to a time gone by, who taught them the things that grandmothers teach — I never knew that having to deliver that pain to them could be such an awful grief itself, that I could feel their pain so acutely. It was worse than the loss itself.

But they are lovely, strong, graceful creatures, and while they feel it acutely, I know they will grow from it. Rebekah has been expressing it in writing — she posted little stickie notes (on Blue’s Clues pawprints she found somewhere) around the house that offered hugs and love to anyone who might need one. She also typed up a chronology of what happened, a very matter-of-fact account that must have helped her somehow. Hannah has had her own way of dealing with it, pulling her beloved Grandma Navee Bear, a crocheted bear Grandma made her, close to her. They’ve both asked questions and offered thoughts and, like all of us, cried a lot.

My mom reminded me of something I’d completely forgotten. When my friends’ father died, too young, when I was 15, after the funeral we went to the house and took his undershirts and tie-dyed them, and for a couple of years afterward we all had these reminders of him to wear. It touched my heart to think of what a sweet gesture that was, and I was so glad to have her remind me of it after all these years.