Memory's death-defying tricks

My grandmother died last week. She was 91 1/2 years old, and I have to admit, there's a little part of me that didn't think she would die, that in a hundred years, she would be featured in a documentary about the world's longest-lived woman, and the documentary would be streamed via antennae implanted in people's molars.

I think that's what she would have wanted, too. The end came fairly quickly, from her normal level of functioning to deceased in about 2 weeks. (Granted, there were many downward steps on that normal level of functioning preceeding her death.) The week prior to her dying, she lamented that she needed to cancel the STA bus to the next day's bingo session. As her family sat vigil, taking turns so that someone was by her side twenty-four hours a day, the oxygen machine whooshing in the background, she vacillated between feeling rotten ("I'm just not getting any better!"), feeling lazy ("I'm just laying here like a bump on a log!"), and feeling withdrawn ("I'm sorry, but I just don't feel I can socialize right now..."), as her family stared at her. What part of this is she not understanding?

There's something about death that I find particularly intriguing. How is it that in the mental transition one goes through from "person exist-ing" to "person exist-ed", we take our doubts, fears, and insecurities about how we interact with other people, and place them on our memories of how we interacted with the deceased?

For me, I doubt that I am very patient with people who aren't as quick-witted as me. I fear that I treat some people like they are very stupid. And I am insecure about people liking me. I almost prefer they not like me, because then there are no expectations that I will fail to meet.

With Grandma now gone, I hear this tiny voice in my head saying, "You excluded her from many of your conversations - you talked to the people around her rather than with her. You treated her like she was too dumb to get what you were saying. And you didn't try to build a relationship with her, because then you might have been held accountable to...something. Someone."

It is awfully difficult to not listen to that voice. There's a part of me, purely emotional, that wants to nod my head vigorously, tears in my eyes, and say, "It's TRUE! I'm an awful human being!" But that voice is not named Reality. Its name is Grief.

Grief passes eventually. However, the potential for allowing inaccurate thoughts, frameworks if you will, into your subconscious, is hideously strong - and permanent.

I'm trying to let Grief talk, to say what it needs to say, without talking over Reality.

Sometimes Grief has prettier things to say than Reality. It's easier to blame yourself than it is to be realistic. "If I had done X, then Y wouldn't have occured." Yeah...maybe...but probably not. That "probably not" holds a truism that human beings don't like to admit: We are Insignificant. If I had (been on United 91 and known how to fly a plane), then (it wouldn't have crashed). If I had (been a slave owner and converted to abolitionism in 1700), then (civil rights would have been achieved earlier). Maybe, but probably not.

My examples seem preposterous due to their scope. I'll apply it to my grandmother, then.

"If I had (been more patient with her/included her more), then (she wouldn't have been so self-absorbed/would have shown more interest in the lives of her family rather than what the retirement community was serving for dinner)."

"If I had (been thankful for her taking me to the orthodontist), then (she wouldn't have made me feel like I owed her for her kindness)."

"If I had (not been so self-reliant as a child) then (maybe I would have let her feel more needed.)"

"If (my birth father had not died shortly after Grandma moved in with us), then (we would have been one big happy family where no one ever disagreed with anyone because my dad liked Grandma all the time and she wouldn't have gone psycho control-freak on me and my brother)."

Maybe, but probably not.

My Reality says I usually ignored my grandmother, but sometimes I made an effort to change my speech pattern, volume, and subject matter to something she wanted to converse with. I was usually bored with her complaints and imaginary maladies, but sometimes I tried to hide that boredom. My Reality says that we were never very good to each other, but in the end, I held her hand and kept a cool washcloth on her forehead.

When someone dies, we need to be honest with ourselves, knowing that we didn't second-guess our interactions at the time so there's probably no reason to second-guess them now. We need to be honest with our memories, letting Reality tell them, rather than Grief.