My grandfather sat in a chair near her bed, resting
his head on their joined hands. After some time he stood. He smoothed the hair
from her forehead and kissed it gently. He just stood there then, for what seemed like a long while.
I could tell he didn’t want to leave her and I felt a bit guilty
for witnessing such a private moment. When he finally did leave the hospital
room, he came out holding her single shoe as if it were a child. It is a picture
of grief I will never forget.
What does someone say in that moment, when they are
saying goodbye to the person they’ve shared their life with? I love you. Thank you for loving me, for our
sons, for everything. I’m not ready to lose you. I’m sorry.
My own thoughts reflected the selfish side of grief.
I’m not ready either. I still need you.
Are you proud of me?
Later, standing in a department store, trying to
pick out shoes through a haze of tears, I
can’t do this Grandma. You aren’t here to tell me whether these are appropriate
for a funeral or not.
Sitting at the funeral home and watching people come
to pay their respects; I thought about how much of our lives belong to other
people. Carolyn was a cherished, long-awaited only child.
For a time, she
belonged only to her parents. Later she was a student, a friend, an employee, a
neighbor. For many years, as a mother, she belonged
to her four sons. As a grandmother, she belonged to us. She was a great grandmother and dozens of other different things to dozens of other people who each have a claim to pieces of the years she spent on Earth.
I watched my grandfather, bent over Carolyn's recently closed
casket with his head in his hands and I was struck by the realization that for everything she was to everyone else, the biggest part of her had belonged to him. I was humbled and more than a bit ashamed that I’d never considered the life she had before it included me, aside from a vague understanding
that she’d had one.
That day though, I imagined my grandparents when they were young. I pictured them bringing
home their first baby; buying their first home; building the family and life we
all claim as our own now. I’d never before thought of them as being the same
people that they’d been when they started their life together. I only truly
understood the enormity of my grandfather’s loss then, when I realized that for
everything she was to others, she’d spent the largest portion of her life, 58
of her 76 years, being his wife.
It was a strange moment of understanding. Not unlike
the first time a child realizes that teachers are real people and have lives
outside of school. When I looked at my grandmother in her casket, I saw the woman I’d
always seen.
I imagine that my grandfather saw much more. I’d
imagine he saw his high school sweetheart, the girl he married, the mother of his children, the woman who made a home and life with him. I’d guess that when my
grandfather looked at my grandmother
