Mon 18 Jan 2010
i went to the woods
Posted by bon under stuff to be done
[40] Comments
i went to the woods because i wanted to live deliberately
to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life
to rout out all that was not life
and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived.
– Henry David Thoreau. (or Dead Poets’ Society. take yer pick.)
when a part of your life is over, the realization usually comes as a surprise, an after-effect.
i woke up Saturday morning with no deadlines hanging over me. the Ph.D application – or one of them, at least – is submitted. the last day for add/drops for the hundred-plus students who’ve inundated my office over the past two weeks? done. i opened my eyes and mentally scanned the day ahead, blood pressure gearing up to jet speed.
then i paused, remembered. it’s done. my eyes fluttered wide, like an extra in Bambi. i realized i had no clue what to do with myself.
then the kids woke up.
i beamed at them, all amends for my previous busy-ness. we lazed, cuddled. we considered breakfast, planned homemade cookies for the afternoon. it was at this point that i noted that my throat felt rather as though someone had pricked it all over with nails.
after further signs of impending plague, i woke Dave up and crawled back into my glorious warm bed to pass out, still thinking, so what if i’m sick? what a lovely, relaxing day to be sick. i lounged for a brief moment on twitter, drinking coffee with milk i’d taken time to foam – a rare treat – and waxing philosophical about trying to live deliberately, now that my mad rush was behind me.
stupid Pollyanna.
by the time i woke up again, Dave had put his back out. at a gymnastics class for three-year-olds.
respite cancelled. the rest of the weekend was the sort of tragi-comic blur where you meet yourself coming and going all at the same time. in the dark before sleep i whimpered, bone-exhausted, run down. in the dark before dawn i came alert again, ready to hit the day running, to rise to what i needed to be.
and it occurred to me to wonder if my days of deliberate living were behind me, for the moment, or if being busy and maxed out were simply habit, the hardest in the world to break.
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the scion of the local autoelectric shop dropped my grandfather’s last cheque off yesterday afternoon. he came to the house shyly, only a couple of hours after his own father and uncle – who own the shop – left. he walked into a vacuum where words sat, invisible but still shockingly electric. i do not know if the room – the brown recliner, the old leather footstool, the tv reeling disasters beyond our ken – looked normal to him.
i don’t think it will look the same to me again.
i was the one who spoke the words. gently, i hope, but firmly, repeatedly. these are your choices. this or this. only these. your decision. now. i watched my grandfather’s eyes the whole time, drawing him back to me, seeking him. i said, time seems to be strange for you right now. sometimes i know you’re right here with me. other times i can’t tell whether you’re in a different space or just trying to change the subject. his eyes flashed at me, caught. a hint of a smile, perhaps? i smiled back. we are not so different, he & i.
i know. it’s not fair. i’m sorry. but this is what you get to decide. this or this.
the bath or the hospital. he had been in the same clothes for a week. he had been in his chair three days, bathroom trips spacing further and further apart to the point where we began to wonder if his kidneys were failing entirely. he would brook no help, no crossing of the boundaries of personal space. we made up his bed with clean sheets but he would not or could not go the twenty steps. he was soiled, skin breakdown imminent. he slipped out of his chair at 5 am. my cousin on the couch beside him, a geriatric nurse, helped him up. but that was all he would accept.
one by one, we expressed our concerns. he waved us all gently away with a flick of his hand. the flash of white was comical, figurative. bared teeth, that flick told us. he had been holding his dentures in his hands for twelve hours.
my grandfather’s LaZ Boy – in different incarnations – has been in the very same spot for as long as i can remember and longer. it is his throne, almost an extension of him. and so it was that yesterday afternoon in a quiet spell i breathed deep and looked at my father and then, with intention, we took our places at the foot of the chair and laid out our ultimatum. we love you. we can’t leave you like this any longer. we knew and he knew – and we made sure he knew – the consequences of the choice we laid out.
at the end of the dance, he chose the hospital. we emphasized the pretty nurses. and i felt as manipulative and as relieved and as brave as i have felt in my life. i squeezed my grandfather’s hand and met my father’s eye. and then i walked from the room so i could exhale, because i was shaking.
when my sister and then young Charles arrived moments later, my grandfather was still in the LaZBoy. we had turned the tv back on. all was normal.
but the room was different, and i knew it. the lion had given up his throne.
when the ambulance came in, respectfully, quietly, sirens off, he went without protest. my sister rode with him. my father signed him into the hospital this time, so he can no longer sign himself out. he is in congestive heart failure. when i went out last night, he was distant, polite but withheld. at first i thought he was angry with me, and i nodded, understanding. but then i noticed that one pupil was blown, far bigger than the other, and i wondered if that conversation in his chair will be the last i ever really have with the grandfather i’ve known, been loved by.
i do not know. but if it is, i will own it. a sad, proud thing, a deliberate thing. life.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
i want to thank all of you for your love & support & comments & tweets. it feels strange sometimes to share it, because it is so personal and so present, and mine is only one lens on this man who belongs to many. and yet it is all too human, this ending stuff that none of us seem to ever quite come to terms with.
i learned, profoundly, with Finn, that there can be privilege in walking with someone towards their death. i fear loss, absolutely. but last night as i left the hospital i stopped on my way across town and drove through the dark, snowy cemetery where my grandmother is buried. i do not go often. i do not talk to my dead. but i laughed as i drove through the ghostly stand of tall old trees glinting silvery, headstones stark against the snow, because the scene was like something straight out of Thriller, and yet…beautiful. i felt peaceful. i do not fear my dead. i love them, hold them in memory. in the private spaces we all seem to drift in at the end of things, memory is all there is.
so for a ninety year old man who has lived a good life on his own terms, i will not fear. only walk beside, and offer him company, and share him while i can.
40 Responses to “ i went to the woods ”
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Trackback from cribchronicles (Bonnie Stewart)
January 18th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
he said yes. [link to post] -
Pingback from last post | cribchronicles.com
May 16th, 2011 at 10:45 pm[…] when the heart attack last year cut off his ability to do, i feared for him. his identity was one based in activity, and i did not think he would brook the loss. yet he did. he made friends with his home care nurse, had her move in back in the winter when he was no longer okay spending the night alone. he made his own decisions, and in the end he spent his last days graciously in his chair, his throne. […]
January 18th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
“so for a ninety year old man who has lived a good life on his own terms, i will not fear. only walk beside, and offer him company, and share him while i can”
this sounds like the best kind of beautiful plan.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
beautiful bon.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
When my dad left home for the last time, when it was clear that he would never return, he chose his terms. He refused an ambulance. Instead, my mother’s brother came with a van and a handful of strong, male relatives. Dad was loaded into the back in his easy chair, sitting upright–the paterfamilias weakened but still on his own throne. My uncle drove the near two hours from our house to the hospital in Toronto–all the while my father sat in the back in his chair.
I do not remember these events even though I was there, but my oldest brother speaks of them as if they happened yesterday, not in 1973.
________________________
You gave him the choice, Bon. You helped him leave his home on his terms. It was your strength and your father’s that lifted him. May we all have someone like you nearby when our time comes.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
You are amazing and strong and dare I say, a virtual stranger, that I am proud of you?
January 18th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
You are a stronger kind than I.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
i keep thinking about you and your family. i remember so much about my mom’s dying process reading about what you are experiencing. realizing she’d never be home again, never be outdoors again, her last ride to the hospice hospital. i remember her slowly letting go, acceptance of what was happening, going back and forth between this world and the next. it was amazing and an honor to experience with her. also incredibly draining, and i didn’t even have my kids yet back then.
we seem to have been wrong about my uncle- he is so much better, and not yet on that part of his journey. but last week i thought- if this is the beginning of his end, i am ok with that, if his life should be this miserable and he deserves his peace and to be with his wife who adored him and whom he adored. a small sad life is no life to live.
love and peace to you. xo.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Oh Bonnie what a day!
Hugs
Rob
January 18th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
This was simply beautiful. Heart-wrenching, but beautiful. I wish him — and you and the rest of your family — peace and comfort.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
You’ve done good, right by him.
I’d be so proud to have a granddaughter like you.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
His days of deliberate living may be behind him, yours are simply on hiatus. You will look back on these harries, frenetis days and realize that (as Lennon sang) “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
You are stronger, more wonderful, more wise than you realize, giving him the gift of firmness in care, yet space to BE on his own terms as long and as deliberately as feasible. And he knows, bless him. He knows.
My prayers and thoughts are with you and him.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I adore you, Bon.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I mean, wait. That’s not a sycophantic kind of adoration. I just mean that in reading this, it becomes apparent how much of a force you are, for others and for me. And how much I aspire to be what you are, in how you are for him.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Oh Bon.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Dear Bon,
This will make you stronger just like the whole relationship did. Memories are part of your strength which you get to bring to your children.
Thank heaven for the the loved ones who touch our hearts. Thank heaven for those we will share with.
Know that your strength as part of what a mother is capable of.
January 18th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Oh dear. Thanks for sharing more about what happened. It hurts to read it, but it also feels good to share it with you in this little way.
It sounds like you are on your way through this with the best that I think we can often ask… not without ANY regrets, but with as few as possible.
January 18th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
I’m thinking of you. If you need anything…
January 18th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Lovely bon.
I’m here should you need anything.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
My friend, I am so sorry you are sick and much more sorry you are losing your grandfather. It has been almost two years now since mine passed. Sometimes it feels like a long time and sometimes like yesterday. Grief is a slippery thing. I’m thinking of you.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
(((hugs)))
January 18th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
My thoughts are with you.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:40 am
I love your bravery, based on deliberate and clear thinking, that brought you to him for the most difficult but loving conversation. You’ve done right by him.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:57 am
i can’t stop crying right now. just cannot. not because i am sad for him,, he is going, yes, but in a way that has love and dignity wrapping him up and giving him whatever support is needed for this next journey, this letting go.
reading through this lens, the one of the family member, is so powerful. i see through the clinical lens, the one that should maintain some distance from my patients, something i am very very bad at. i think i am crying because yesterday i worked with a woman of 97, she is in CHF but the expensive assistive living that she pays for could care less about that. and she cried yesterday as i left, asking me why god would not take her when that is all she prays for.
she looked me square in the eye and told me clearly she is not depressed, she just wants to be done. and in that sentence i could she how her beautiful life, all 97 years, have been reduced to a rocking chair in a quiet room with a pepper tree outside her window of her paid facility as her only company.
sometimes i think i am in the wrong line of work. i just wish everyone had family like you when they need to go.
my heart and thoughts are with you and him and family in this time…sending love, bon.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
(((Bon)))
I am sorry.
You are a good granddaughter. May we all be so blessed at the end.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Nicely written, Bonnie. It’s so hard to see a family member you loved throughout your and his lives, and continue to love, be at this stage. I’m happy to hear he’s back in hospital (from a medical view). It must be so hard for him, though, to give up control like this. He’s fortunate enough to have a loving family surrounding him. That’s all that matters now.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Wow.
Thank you for sharing this with us, Bon. I hope that I can be as brave and strong when it is required of me.
I am thinking of you in these days. (Hoping you feel better now.)
January 19th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Beautiful, beautiful. You honor him by marking these days with your heartfelt words. Words and heart are a worthy farewell gift. Thank you for sharing.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Reading your beautifully written words I find myself crying with tears of understanding. Thank you for being so open, and sharing your journey as you walk with your grandfather.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
There is indeed “privilege in walking with someone towards their death”, as you so well put it. I’m glad that I had that with my mother, hard as it was.
Peace and love to you all.
January 19th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Dear Bonnie,
Thank-you for sharing yourself so generously. Some people hold the pain within where it festers and bleeds in the dark. You bring your pain out into the light. You stare at it and speak its curves and lines. Your bravery somehow vanquishes our fears, our hopes of avoiding that vigil kept at the bedside of a loved one. With grace, dignity, and honesty, you are bringing healing to us all.
You are in my thoughts and prayers,
Ruth
January 19th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
just an update…he is doing better in the hospital than we could have hoped. my aunts flew home last night, and my uncle is here from NB, so his four children are around him now and i’ve stepped back a bit.
we are still in a strange limbo…he is doing reasonably well out of the house, but wants to be in the house, and if release becomes a possibility we will need to get a lot of bureaucratic things in place quickly. going back to the house without full-time nursing care isn’t an option any longer.
thanks again, to all, for your patience and love, for abiding with me as i work this through, write it out.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Thinking of you, your grandfather, your family, and wishing all of you as much peace as possible.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
oh, bon.
bon.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
How beautiful and aching.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I wish you peace.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:50 am
My love to you.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:52 am
I’m so sorry Bonnie, that’s gotta be hard. Sending positive thoughts and vibes your way! xoxo
January 29th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
You always break my heart so gently.
January 30th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Brilliant post.