A Year Ago

It's been a year since my grandmother died.

Got out of bed early and fished out my journal and lay in bed, writing about it. The page was all soggy and wet by the time I was finished.

I rolled over and just stared at the ceiling, trying to get a grip on things.

For some reason, I felt compelled to rehash what happened that day.

Why force yourself to remember a day that was so horrible? But I guess I can't help but think about it. It's a weird experience seeing someone take their last breath right in front of you.

I think about it a lot, actually.

I woke up this morning and just lay in bed for awhile, listening to the rain falling outside. It was weird, but it didn't feel like it'd been a year, you know? It felt longer. Like it'd happened years and years ago.We were never close. There'd been this fight between her and my mom and then she moved out and went to live with my uncle's family.

Because of the whole SARS thing last year, you weren't allowed to have a lot of visitors at the hospital. So, I hardly saw her when she was in the last few stages. Before the day she died, I'd seen her once, a few months back and she still looked okay. She was thinner, but she still looked...well...okay.

There was a white board at the foot of her bed and I drew her this childish picture of the whole family with big smiles on our faces. It made her smile. But it was a tired smile...like she was putting on a show for me.

And then, I remember that day. I was at work when an e-mail popped up on my screen from my mom. She told me the doctors didn't think gran would last throughout the day. She'd already gone to the hospital and didn't have time to call me at work, 'cause I get in later than her.

I started crying.

My assignment editor thought I was upset because she was giving me flack for some mistakes I'd made in one of my articles.

I ran to the washroom and just hid in the stall, sobbing so loudly I was pretty sure half the floor heard me.

I get embarrassed now, thinking about it.

They told me to go to the hospital, though my dad didn't want us to be there to see my grandmother. He thought it'd be easier if we didn't see her like that.

But I came home, called my other sister and together, we drove to the hospital. We were so flustered and scared, we didn't even know what name our grandmother was registered under. When older Chinese people ask us who are grandmother is, we're taught to say, "She's so-and-so's wife." And plus, we always called her grandma in Chinese, so how the fuck were we supposed to know what her "official" Chinese name was?

Okay, that just sounded stupid. You'd think we'd know our grandmother's name, but we didn't.

There was a lot of confusion 'cause apparently, we spell our last names different and for awhile, my sister and I thought we wouldn't be allowed in.

But in the end, we managed to get inside.We got lost in the hospital, of course. They were doing renovations and you couldn't get to certain wings unless you took another elevator.

By the time we got to my grandmother's room, most of our family was gone --- they went to lunch.

It was like, as soon as we stepped through the door, she took these last two agonizing breaths and then stopped breathing.Thinking about it now, it's like being there all over again.

My sister and I started crying and we ended up using up so many tissues we started using the rough paper towels instead.

Our dad and uncle and aunt weren't even there to see their mother take her last breath and we were there with my mom and her sister-in-law --- the two women my grandmother had disliked for most of her life --- with a dead body.

My cousin was in shock and kept saying, "I think she's still alive. She's still warm."

She kept wanting me to touch our grandmother --- to feel for myself that her body was still warm.

I wanted to hit my cousin across the face and shake her.

Instead, we just there, dazed, as we waited for everyone to come back.

The thing is, what really made it horrible was seeing her die.

It was a shock to see her all shriveled, nearly bald and in such obvious pain.

Maybe my dad was right. Maybe it would have been easier if we hadn't seen her. But then again, my mom said it was like she was waiting for us.

Or maybe that's something we tell ourselves to make us believe that there are such things as souls and that they go somewhere after death; that there's something bigger and more mysterious about life that we can't even begin to grasp until it's our turn to die.

We'd watched the entire first season of Six Feet Under just a few weeks before my grandmother's death and some of the things that were explored in that first season kind of made me think more about life and death, too.

Like that last episode, where a woman asks Nate, "Why do people have to die?"Nate thinks for a moment and then says, "To make life important."

And it kind of put things into perspective.

People keep saying that last year was a really bad year for me because shortly after my grandmother died, an uncle died unexpectedly. But the thing is, I don't think of it as a bad year. Does that sound horrible?

Death is a part of life. Tao Te Ching said that once we realize that all things change, we won't be afraid of anything. And as much as we miss those who have gone before us, it's something we have to accept and learn to deal with. We go on, we exist and one day, we, too, will die.

Am I getting all preachy and boring?

I guess it's because of all this stuff I've been thinking about in the last couple of days.