Screaming Grief

This piece talks about grief, religion, health complications for a loved one, and death.
 

As I grow older, I gain new experiences, new loves, new dislikes, and opinions, and I’ve lived a thousand lives since the last time I had been back home in upper Appalachia. My hair was still a crimson, fiery and reflective in the bright autumnal sun as I visited my first set of paternal grandparents. I have two due to a divorce. There was a silent understanding as the family gathered around the table for a hot meal as the sun settled down over the rolling hills in the west. The golden lab, Max, was checking out the table, lingering near me as I overheard my grandmother as she held onto my mom while coming in from the porch balcony.

 

“I’m ready to die. I’ve had a good life.”
 

The understanding grew heavier, somber, and I could only remember thinking, “I wish you have the mercy of going on your own terms.”
 

Unfortunately, Life has a sick sense of humor, and the family must watch as the strong, no nonsense brilliantly creative woman we’ve respected turns into a shell of who she was. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the grief and depression melted into an anger I haven’t felt for a long time. The anger of helplessness, of hopelessness, and seeing the cruelty of a loved one’s mind turning against herself. The anger directed to the one kind and loving omniscient being that is supposed to comfort us in times of trials and tribulations. I was sixteen again, and instead of being angry for the sadness inside me, I was angry about the medical torture my grandmother has endured in her older years.

For those blessed without the grief, allow me to tell you about my family. I moved to the South when I was seven, and after that, during the summers, I would go back up to New York to see my family and spend the summer back home. I never considered Texas my home, even when I made friends, got my Blue Heeler, Tabby, and established a life. It never held my heart. Those summers back home were brief – from June until August, but there was enough to cement love in my heart from a family over a thousand miles away. 
 

From what I remember of those summers away, Grandma Chapman loves cardinals, quilt making, watching The Price is Right and the subpar soap operas that play before the news, has a rooster decorated country style kitchen, and for the longest time, she used to smoke Marlboro Reds. A lifetime ago, there was a family restaurant, drama, anger, and rocky relationships in a time before I was born, but I know that before the grandchildren were around, there was turmoil. My brother and I briefly saw the anger, knew what not to do and when to listen, but I still remember the excited woman working on a new quilt and standing out on the porch to watch the beautiful pond system built in the backyard. I remember the time she even knew something was wrong with myself when I was having my own teen struggles. She took me to the bench hidden in the garden near the pond to chat about the happy things before I helped her back inside. 

 

Even that last summer was hard at the early signs.
 

Now, she’s starting to forget people. She’s experienced strokes, she even died in an ambulance once only to be resuscitated, and it’s hard to look at the state she has grown into in these silver years. A photo of her with my uncle and the ominous text from my father of returning home in the spring had my stomach churn in an all too familiar feeling. A gut feeling no one wants to believe: she won’t make it to spring, but she’ll make it to Christmas.
 

I got the message before my shift at work, the feeling, and I was a wreck all day. I would cry in between transactions, hide in the bathroom to try to stifle myself only for my sniffling nose to betray me as others entered. It reached a boiling point on my break as my lunch order was wrong. It was the final dent in a shitty day, and it caused the tears to erupt. Capitalizing on the fact I was finally crying behind my workplace, hidden in my car, I put on a song I have cried to since I was sixteen. 
 

The familiar, haunting beginning of Hospital for Souls by Bring Me The Horizon started to pour from my car’s speakers, and I wasn’t in my car anymore. Tides of sadness came in and I was carried out to sea with my body still attempting to silence my sobs. I don’t cry loudly. I don’t cry pretty. I’m silent, tortured with the desire to scream and thrash, but my body is an anchor that only drags me further in my despair as my mind started to churn over the memories. A mix between that garden time when I was sixteen and now, I was sad. I was angry. Angry that people can die like this – not recognizing who is around them, not recognizing their home and friends. Angry that the divinity we cling to allows such horrors to happen.
 

Despite the big emotions wanting to suffocate me, wanting me to fall back into old habits that only lead to destruction, I cried. I listened to the lyrics. As the song hits the “bridge”, the feeling of being within a group meeting in a mental clinic is invoked. 

How are we on a scale of one to ten?
Could you tell me what you see?
Do you wanna talk about it?
How does that make you feel?

I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I was whimpering, my fingers digging into my shoulders as I carefully had the subconscious effort to avoid scratching the fresh tattoo on my left bicep for this band. After the song concluded, my head ached, my eyes were puffy and irritated, and snot kept trying to drip from my nose as I returned inside for the rest of my shift. Despite it all, I felt lighter even by letting myself be sixteen again.
 

I guess in the end, I knew how to handle grief and my emotions better than I give myself credit for, and I can only hope that when the time comes, I’ll be okay when she takes her last breath. It would be a mercy, and I hope that Death comes to her with a soft blanket in the night, lulling her to sleep in what little mercy can be given to the woman I’ve seen wither by the brutal hands of Dementia.

I hope that when the time comes, there’s an apology from Death at the seeing her life, seeing the degeneration of her health and self. I hope that peace is made as Max is brought to her to guide her to whatever afterlife waits for us in the end.

I want it to still be soft. I want it to be kind.

Most of all, I want it to be peaceful despite the cause of death.