All About Bob Dylan
Silence. It is joyous.
There really is no time to play when you spend half the month traveling.
More home. Or, anything from my wish list.
Or, "Whiskey and Laughter" Post Date: 10/18/04
Original Journal Date: 10/11/04 One time, maybe eight or nine years ago, my cousins and Pookie and I were all hanging out at my mother's house. We were talking politics. We were, specifically, talking left wing liberal politics. The kind of politics we have the luxury of believing in because we didn't grow up during the Great Depression or have to work in the CCC or dig through coal mines. My grandfather, who had to do all of that, hates that brand of politics. And so he got angry, frustrated, agitated and worked up. He stormed into the room where we were all talking about how we should spend more money on the arts or welfare or something like that, and he yelled at us, "YOU KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM WITH Y'ALL IS? Y'ALL GOT COMMON SENSE, BUT YOU AIN'T GOT NO SENSE OF REALITY."
A couple of days before my Grandpap actually passed away, my mother walked into the hospice room with an atlas and a flashlight. I was confused, until my uncle burst out laughing and said, "She brought it so that the stubborn old guy could find his way." Apparently, this had been the joke. You know, that he really needed to die and somebody needed to show him the way or something. So my mom brought him a map and a flashlight to help him along and my family laughed about it, like we always do. The hospice nurse laughed too and said, "The question now is, who's gonna kick him in the ass and get him started on his way."One night, my Grandpap is near the end. My uncle, my mother and myself are on night duty, but I'm too tired to stay awake, and I fall asleep in the chair in the corner of the room. My Grandpap talks all through the night. We can't tell what he's saying, but we all suspect he's having a conversation with the ones who are waiting to bring him to the other side. He's arguing. He doesn't want to go. Later, when we tell other people about this night, I say, "He was aggravated. He knew he couldn't win the argument, but he's never lost a fight in his life. So he was frustrated." He literally talked all night. Then his joints started to get cold. This happens before you die. It's one of the phases of death. His joints got really, really cold. I woke up from my sleep in the chair at some point to see my mother and my uncle acting like two crazy people grabbing at his joints saying, "He's getting cold, he's getting cold. It's going to happen tonight." It didn't happen that night. He's too much of a fighter for that. He got warm again by morning.
We had the best nurses and hospice nurses I've ever seen taking care of my grandfather. Every day they kissed him when they came in, even though near the last days when he was still able to talk he called them all "Nazi bitches." The nurses told Di and I about how he called them Nazi bitches, but somehow when they told the story, the words "Nazi bitches" came out sounding like the word "sweetheart." They all brought food for my family every day for the last weeks when we took turns watching over him. When I got to the hospice floor, the refrigerator was full of fried chicken for us. The day after he passed away, the morning nurse showed up with bacon and eggs to make us all breakfast. She cried when she found out she didn't need to.They doubled his medication to try to calm some of the pain. They doubled his medication so that he wouldn't fight it as much. Did you know that morphine can be applied as a cream now? His favorite nurse volunteered to work a double shift so that she could be with him when he passed. She came in early and slept in one of the vacant rooms upstairs so that she could stay up all night with him and be there to rub his arms for him.
And so he passes. It was the first time in weeks one of his three children isn't in the room with him, and we're all convinced he just didn't want to die while his kids were there to see it. But Joel is in the room when Grandpap finally slips away, and so are Di and Greg. They're all talking about having grown up being the "shittin' grandkids." Then, the favorite family phrase, "tighter than a bull's ass going up a hill" is invoked, and suddenly my Grandpap's eyes open up really clearly. More clearly than they had in weeks. He makes a noise that starts with a "b," and Joel, Di and Greg all think he's saying "Bye." Then he closes his eyes and sleeps away. At least that's how they tell the story. That's how I choose to believe it, too.Joel calls me to tell me and I turn my car around to start the trip to where my family is waiting.
While we're waiting for my mother to arrive, the hospice nurse tells us that the last place the heat will leave his body is through the back of his neck. He'll stay warm there for a while. She also tells us that most of her hospice patients who can speak near the end see angels standing in the corner before they go. Never floating above the bed or standing in the middle of the room, always in the corner.We each take time alone in the room with him. I ask for help, and tell him that I hope I make him proud.
My mother takes a long time in the room with him. Someday I'll ask her what she said in there.Finally, we all go in to the room. My mother has brought a bottle of Jack Daniels and she pours shots into little, tiny plastic pill cups from the nurses' station. While we're standing around the bed wandering what to say for a toast, Joel realizes what the family toast should always be from now on. So he raises his shot and says, "To reality and common sense." We all take a shot for the old man.
We spend two hours in the room, telling stories and laughing. At one point, my uncle looks at my mother and, with all the seriousness in his voice that you can imagine, he says, "Are you alright with this Joann? Are you okay? Are you sure?" And she nods her head yes. And then my uncle looks at her again and, with just as much seriousness says, "Then lets go plant his ass." My family erupts into laughter. We pretty much laugh for the next two hours. We laugh so hard the tears come. Not the sad kind of tears that mean that we're here in a room with his body, but the happy kind of tears that mean we're celebrating what an unbelievable life he had and how much he gave us. We laugh until our sides hurt and we can't stand up any more. I don't even know that I can ever remember all the stories or exchanges or things that set us off, but I remember the laughter. Years from now, when they ask me what I remember about the night my grandfather died, I will say I remember the way my family laughed together. How lucky am I?Two hours after he has passed away, I bring the tape up from the car that Joel made of my Pap playing the organ and singing "Stormy Weather." We put it into the tape deck on the clock radio and listen to it. His voice fills up the room. He sings about his three kids by name: Gibby, JoAnn aaaaaaaaaannnnnd Danny. Somewhere in the middle of the song, he says this: "I hope you're liking what I'm singing. I hope you're liking what you're hearing. I know for sure that I am, because it's coming right out of me." Have you ever heard "Stormy Weather?" I think it might be a George Barber original. Sing it with me...
Stormy weather...
Why don't you and I...
Get together...
It's raining outside...
It's raining all the time...
It was raining the day I met you...
But the sun will come out...
Stormy weather...
You and I...
Should get together...
The hospice nurse tells us that we need to leave the room because the coroner has come. On our way out, she tells us that our family is the most well adjusted family to death that she's ever seen. We all stop in our tracks, because nobody has ever called us well adjusted before.Some families, apparently, don't want to stay when the coroner wheels the body out. But we all do. I think, though, partly we all stay to make it easier for the nurses. They are crying and can't keep it together, so we give them hugs and stroke their hair.
After they remove my grandfather's body, we decide we need to drink booze together, and lots of it.We also need food. But it's late on a Sunday night in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. The first bar we stop at isn't open any more. The second one isn't serving food any more. The third one just closed the kitchen. So we give up on the idea of booze and just go the Eat'n Park for some food. They seat us near the back, where we are loud. Where we laugh. Where we make fun of each other and talk about massages and happy endings. When we leave, we realize that what we thought was an empty restaurant is actually full of people. It's just that they've seated everybody at the opposite end of the restaurant from us. We were that loud. On the night my grandfather passed away, my family and I got so raucous that they couldn't seat other restaurant patrons near us.We decide to start a new family business. Since everybody was so overcome by how joyous our death celebration was, we're going to officially launch Grief Busters. Now don't you go stealing the name or anything. Anyway, what we'll do is, when your loved one is about to pass but you don't have the kind of family who's going to sit around telling stories and laughing and making you remember the good things about your loved one, we'll step in for you. You just fill out a simple questionnaire with some basic facts and possibly true stories about your soon-to-be-departed one, and we'll fabricate the rest. We'll show up at the death bed or the funeral or the service or the reception and (loudly) tell stories about your newly-departed loved one. We'll make up jokes and songs, too. We'll create fake identities so that you feel you're actually related to us. All of this for just $1650 per day plus incidentals (like if you want us to bring food along). Yep. This is the idea we come up with the night my grandfather passes. Di even makes up a jingle for us to the tune of Ghostbusters:
If your loved one dies
And you need someone
Who ya gonna call?
Grief Busters!
I follow my mother home to make sure she drives safely. I go back to the house I grew up in to get some sleep. I have never in my life not been scared when I am there at night alone, but this time I wasn't.The day they put my grandfather in the ground, my cousin Jeff brings another bottle of whiskey. They do another round of shots and dump the rest of the bottle on top of the coffin. They buried my grandfather with a five dollar bill in his pocket. It was important to him that he never be penniless. But the most important thing to him was that my family laughed and hugged and smiled and loved together. So that's what we do.