Continuation of previous blog.

Friday, October 7, 2005 7:23 AM

The second time it happened was a few years ago, actually. It was with my Grandma Fran. Of the two gma's I had, she was my favorite of the two. She was really into movies, she was friendly and funny and warm. Everything you want a grandma to be. And she was also a chainsmoker. She went in for a checkup at the hospital, and she didn't come out. She had lung cancer and brain tumors. She only had a few months, if any at all. I only saw her twice when she was in the hospital and she looked bad. I was still able to talk to her and tell her all my feelings. All of us did, so there wasn't that sense of "I'll never get to tell her how I feel". It was a few months later that I think I got a phone call or my brother Matt told me that she had died, and I didn't like bawl or do anything theatrical. Instead, I was a bit ambivalent to it. I mean, it was inevitable, so it didn't hit me or anything. This was just a confirmation. And I think at the end of April was when we had the service. Her body was already cremated, and so the whole family came to bury her ashes. They said that we could leave some stuff with her, so I wrote sort of a final letter to her with some dialogue from an ep of SIX FEET UNDER about death, where this one character asked "Why do we have to die?", as well as a toonie (a two dollar coin, for those unfamiliar with Canadian currency) as to pay the ferryman. I don't remember if anyone else did that, but I felt like someone had to do it, so I did. After the service, I kinda walked around in a daze through the graveyard with U2's "Kite" playing in my head. But the one thing I remember the most was seeing my Grandpa Maynard cry. I had never seen him cry before, so it really struck me then that she really was gone.

That one comment that Joss made in the commentary track for "The Body" ep about how we fantasize/deny the death during that early process actually happened. My mom was the first one of our family to actually see my gma's body. The nurse had called her to tell the fam that she was dead. And the nurses wern't supposed to touch her before my mom got there. And when my mom got there, when she saw the body, she though "Well that nurse was an idiot. She's not dead. She's asleep." Her body was positioned so that she looked like she was sleeping, and not dead. But then it hit her that she actually was gone.

A year later, my Mom and I went up to Unity (small town where they lived), since everyone was there to go through the house, because he was selling it. In a year, he had met another widow and got married that weekend. And so most of my mom's side of the family were there to go through the house to see if there was anything that we wanted. I went through their vinyl collection, and the only thing I found of interest was a Simon and Garfunkel album and a The Who album. My cousin got The Who, and I got S and G, as well as some books off my gpa's shelf and a magnifying glass. And when we were driving home with the truck full of furniture, my mom told me how my gma and gpa actually were. And it was a toxic relationship. How my gma was just miserable living in Unity. And how this dent in their kitchen sink was created when during an arguement that was so heated, my gpa threw a coffee mug into the sink hard enough to make that dent. And how my Aunt Joyce, who was the youngest of my Mom's siblings would be caught in the middle of it and how she's call my mom or my Aunt Joan just sobbing in a phone booth. That weekend was the hardest on Joyce actually. She was a complete wreck the entire weekend (I actually walked in on her when she was crying and was weirded out by the whole thing).

And then today, I was talking to my mom about this (I made sure to tell her that I loved her), and she told me some stuff I hadn't heard before about all this. She said that me and my brother actually brought the best out of her. That she was better to me and Matt then she ever was to my mom. This, as well as the knowledge of how toxic of a family situation my mom lived with, really startled

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