Into the void...
“That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.”
-Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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2003-06-02
2:34 p.m.
My grandmother died yesterday. My mom called me shortly after 11:00am to tell me that my grandmother had died around 9:30am. Although this did not come as a surprise, as my grandmother was 93 years old and not in the best of health, it’s actually affecting me significantly more than I would have expected.
Less than an hour after the first phone call that had been cut off due to bad cell phone reception, my mom called again to tell me she was at my grandmother’s apartment, looking for something. Apparently, my grandmother’s only request was that she be buried with the rosary I bought her when I was in Italy about five years ago. Despite my wholeheartedly atheistic beliefs, I can certainly respect the fact that my grandmother and my mother are both devoutly Catholic, and the rosary from Italy was the only thing I could come up with to buy my grandmother as a gift from my travels. I find it terrifically ironic that she would choose that rosary, out of the several she owned, to be buried with.
And the guilt shall consume.
I have absolutely no reservations about my atheism. However, the seriousness with which my family regards their Catholicism nevertheless makes me feel guilty for not believing in the faith I was supposed to grow up believing. Even my genius brother the physicist who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from MIT still goes to mass every Sunday morning. So does my older sister. I’m not really sure about my younger sister, but she probably does, too. Where the hell did I come from?
And why do I have to feel so guilty?
In any case, now I’m flying home for a funeral tomorrow and I’m missing Commencement here at work, which is kind of a big deal, but everyone understands, thankfully. I want to go to the funeral to be there to support my mother, who spent half her life worrying about my grandmother’s health, safety, and comfort. But I am not looking forward to the funeral. Granted, nobody looks forward to funerals, but I definitely have a very specific problem with them.
I just can’t stop thinking about death.
There appears to be a black hole in the middle of my brain that sucks every thought into it until the thought is changed to: “Death, death, death.” And no matter how hard I try to think about anything else, the thoughts keep swirling around back there without any rhyme or reason: “Death, death, death.” And I try to say, “Shouldn’t the meds be helping this?” But I know in the end that even the meds can’t always fight the evil, siphoning death-fixation that would exist all day long everyday if it weren’t for the large quantities of chemicals in the first place.
I feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. The death-fixation is fighting a terrible battle against the meds and neither side is necessarily winning. It would appear that the obsessive thoughts of death and the chemicals to counteract them achieve only the lingering sensation of helpless nausea in their encompassing body. I very distinctly feel the urge to drink a lot and cut myself, and I honestly haven’t experienced those feelings much at all since the doctor switched my meds last year.
Aside from myself, I’m also extremely concerned about my family. I’m noticing a crazed paranoia that makes me freak out and think, “Oh my god, what can I do to make them better? Oh my god, they’re probably freaking out. Oh my god, I have to fix them. I have to make everything better. I have to make everything right.”
But I can’t. So I freak out.
I even decided that I had to make cookies. Why the hell did I have to make cookies? What place do cookies have in this situation? We have to have cookies because every time the entire family gets together, there are cookies. My mom’s surely not going to be baking. Grandma used to make a lot of cookies, but she obviously won’t be baking either. That leaves me to make the cookies.
Or are cookies inappropriate?
Of course, the sudden plane trip and the thought of having to switch my plans all of a sudden are not making it any easier. Also, the inability to come to terms with death in any capacity, coupled with the fact that I had to bail out of major Commencement ceremonies here at work, have left me feeling like I’ve been absolutely pummeled. I had to talk to my boss about it, I had to talk to the Human Resources person to find out about bereavement time and its rules and regulations, I had to talk to the Commencement coordinator who was not pleased that her plans were being changed at the last minute again. And although everyone tried to be very understanding and supportive, that doesn’t make it any easier to talk to them all about it. I would’ve been fine if I didn’t have to talk to anyone about it.
I just want to go home.
