Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Black Monday

My grandmother died yesterday. It wasn't unexpected, but it still hit me like a blow to the chest when my dad called me at 7:30 a.m. and relayed the news in a shaky voice. I was at work, in the middle of writing an e-mail, bragging about how the bionic woman was still with us. But she wasn't. The strongest woman, the ultimate farm girl, the powerful physical figure who I was often compared to had left her shrunken, broken form for somewhere better.

I am not a highly religious person, but I am a believer, and I believe my dad when he said he felt her escorts come to get her as he held her head in his hands. And I did not doubt, looking at the shape on the bed that was so clearly no longer her, that she was gone. I have had the fortune of making it to 29 years of age without seeing a dead person, as those who I have lost were not lost in my presence, but I calmly broke that barrier yesterday, looked into her lifeless eyes and said goodbye.

There were moments of great joy yesterday. Everything seemed funnier than usual and I found myself in hysterics at the strangest moments--like when we found the unopened bottle of morphine and half the family fought for it while the other half wouldn't let us have it. Or when one of my aunts relayed her tendency to steal toilet paper out of the trash and collect leftovers from potlucks at work. Or when Walgreens called to remind us to refill my grandmother's prescriptions.

There were also moments yesterday that may haunt me forever. When the undertaker came with his stretcher and his body bag and my grandfather fled to the other room to shake with sobs. And when my most emotional aunt arrived her grief was so palpable it ripped me apart. She sounded almost like an animal, her pain was so raw and so wild. I loved her even more for her ability to feel such unmasked love. But somehow I couldn't really cry until I went to bed that night.

After they took her away my most organized aunt made us go for a walk. We bundled up, I in my black overcoat and giant black sunglasses, my father in his dress pants and shoes--all of us in a strange array of whatever we were wearing when we hear the news--and left for a three+ mile hike through the scrap of woods left in Bellevue. We watched a bunny hop in front of us and stopped at a waterfall and creek where my dad used to play when he was young and we inspected the new Microsoft buildings being built on the edge of what used to be thick woods.

As is typical in a family full of engineers, physicists and techies, we lapsed into blessedly distracting discussions of flow meters, my dad's new smart car and cell phone towers. The stupid dog provided entertainment as well. Silence felt oppressive.

Today I feel like cardboard. I'm tired as hell.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Self Indulgent Rambling


Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Twenty-nine years ago today one of my oldest friends was born. And today I will cross the threshold of my first house in Seattle.

It's a classic Seattle April day here, with rain drip-drip-dripping noncommittally and dove grey skies robed in mountain-country clouds. I woke to remembrances of Dr. King on NPR and drove to work listening to the Decemberists spout literary glamour. "Decked by a Japanese Geisha with a garland of pearls" indeed.

My car is full of painting supplies. My apartment is full of beer and wine at the ready for tonight's open house. I am full of maudlin; of sentimentality, excitement, fear. I love change but I sometimes feel lost after I've caught whatever change I'm chasing.

This mindset is pretty much central to who I am and how I think, which I think can be pretty maddening for many people who watch me along the way. A friend once put a song about Virgos on a tape for me (yes, a tape) with some pretty damning, hilarious lyrics, but my favorite part went like this:

Virgo has to know the why, the who, what, when and where
She'll strive to reach perfection, and then improve from there!

Whether or not you believe in astrology, that is pretty much spot on. I'm restless for constant improvement and I have to know every damn detail on everything. Improvement equals change. Ergo I'm constantly changing elements of my life trying to find the best option, or a way to make myself better. Even after we bought the house I went on the real estate site every day to compare the new houses on the market to the house we purchased. I simply had to know that we got the best option in our price range. (We did).

Both Hombrelibre and my sister think I'm insane for doing this. My sister said that the second they bought their house she stopped looking at what else was out there. I simply cannot do that. It might be physically incapable for me. Ignorance is never bliss for me. It is only by knowing that I can relax.

The more I know, the better I feel. It's not knowing that sends me into a panic. My default assumption, when I'm ignorant, is always something much, much worse than the truth. I will imagine every horrible scenario that I can fathom. If I didn't look at houses every day I would convince myself that 18,000 better, cheaper houses came on the market the second we closed on our house. When I was fainting regularly at shows for awhile a few years back I decided I was dying because I didn't know what fainting felt like. Before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis I was (yet again) convinced I was dying, or at least had cancer which was pretty understandable considering I was crapping myself regularly and my hair was falling out in clumps every day. Now that I know what fainting is like I don't stress about it. Now that I know what ulcerative colitis is I can spend countless hours researching alternative therapies and harassing doctors and reading about it.

So for those of you out there who think you're protecting your Virgo friends when you don't tell them something...you're not. For the love of god, tell them if you're mad at them or if they have a piece of spinach in their teeth or if they need deodorant. They might look temporarily taken aback, but by god, they'll love you for your honesty in the end.

'Swearin.