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Dormit in pace
Aug. 17th, 2019 09:41 pmMy mother's father died when I was a little more than a year old.
My mother's mother died when I was 22.
My mother's father died when I was 28.
And Elsie died yesterday, 7 weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. I'm 46.
What most struck me yesterday is that my parents, therefore, have been saying goodbye to their parents for 45 years. And that, now, finally at the age of 72, they're the most senior generation. I saw it hit my father yesterday as we sat in the hospital room with my grandmother's body.
I sat with my mother while my father called my siblings. We waited together until the doctor came to confirm that Elsie had passed. And then we said goodbye.
Then I had to go home and explain to my little girl that great-grandma was dead and help her process it. It's a conversation my parents never had to have with my for the grandfather who died in 1974. A conversation that a 22 year old has more tools to understand than a 9 year old. True, in between my mother's brother Joe died, a death that my six year old self somehow pieced together was due to a heart attack -- because that's how people died, right? I was in my late teens before I discovered that he had killed himself after a life made miserable by a world that didn't understand what dyslexia is.
But, my god, watching a 9 year old collapse in your arms, and holding her through that storm of grief and loss, it is fucking hard. But maybe not as hard as 45 years of saying goodbye to parents over and over again, or of trying to understand the enormity of death at 9. She asked me if I felt the same way she did. And yes, little one, my heart breaks with the loss. But at least I have the understanding of what 40 years of osteoarthritis, almost 20 years of living without your husband, years of watching your friends pass on, and living within an increasingly frail body all were like to contextualize the many reasons that for Elsie, this was a blessing and a release.
Elsie, for people who never met her, was a very small woman. She barely made the five foot cutoff to join the nursing sisters, and she was always slight. In the last five years, she had dropped to well under 100 pounds, and no longer had any fat under her skin. She was literally skin, bones, tendons, and blood vessels. And her skin was so very fragile and thin; adhesive wound tape would rip her skin when removed.
She spent the summer out in Alberta, after going to my youngest cousin's wedding in May in British Columbia. After the wedding, she and my aunt drove back to Alberta and we flew home. Last week, I was in Las Vegas for a work conference; at the same time I was travelling there, she flew home from Alberta. I was packing on Friday morning to go home when my phone rang. It was the facility where she lived. She'd fallen, and had a cut on her arm; they didn't think it was serious, but wanted to let us know. By the time I landed in Toronto that evening, they'd taken her to the hospital because the facility staff had been unable to completely stop the bleeding. My parents and I went in to see her in Emergency. The doctor was concerned because her sodium was low, but putting in an IV wasn't an option because of her fragility. The next morning they admitted her, primarily because the facility where she lived didn't have staff proficient enough in wound care for skin as fragile as hers. To address her sodium, they gave her potato chips. Mom and I took M in to see her; Elsie's speech had become so slurred that M was unable to understand her. It improved over the next couple of days, and she spoke to my parents on Monday about how good it had been to see M. But then on Wednesday, she fell again. On Thursday, she ate a few spoonfuls of yogurt - full stop. I made plans to go to the hospital on Friday morning after a doctor's appointment in Guelph.
I am, right now, too numb to feel much anger at the circumstances that caused me to miss being there with Elsie as she passed (and when emotion breaks through the numbness, it is mostly grief); my doctor's office put me in an exam room and then basically forgot me for an hour when a walk-in came in. But when I got there, twenty minutes too late, at least I was there for my parents. They'd been with her at the end, and she passed peacefully.
A funny story about my grandmother: her name wasn't actually Elsie. When she was born, her parents named her after two of her aunts, Elsie and Millicent. They wanted to call her Elsie, but Millicent was the older aunt. So she was christened Millicent Elsie Lainchbury (and if that isn't a good stout East Midlands name, I don't know what is), and it's what appears on her birth certificate. But it appears no-where else. Everyone has always called her Elsie. Her driver's license says Elsie. She trained at Sick Kids, enlisted, and worked as Elsie. She was married as Elsie (I once asked her if she and Grandpa actually been married). I didn't find this out until I was in my early 30's and I teased her about it mercilessly.
I'm going to try to write down more stories about Elsie, so that I can remember them to tell M as she grows up. While she's very lucky to have known her great-grandmother, she's only known her as a very old lady, and not as the force of nature I grew up with.
Sleep in peace, Elsie Millicent Dandy (October 7, 1917-August 16, 2019)
My mother's mother died when I was 22.
My mother's father died when I was 28.
And Elsie died yesterday, 7 weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. I'm 46.
What most struck me yesterday is that my parents, therefore, have been saying goodbye to their parents for 45 years. And that, now, finally at the age of 72, they're the most senior generation. I saw it hit my father yesterday as we sat in the hospital room with my grandmother's body.
I sat with my mother while my father called my siblings. We waited together until the doctor came to confirm that Elsie had passed. And then we said goodbye.
Then I had to go home and explain to my little girl that great-grandma was dead and help her process it. It's a conversation my parents never had to have with my for the grandfather who died in 1974. A conversation that a 22 year old has more tools to understand than a 9 year old. True, in between my mother's brother Joe died, a death that my six year old self somehow pieced together was due to a heart attack -- because that's how people died, right? I was in my late teens before I discovered that he had killed himself after a life made miserable by a world that didn't understand what dyslexia is.
But, my god, watching a 9 year old collapse in your arms, and holding her through that storm of grief and loss, it is fucking hard. But maybe not as hard as 45 years of saying goodbye to parents over and over again, or of trying to understand the enormity of death at 9. She asked me if I felt the same way she did. And yes, little one, my heart breaks with the loss. But at least I have the understanding of what 40 years of osteoarthritis, almost 20 years of living without your husband, years of watching your friends pass on, and living within an increasingly frail body all were like to contextualize the many reasons that for Elsie, this was a blessing and a release.
Elsie, for people who never met her, was a very small woman. She barely made the five foot cutoff to join the nursing sisters, and she was always slight. In the last five years, she had dropped to well under 100 pounds, and no longer had any fat under her skin. She was literally skin, bones, tendons, and blood vessels. And her skin was so very fragile and thin; adhesive wound tape would rip her skin when removed.
She spent the summer out in Alberta, after going to my youngest cousin's wedding in May in British Columbia. After the wedding, she and my aunt drove back to Alberta and we flew home. Last week, I was in Las Vegas for a work conference; at the same time I was travelling there, she flew home from Alberta. I was packing on Friday morning to go home when my phone rang. It was the facility where she lived. She'd fallen, and had a cut on her arm; they didn't think it was serious, but wanted to let us know. By the time I landed in Toronto that evening, they'd taken her to the hospital because the facility staff had been unable to completely stop the bleeding. My parents and I went in to see her in Emergency. The doctor was concerned because her sodium was low, but putting in an IV wasn't an option because of her fragility. The next morning they admitted her, primarily because the facility where she lived didn't have staff proficient enough in wound care for skin as fragile as hers. To address her sodium, they gave her potato chips. Mom and I took M in to see her; Elsie's speech had become so slurred that M was unable to understand her. It improved over the next couple of days, and she spoke to my parents on Monday about how good it had been to see M. But then on Wednesday, she fell again. On Thursday, she ate a few spoonfuls of yogurt - full stop. I made plans to go to the hospital on Friday morning after a doctor's appointment in Guelph.
I am, right now, too numb to feel much anger at the circumstances that caused me to miss being there with Elsie as she passed (and when emotion breaks through the numbness, it is mostly grief); my doctor's office put me in an exam room and then basically forgot me for an hour when a walk-in came in. But when I got there, twenty minutes too late, at least I was there for my parents. They'd been with her at the end, and she passed peacefully.
A funny story about my grandmother: her name wasn't actually Elsie. When she was born, her parents named her after two of her aunts, Elsie and Millicent. They wanted to call her Elsie, but Millicent was the older aunt. So she was christened Millicent Elsie Lainchbury (and if that isn't a good stout East Midlands name, I don't know what is), and it's what appears on her birth certificate. But it appears no-where else. Everyone has always called her Elsie. Her driver's license says Elsie. She trained at Sick Kids, enlisted, and worked as Elsie. She was married as Elsie (I once asked her if she and Grandpa actually been married). I didn't find this out until I was in my early 30's and I teased her about it mercilessly.
I'm going to try to write down more stories about Elsie, so that I can remember them to tell M as she grows up. While she's very lucky to have known her great-grandmother, she's only known her as a very old lady, and not as the force of nature I grew up with.
Sleep in peace, Elsie Millicent Dandy (October 7, 1917-August 16, 2019)
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