8 posts tagged “death”
My grandpa died today - dad's dad. We were expecting it. He'd had a fall and was unconscious and bleeding inside his skull. Dad went over to Tassie yesterday and the funeral is on Friday. I'm not sure if mum can go or not; I'll be away so I wont.
His alzheimers had been getting worse and worse since grandma died last christmas. He had to live in a high security ward and he wasn't really sure who people were. He kept trying to get out to "go visit Ada" - he couldn't remember that she was dead and had to be told every day, and then he'd become depressed about it all over again. I can't think of his passing as a bad thing, to be honest. I'm sure he was a great person once - I can see some of him in dad and in my Uncle Stephen. But I didn't really know him, because we only visited for a few days once every couple of years. All I have are a few vague memories of playing badminton with him and us walking up the mountain near their house together as a family, and him becoming more bruised with age and lost in his mind every time we visited. I think my dad would like me to write a poem like I did for my other grandfather, but I just can't, because he wasn't a part of my life and I can't say that I loved him, sad as that is.
And yeah.
Finished exams.
It's summer.
Our DVD player and good computer are broken.
We're going to New Zealand from the 15th to the 25th of December.
Facebook ate my brain.
I'm going to bed.
Good night.
I was looking through my stuff from last year and found this, but couldn't find it on my blog anywhere. Do tell me if you've seen it before and I will take it down. I like not being manic depressive anymore :)
Take me. Take all of me. Pick me up and put me in a box. Snap the lock closed and throw away the key. I have seen the world and I have seen too much. There is war out there, and famine, and illness. There is pain out there, and there is too much pain for me to bear. I need to sleep now. I have to close my eyes and forget. How can I bear to go on otherwise? There is so much beauty in this world, and there is so much pain.
Will you help me?
No, what am I saying.
No-one can help me now.
I have seen too much, and now I understand.
They see the war on their television screens every day and they turn away.
They hear of children dying every minute and they shut their ears and talk of something else.
Once, I cried because of this; but now I understand. There is too much suffering, and we have to turn away because otherwise we cannot live. We would break. We would die. And so we turn away, and pretend that everything is good in our lives.
Don’t tell me what to think. I have a mind, I can decide for myself. I need to know, but I will find out myself. I need to make my own mistakes. Give me more air, I’m suffocating.
I’m not a caterpillar any more. It’s not enough just to eat and to exist and to believe.
I covered myself in this sticky net. I hid myself away in my own mind and nobody can really see me anymore. Who am I? I don’t know. I am sleeping. For now, I am just safe. I am learning, slowly. One day soon I will be forced to come out, to be strong, to make my own way. Hopefully when I break free from my cocoon I will discover I have wings, and finally I will be able to fly.
Adolescence is a difficult period. It is a time when you discover who you really are, and who you want to be.
Death is one of the harder things to learn. How do you reconcile yourself to the fact that one day you will simply not exist any more? Some people tell their selves pretty lies about heavens full of angels and eternal bliss. But I am a scientist. How can I ignore the barely concealed flaws in their stories?
I lie on the floor, hands buried deep in my dogs’ silky fur. I can feel their heartbeats within their ribs. They are so tiny, so fragile. Yet they trust me so completely that they fall asleep tucked under my chin each night. They trust me with their lives, and I love them so much that sometimes I think my heart is about to explode with the joy of it. This is why I live, and this is why we fear death – because we miss the love, the warmth, the friendship.
We should never try to lessen the impact of death by trying to love less. If we do, then what is the point in living? Life is beautiful. It is full of laughter and joy, rainbows and mountains and cold misty mornings. Running so hard you think you’re flying. Warm hugs and paintings and music. They say, live every moment as if it is your last. I don’t think you should. Would everything then be tainted with haste and bittersweet longing? Just live every moment as if you were a dog. Live it with everything you have and love it with more than that.
"Wake up Steph. Please. The cat's unconscious, and he's dying."
Tears sliding down her face. Cold shiver down my spine.
He lay on the sofa like he always does. Did. Left wrist curled under his head, right arm stretched out in front. I knelt down beside him, quietly. He didn't move. Mum fondled his ears, just like we always d... did.
He didn't notice. He didn't move. "His heartbeat is so faint ..." Her heartbroken whisper broke something in me and I cried then, as I stroked that familiar line; across his forehead, over his ear, down his neck. Just the way I did every day, walking down the drive to find him waiting patiently for me. Every soft hair ingrained indelibly on my memory.
I checked his chest one last time; there was no familiar beat there now. For an almost frantic second I waited, waited ...
"Is he gone?"
And I had to nod. And we held each other, and we wept so hard and so long that the world changed. How could there even be a world for us without him in it? He was one of us, you know. One of the family. Even as I type this, I can hardly see the keyboard for the tears, because I can't imagine life without him, and now I have to live through it.
It wont be the same.
It will never be the same without his comfortable presence.
Mum stroked his ears one last time and they sprang back into place, neatly, just as they had before. She let out an involuntary whimper. "I keep thinking I can see him breathing ..." And I could to, a trick of our minds so unwilling to say goodbye. So we stayed with him for a while, just sat there, wrapped him in a blanket and wrapped ourselves in memories.
We first saw him in the vet clinic up the road. We had just mentioned that we were looking for a cat, and the nurse hesitated then said "...well, there's a cat who's just come in for his shots, and they said just now that they might think of rehoming him ... would you like to come and see him?" The question that would shape our lives.
He had a quiet dignity about him. He didn't throw himself at us, but when we picked him up and held him he just melted into our laps - he was so big that my sister and I had to sit side-by-side so he could lie across us - and he purred, louder and louder.
I still hear it, echoing in my ears.
It was two weeks before we could take him home, because we went to central Australia. When we went to their house, he was huddled in the corner, miserable. My heart broke to see such a noble spirit reduced to that.
He had been a wild cat, they told us. They already had two cats, so it wasn't too much trouble to put out a bowl of food for him too. It had taken a whole year before he trusted them enough to come inside. After he was desexed, though, he settled down so much that he was an almost perfect housecat - except that he hated their other cats, and the other cats liked him only in the way that a bully likes flushing the head of a little kid in the toilet.
Not that they were nasty cats. In fact, they were very sweet with people. And I love them, because it was because of them that we met Meggs, because of them that we took him home.
He walked straight into his box, even though, as we discovered later, he had a phobia against them. He wanted to be rescued. He wanted to be our cat.
Everybody admired him. "Oh!" they would cry. "He's such a handsome cat." And so he was.
He was beautiful.
I love the lines around his eyes. We said it was his make-up, as if he was vain ... but he never was.
I love his eyebrow-whiskers.
I love the patterns on his face, and his soft fur, and his round feet.
When you looked into his eyes at night, they shone red and green both at once, deep swirling mysteries of eyes, as if you were looking into infinity. You could drown in eyes like that. Perhaps I did.
He liked to help us with the gardening. Whenever we went outside, he would follow, murmuring pleasantly under his breath. We didn't garden as much as he liked, so he took himself out and made hollows in the grass under the flowering trees, so that he could watch the birds come and go. He never caught them, though. He only wanted to watch. When the trees weren't in bloom, he would sit in the kitchen and watch the quail in the aviary for hour apon hour. Occasionally they got too tempting, and he leapt at them. It made a very distinctive crash, and entertained our dinner guests immensely, but he never learned.
He slept on the foot of my bed most nights. My sister and I shared a bunk bed. I slept on the bottom for a while, but then dad built a set of steps so that I could have my own top bed back and he could still get up and down. The house was his, and we were his, and so (within a fairly short space of time) were the neighbours.
We discovered a few years later exactly how wide his range was - three houses down the street, two houses up the street, and even the blocks over our back fence. All of them knew his name (how, I will never know) and most of them fed him. No wonder he never lost weight! Our big fat garfield cat...
He treated the arrival of Merry the way he treated most things - with stoic tolerance and the seemingly infinite patience (except when dinner was concerned!) which we loved him for. And he needed it, because she changed a lot of things. Merry shared my room, so Meggs had to sleep on Viv's bed from then on, and so he became her cat. He had to yowl really loud for dinner from then on! But she loved him to bits, maybe even more than me and mum did - and that's saying a lot. He was the object of endless sketches and countless hundreds of photos. She scratched him in just the right spots, and she called him Master, the Ruler of the Universe and Everything.
I just called him Cat. He didn't seem to mind too much.
We had always known he was as much like a dog as a cat, but with competition I think he sometimes felt he had something to prove. He would follow us on walks sometimes, right up to the edge of his territory, and when I trained the dogs he would come to watch, so I taught him some tricks to stop him feeling left out. He secretly loved it, even came and asked me to train him, but if he ever thought I was getting too happy with him he would quickly stop and walk away, just to put me in my place.
My grandpa loved him. They shared a soul, I think. Calm, loving, and rather fond of good food.
Is it wrong that I cried more over my cat than my grandpa?
I loved my grandpa so, so much, but Meggs was more than family. He did what no-one had been able to do for me before - he was there. Always, without fail. I knew that when I came home from school he would be there. I knew that when I was sad I could hold him and he would be there with me all night, a warm and fluffy ward against the monsters who hide in the dark. And I would trip over him in the kitchen, and in the coridoor, and when I walked into the door, because he always wanted to be right there with us.
Mum had to go to school for a meeting. Viv didn't know yet.
So I went with her. I found her, sitting on a bench with her folder on her lap. And I took her in my arms, and I just held her.
Her face went deathly pale, her eyes wide and searching desperately.
"Meggs passed away this morning in his sleep."
She turned, reached into her folder, and pulled out a page - one last picture of the Master.
And slowly, slowly, she crumbled. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and the girl who never cries sat there and wept, and wept.
And we cried together on the cold wooden bench, and we watched the magpies and wondered how they dared to go on when the world had just broken.
But somehow, it was right. Life moving onwards, always onwards.
He loved to watch the birds.
We buried him in his favourite spot, and planted flowers all around his grave, so the birds will still go to visit him.
Mum asked if we wanted to say anything, but we were all crying too hard.
Finally, I spoke.
"He was a good cat," I said.
And somehow, that was enough ...
I just wrote this. It kinda freaks me out. And yes, I know I've used the phrase "sound of silent tears" before, but it's a nice one. I like it.
My heart is bleeding. They ripped it from my chest while it was still beating, and they hold it in their fists, dripping gorily.
This is my story. This is the sound of silent tears.
Every day, more come. Big, yellow trucks. Bulldozers, factories, uniforms and clipboards. Murder weapons. All official, written down and signed by some stuffed bureaucrat in an ivory tower. I cannot complain. I can never complain. They turn their heads and they cannot hear me screaming. They ripped at me, tore at me, stole away my children and raped me mercilessly … but I am still alive. How can I be, when there is nothing left but pain? How can I go on?
But I am the ageless one, and the death of my body will take an age longer than the death of my soul. I am the earth, and I can hear you laughing.
I gave you life. I gave you everything you ever needed, but you took more than that. You took more than I could ever stand to give. Once there stood massive forests, full of life and wonder. A miracle it took a million lifetimes to grow. You destroyed it all in an instant. Your tender hands are drenched in the blood of a million lives a million times over and you do not even realise it, or perhaps you do not care. I loved you once, as I love all my creatures. How did it ever come to this? Where did I go wrong? I gifted you with minds, I gifted you with a spirit, I thought I had gifted you with morals but I know now I was wrong, oh so wrong. And now the children have grown into men, and there is nothing I can do now but wait.
I once thought that there was hope, but now even that eludes me as I lie here watching the destruction of everything I cherished. I never thought that it would come to this. The only relief I can see from the endless torture is my impending oblivion.
Goodbye, my children. Do not worry, I have forgiven you. I know that it is all my own fault. I think that when I gave you minds, I forgot to give you hearts…
It is a little over a year since grandpa died. I don't know quite what to think about his death. By the end, there was none of the kind man who used to be my grandpa. He was the soft cushon to grandma's hard edge, and he smoothed out the conflicts that occur in a familly of strong willed people. Conflicts that now arise again, so that I almost glad that grandma, aunts and uncles live in Sweden at the moment.
There haven't really been any deaths in my familly since I was born. So grandpa's death hit a little harder than it may have. Or maybe not, how can I know? I have been blessed, I guess. But I was so devastated, because he had always been the one the most like me in the familiy. The soft one. The flat-footed one. The one who liked ice-cream and little stories...
Memory is hard sometimes. But sometimes we have to remember in order to heal. Sometimes we have to cry in order to heal. At the time, I felt as if was doing the crying for the whole familly. Dad didn't feel the loss as much as the rest of us, and mum felt somehow that she had to be "strong", and Viv ... well, Viv never cries at death.
I didn't know him as well as I would have liked. They were only ever here for half the year, and by the time I was old enough to apreciate him his mind was already fading like his hearing was, though we didn't really realise it at the time. Life with someone suffering Alzheimers is very hard. Very hard indeed. I heard a quote the other day, "Alzheimers is not forgetting where you put the key, Alzheimers is forgetting that it IS a key..."
But I don't really want to remember the later years. I want to remember the grandfather who made us a dolls house to play with. I want to remember the man who wore sandals and adored jam on digestive biscuits. I want to remember running up to him and hugging him so fiercly that he was happilly surprised, because I was young and full of love and didn't want to lose him ... because I knew even then that everything must die. Everything has its time and its place and then it is gone, like wind through the trees. I was a leaf in that tree, and he moved me. One day autumn will come and I too will fall. It is kind of sad, but I feel as though life is defined by death. So we can only really understand life by understanding and accepting death.
I wanted to share a poem that I wrote at the time, to celebrate his memory. I did not think much of it at the time, but mother read it at his funeral and I am told it made everybody cry, because they thought it encapsulated who he was. I really loved my grandpa. I don't ever want to forget him.
I remember I was smaller;
My grandpa would tell me stories,
Of a time when he was young
And life was bright.
I sat down and I listened,
And in my mind I pictured
The visions he could see
When he recalled.
His voice was deep and gentle,
And it warmed me like a blanket,
And some times I would laugh
And others nod.
I remember a time later
When his words slipped into Swedish,
And he didn't seem to know
What people said.
But I still sat down and nodded,
And I listened to the memories
Which he told with his deep voice
And bright blue eyes.
"I knew it." said my mother,
And I heard her voice was breaking,
And the tears slid down my face
Freely and warm.
He was sweet and kind and gentle,
The man I used to know,
And this is my goodbye
To one we loved.
Yesterday I wanted to write. Today, I don't. I don't want to write about the pain in the world. I don't want you to see my hands shaking; why should they even care? When I close my eyes I see blood leaking, red blood on sand, the world awash with its own bloodied tears. Every second someone is dying, people are crying and I hear them when I tilt my head, but I don't want to hear them anymore.
I sit on the bus and she slowly breaks down. The edifice trembles. There is so much pain in this world, and there is too much pain for me to bear. I shatter, slowly. Piece by piece I fall away. I cannot stand anymore. Everything has come back to me, and it has torn at me, and left me nothing. How can I live with everything I have lost?
Tell me that.
Tell me how I can live when everyday people scream and weep in fear, when they feel their hearts ripped from their chests as they see him one last time - he's still warm. How can he still be warm?
I always imagined ...
No!
I amagine too much!
What I imagine is painted across my little world, eating at me ...
When every day they take a knife and pull it across their wrists, lying in the bath. They pull it down the vein, not across, so they will bleed too quickly and no-one can save them now. Save? Stupid word. You cannot pull someone away from the blissful dark eternity into tortured, broken life and call it "saved".
And on and on my brain ticks on, never ceasing unrelenting tick tick tick
I see blood
I feel blood rushing through my veins
I tase blood and I taste tears and I taste shame
How can I tell you how I feel? And yet I must, or it will sit inside and slowly choke me, silently suffocating my will, clouding life with endless darkened coridoors.
Hold me. I'm afraid.
If you knew you had one week to live, what would you do, where would you go, who would you see?
Submitted by normatheartist
Assuming that I was not bed-ridden with illness, I think I would hang around home. I would talk with my friends, play games with my familly, walk my dogs, run and laugh and scream and sing. I would cry in the shower until I came to accept my death, and then I would smile again. I would run naked through a tropical thunderstorm, sleep under the stars, eat until I felt sick. I would write until my hand cramped up. I would hug eveyone a thousand times and tell them that I loved them with all my heart. I would lie in bed an know that I was dying, and I would hold my dogs in my arms and whisper sweet nothings in their ears. I would promise them that we would meet again in the next life, and that I would wait for them. And I would lie there and stare up at the ceiling as the bittersweet tears slid down my face, and I would face death with a song in my heart, because my life has been so wonderfully, amazingly beautiful.
