My father’s father died long before I was born; I know no more of him than his name (which would have been mine if I hadn’t inconveniently been born the wrong gender) and the story of Grandma’s diamond which I now have and wear.
My other three grandparents are all gone now. I was only on the fringe of the ends of their lives.
In my grandfather’s case, that was really because I wasn’t needed. Grandpa had prostate cancer, chose not to treat it aggressively, lived quietly among his books and his genealogies and his investments (he was a county treasurer and freelance investment manager most of his career), went into hospice when he needed to, and was lucid to the day he died. I talked to him on the phone in hospice a few times. He was laconic about the state of his health. “Good days and bad days,” he said, and that was all he would say, having other things he preferred to talk about.
When he died, I felt that dying wasn’t so bad if one could manage it the way he did. He was never anything less than himself. I didn’t go to his funeral, though. I wanted to, but my mother said I shouldn’t in the tone of an Imperial Command. I felt strongly that wrangling over it would betray him and the way his death had decently and with dignity closed off his life, so I shut up and stayed away.
My father’s mother was overtaken by diabetes. She pleaded with her sons to live out her life in her own home, the home she’d lived in some fifty years. Her sons fought like gladiators over what to do with her—the option she actually asked for was never on the table—and she died in a nursing home, blind, confused, and helpless.
There were certainly discussions to be had about how best to care for her; I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But I was in on the email exchanges for a while, and let’s be clear that Grandma’s wishes were at the bottom of the concern pile for everyone. (”It would shorten her life,” they said of her express desire to stay at home. “It would be too expensive, poor value for money,” they said.) Grandma was a trophy, and the field of battle was who could most loudly and dramatically proclaim concern for her. It was a disgusting display of chest-pounding oneupsmanship, and when I visited Grandma in the place she eventually died in, she surely didn’t look any the better for their vaunted solicitude.
My mother’s mother, who died a week and a half ago, sank into one of the nastier sorts of dementia after a series of mini-strokes, her temper turning white-hot vicious. To make a long story short, my aunt cared for her after Grandpa’s death until Grandma’s temper escalating to physical abuse wore my aunt down enough to heed Grandma’s repeated requests to be institutionalized. (“She only says that because she thinks she’ll die,” my mother told me mournfully on several occasions. Well, and so? I thought.)
The change, it turns out, was not good for Grandma, who bit and kicked and spat at staff at the home until they had to sedate her for their own safety. She died in the body a few days later. If you ask me, which you didn’t, her mind and her self had died long before that. Grandma was the properest, most gracious lady you can imagine; she tried and failed to teach me manners and sewing throughout my childhood. She was also the paradigmatic church lady, generous with her time and effort, invariably kind to children, a credit and a help to her community.
Whatever was kicking and biting wasn’t my grandmother. I don’t know how else to put it. I don’t understand why changeling fairy tales are all about babes-in-arms; I think it more horrible that so many changelings are elders, that a solid and stable personality can not only vanish, but turn inside-out just in time for that to be the last memory that friends and children are left with.
My mother’s family is rather less contentious than my father’s, so I expected Grandma’s funeral to go smoothly. It didn’t. Whether because she felt that her siblings had deserted her with Grandma’s changeling, or out of plain ordinary vanity, my aunt shut my mother and my uncle out of the arrangements altogether, and my mother nearly came to (non-metaphorical) blows with her over it.
The most I can do, sitting here appalled and afraid, is try not to repeat the mistakes my parents and uncles and aunts made. I will listen to what my parents say they want, and let them govern their fate as much as I possibly can. I will take seriously Andy Clark’s contention that our physical surroundings are our cognitive scaffolding, and so I will think very hard before I change them for my parents. I will not force my parents to trade dignity and quality of life for mere quantity. I will do my level best to solve problems instead of creating them. I will remember that my parents quite properly reside at the center of their own lives; I will not relegate them to mere symbols in my own psychodrama.
I do not expect this to be straightforward.
Me, I am afraid again. Perhaps the reason my grandfather managed his own death while both my grandmothers could not is the gender difference. Men are permitted autonomy and self-direction, but everyone expects to take over for women. Men’s voices are heard and heeded; women are thought not to know what is best for them, are not trusted to make their own independent decisions about themselves. I hope this isn’t true, but it surely sounds plausible. I’m afraid to search the sociology literature, lest I find out I’m right.
I’m afraid of having my wishes disregarded and my dignity violated. I’m afraid of being robbed of my identity, becoming a changeling, losing the habits and abilities of mind that make me myself—and I’m even more afraid of being forced to live on as not-me. Hell doesn’t need an afterlife; plenty of scope in this one.
One small crumb of consolation is that I won’t have children to fight over me, smother me with misplaced kindness, and bungle my disposal. What I want is simple: recycle whatever’s recyclable—I am an organ donor, so all that’s in order—cremate the rest, and scatter it wherever because I’m past caring. And don’t spend a penny more than absolutely required. Money is for the living, not the dead.
My second grad-school advisor, who treated his grad students like the dirt under his fingernails, nonetheless managed the end of an emeritus professor’s life with true kindness and complete respect. The old man came in to do work whenever he wanted to. My advisor looked after his finances and got him to the doctor when he needed to go. Like my grandfather, the old man died lucidly and quietly, and had a quiet, dignified memorial.
Finding someone to do for me what my advisor did for him is all my hope for the end of my life.
