I’m not a huge fan of death; never have been. Whenever I think of death, I think of my uncle Nathan. His was an open casket, and the only memories I have of him were of cigar smoke and that moment of seeing him in the coffin. I cringed at every funeral after that as a child and well into my adulthood.
I would say that while this is a memory from me as a young child, the two that stand out more abruptly are of both of my grandfathers. They both died when I was five or near about. My first grandfather, my dad’s father was from Canada, and I remember his family there more than I remember him.
The most enduring memory I have is standing in the hospital parking lot looking up to the roof where my grandfather stood. He was wearing a grey bathrobe and I think my grandmother stood next to him. He waved to me and possibly my brother, and we waved back. Well, I waved back because my brother would only have been one or so. I think my father stood with us in the parking lot.
This was 1970 or 1971 and children weren’t allowed in the hospital. It’s kind of like that now, but when my dad was in the hospital, we used to sneak my son in to see him and the nurses would ignore him just so long as he could get past the security guard.
We never would have thought to sneak in back then.
I remember this grandfather from photographs that blend into memory. There is me in a stroller wearing bunny ears, holding a Kodak film box, the recognizable yellow box of the Eastman Company. We are on a street in the Bronx outside of an apartment building. I don’t think this is their apartment building, but nearby there is an asphalt park surrounded by a chain link fence where the older boys played basketball and the girls jumped double-dutch. It was a noisy street with cars driving by, their engines noisy and their horns loud, interspersed with the bouncing of the basketball off the backboard and the handball off of the wall that divided the spaces.
My other grandfather, my Mother’s father died either later that year or early the next year. It was within months of each other. In fact, my grandfathers died within a year and my grandmothers did the same although they waited for many years after that. My parents also died within eighteen months of each other.
The only memory I have of this grandfather was his balding head, sitting with his back to the doorway at the kitchen table eating his dinner when he’d come home late from work. I’m not sure what we would have been doing there so late, but it is the one picture of him in my mind that is consistent.
My mother says that it isn’t true, but I have vivid memories of his death. He had a heart attack in the house, and I remember him lying on the carpet and the paramedics coming in with the stretcher from the ambulance. I would swear that I was there, and my mother would swear I was not, so I don’t know if this is an actual memory that she’s always tried to protect me from or if it is one of those planted memories from other people’s overheard conversations.
He did have a heart attack and died in the house and there are other details that it would seem strange for others to talk about around me, but I don’t know.
These are the three that still stand out to me as an adult, and form my ever fearful phobia of death and dying, although I have mellowed out in the abstract of faith and adulthood. I still occasionally have a recurrence of a childhood dream that I’ve often had of nothingness. If you can’t imagine it, it can’t be explained, but it is the abyss of nothing and it is palpable. It is the dark staring back at you and as much as I try to be calm and rational, the noiseless void can be too much to bear. All I can do is wait for it to pass, and it usually does.
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 