|
|
|
mortality personified
Friday, December 24 1999
At the Seaway Hospital the doctor x-rayed Kim's lungs and did the usual bloodwork (the nurses
had to stick Kim three times). The diagnosis was bronchitis complicated by asthma. Kim's case was
unusually stubborn; she required three different inhalers and an injection before she recovered her lung
capacity to 93 percent. By the time I woke up circa 11:00am, Kim was trembling under the influence of
ephedrine.
We sat around for awhile eating some hearty chicken noodle soup made by Kim's father, Bud.
Then we headed down to Wyandotte to visit Kim's paternal grandparents, still living in the same house
in the same tidy neighborhood for the past several dozen years. In the past year and a half their health
has deteriorated enormously. Were it not for the daily visits by their children, they'd be consigned to a
nursing home by now. While Kim's grandfather depends on a walker to get around, he's actually in better
condition than Kim's grandmother, whose kidneys and heart are both failing. A year and a half ago she
was a plump grandmother telling the neighbor kids not to peal the bark off the trees. Now her legs are
swollen and she ambles around precariously with a look of resigned worry on her vaguely jaundiced
face.
For most of the time we were there both grandparents were obsessed with the relatively minor crisis
of a missing pair of glasses belonging to the grandmother. For a good half hour or so we fanned out and
searched the house, but they couldn't be found anywhere. The grandfather kept repeating the story of the
last time he'd seen them. We begged for them to forget about the glasses and just enjoy our visit but
they couldn't think of anything else. I suppose that when your physical body is a sinking ship and your
fully-conscious mind is aware that its losing its only possible home (and its only connection to the
world), sensory aids assume more importance than a young able-bodied person could ever
appreciate.
My last grandparent (my maternal grandmother) died back in 1984, and before that my paternal
grandmother died in the early 70s. Both of my grandfathers died long before I was born. Consequently,
my direct exposure to mortality has been thinly spread out over many years. In contrast, all Kim's three
remaining grandparents seem poised for imminent demise. It's a sort of crash course in the brevity and
preciousness of life. Since I'm right there with Kim at this point in her life to experience this bundle of
mortality with her, I can't help but be affected. It's not the most pleasant way to spend the last holiday
season of the millenium, but I suppose such lessons are useful for the healthy, the young, and the likes
of me as we attempt to hone and focus the purpose of our lives.
I needed a little break from all the glum socializing, so I took Sophie for a little walk around the
neighborhood. The houses in Wyandotte are widely-spaced on big fenced lots. The town has an almost
rural feel about it, though it's still an urban area and has been continuously populated at its present
density since the early part of this car-fabricating century.
Unlike in Southern California, the dogs of Wyandotte, Michigan usually live in large fenced yards
and never get taken for walks. The winters are long and Wyandotte dog owners quickly get out of any
dog walking habit they might develop. The dogs we encountered usually consisted of motley pairs of
completely dissimilar canine breeds, all of them barking their heads off in a way that aggravated
Sophie's travel-induced constipation.
Back at Kim's father's place, Kim and I spent the next hour or more wrapping Christmas presents
for Kim's many relatives. It turns out that a good fraction of our hefty luggage was a veritable Santa's
bag of presents that Kim had bought. You know, for an only child, Kim sure has a lot of Christmas
obligations. Most of her problem in this regard is related to the fact that none of her paternal relatives
strayed from their native homeland of downriver Detroit. For her, Christmas in Detroit means buying
and receiving lots of presents. Considering how little sleep Kim had last night, it's surprising she had so
much energy. By this point the depressing and relentless nature of our familial obligations was wearing
me out and giving me a head ache. I was disappointed that a much-anticipate opportunity for down time
was being swallowed up by gift wrapping.
The final familial obligation of the day was a big Christmas dinner held a few blocks away at the
residence of one of Kim's aunts or uncles. It's a family gathering going way back into the musty depths
of history and, as Kim had predicted, it was rather like Oktoberfest. The food was a decidedly northern
European mix of sausage, ham and turkey, though the beer was mostly Bud Lite. The kids were mostly
upstairs playing with a Sony Playstation.
Also upstairs was Aaron, the live-in boyfriend of Kim's cousin Michelle. Aaron is an orthopedic
surgeon and probably makes good money, though he and Michelle choose to live in a room in her
parent's house. When we found him, Aaron was busy avoiding the party downstairs. In his cynical view
the bulk of those present were unpleasant gossips and busy-bodies, the sort of folk with which the
incestuous communities of downriver Detroit are largely peopled. He'd been downstairs for a beer and
had already had an altercation, so now he was simply waiting for the party to clear. He referred to the
glad-handing and how ya doin' taking place downstairs as "forced intimacy," something he says he gets
enough of already as a medical doctor. I found his cynical bah-humbugging exciting and refreshing in
its contrast to the orthodoxy of Kim's attitude, though I can understand her viewpoint as well. After all,
this was in all likelihood the last Christmas feast her grandparents would live to attend, here at the end
of the millenium they've shared with Chaucer, Michelangelo, Newton and Nixon.
Back at Kim's father's house we were trying to be good houseguests by loading the dirty dishes
into the dishwasher. Not knowing where to put the clean dishes we found in the dishwasher, we simply
piled them on the counter. As we were sitting on the couch in the living room, Kim's father and wife
Linda came home. Linda immediately began asking aloud in an interrogative voice, "Why are the dishes
doing piled up on the counter?" Kim thought this horribly rude; it was obvious that we'd taken them out
of the dishwasher and it should have also been obvious why. When Linda asked a second
time about the dishes, Kim told her we'd only been trying to help. To this Linda responded with
silence. Kim thought this exchange so rude that she fetched the card out of the basket she'd prepared
for Linda and stuffed it in her pants. It later fell out when Kim went to the bathroom, and her father
subsequently discovered it lying indignantly beside the toilet. Despite the rules of the house, Kim and I
slept together tonight in the basement.
Sometime during the night Sophie played the role of Santa, leaving a slimey brown gift in the hallway
for Kim's father to step in on Christmas morning.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?991224 feedback
previous | next |
