On July 10th, He was Going to Die 


On July 7th, he was going to Switzerland. On July 10th, he was going to die. They would kill him? He would kill him? He was going to die. He was going to go to sleep first? It was going to be harmless. 


When I saw my grandfather for the last time in late June, his green eyes got lower on his face. Also they were greyish. Actually his entire face had lost color. This didn't appear in the organ failing way, more like in the airplane way. Human colors smudging, and dulling out. He was inside of his body like his body was an airplane. He was no longer where he once was, and not yet where he was going. He was a dead man walking towards his ending life. He was an alive man walking towards his beginning death. This hanging feeling was his colorlessness. 


Before June, I had seen him in March. This was after his first stroke and before his second, when he had more color. He grabbed my arms and cried into them. Crying, he said, I'm so sorry, we never did have a relationship, did we. I sort of held him and was almost laughing through my words. Going oh it's okay, that's okay. I was always hoping he'd interpret any discomfort of mine as a feeling of warmth towards him. I was always sort of laughing around him.


In between March and June, I did not see him. He didn’t want to see me, or maybe he did want to, but felt unable. I didn’t want to see him either. Or similarly, I couldn't. So a lot of time went by where I was kept aware of sometimes how well, but mostly how poorly, he was doing through my mom, and I did not see him. I questioned if I should feel guilty over this. I decided to not.  


In this stretch of time, his will raveled out of him. He got more and more un-willing. And whatever will he had left in him, he set it on an assisted-suicide program in Switzerland. 


I was grateful for Switzterland. Before Switzterland appeared, my grandfather was trying to get my sister to hire a hit man on him. Trying to wire my sister ten thousand dollars from his bank account. My mom found out, and asked him, if this is some sort of inheritance or gift, why is Lola not included? My grandpa refused the question. This is not Lola’s business. 


So my sister and I were very grateful for Switzterland. Switzterland was riding a tricycle down a steep hill, as opposed to going down on a skateboard, or a unicycle, or just belly flop and skidding on your stomach. 



Switzterland was slow, and far away. The application process was long. Then there was the waiting. And in between the waiting, there was his second stroke. This terrified him. Not because he wanted to live. He did not want to live. He just wanted to be able to say his name, sign his signature, and turn the lever of the IV machine with the drugs. If he could not do any of those things, Switzterland would refuse to kill him. And so there was a growing and silent understanding that if my grandfather could not get to Switzterland very soon, something horrible could happen, something worse than death could happen to him. A sort of imprisonment. 




Then the waiting was over, and Switzterland sent us a letter with a Yes. After that, it took some more weeks to schedule his date. my grandfather became paranoid that my mom was ignoring Switzterland’s emails on purpose, to sabatoge the mission, to keep him alive. It was only when we finally got a date, July 10th, that he really perked up. 


July 10th tugged on me. It was June 20th and time for me to stand up straight, and clench or unclench my jaw, whichever I could do, and see him. This last week of June, I pushed my body into his apartment building, into the elevator, into his front door. 


My grandfather greeted me very normal. He said do you want water. I said oh no I have some and I gestured at my water bottle, which I had been cradling like a baby, or like a grenade. We made some small talk but it was strange, and pointless. 

We were sitting in two armchairs next to each other, facing the black void of a turned off TV. Finally I asked him if he was scared. He had to clarify what I was referring to, which I confirmed yes, was his own death that had been scheduled in the shared Apple Family Calendar. He said no. He was not lying. 


In the silence between us, I thought hard about what a person in his circumstance would want to talk about. A reckoning, or confession, maybe? Would he like to give a monlogue? 

I 
asked him about the happiest times in his life. He told me stories about stealing boats and cars with his friends when he was young. He did not mention to me about becoming a father, or a grandfather. 


I asked him if he had any advice he'd like to impart to me. He said you're going to do fine. Then he thought a bit more, and said don't worry too much about losing money when you make it. Even when you do lose money, he said, don't worry too much about that either. He never did this, and it worked out for him. He said, Lola, you have good people skills. Maybe consider going into AI, training it or something. He didn’t know me super well. But he was always resourceful with the information he had. 


Then he said, Lola it's very interesting to talk to you one on one. We rarely did this, us alone. He said that when I am with the rest of the family, I go quiet and it looks like I’m having no thoughts. He was surprised to realize that the whole time, at all those dinner tables, I was having many thoughts. You weren't saying them, he said. I nodded. I said, I do this with our family and I can't help it. I said, I don't know if it's good or bad about me. He shrugged. He said, well it's just the way you are. It was so kind that he said this to me. He was not trying to be kind. That made it even kinder.


After an hour, there was nothing left to say. All that was left was everything that could not be discussed or even known. And he was glancing around, and restless in his chair, and I could tell he wanted our meeting over with. So I said, well, ..... And then I said, I'd like to see you again, one more time before your flight. And we were both aware of this euphemism I was using, "flight." And he said, oh, no, I don't think so, I don't think that will happen. I did not ask why. 



When I stood up, I realized immediately that I was clueless. I had no protocol for this interaction. I had no experience to pull from. I felt like a baby who had never been in a bath before, and who was now in a bath, all alone.  



I figured it was time to really look at his face. I looked at his nose, the way it related to his mouth. I saw my mom in his face. It has been an amazing experience I’ve had in the world, knowing the people who gave me my mom her features, and from her features mine. I can hardly believe they were walking around in the world with me. So animated, so vivid and up close.  


I hugged him. I said, I love you. In response to my I love you, there was a pause. Then, as if he had left the house without shoes on or accidentally locked his car key in his car, he said, oh yes that's right, love you too. 


And then my body, reciprocating the discipline with which I had pushed it into the room, walked me out of it. I heard the door close behind me. 


A week or so later my mom and my grandfather and a caretaker got to Switzterland via a precarious set of logistics that kept falling apart, but each time not completely. Another way to explain this is that they got to Switzerland by the grace of God. 


Once they were in Switzerland, my mom didn't text me much. Then on July 9th, she texted me with the time of their appointment for the next day. It would probably happen in the middle of the night, my time.


On this night, Liv and Shubhra are in the living room. Lucian is visiting. We are all talking, them on the couch, me listening on the carpet. I am aware the time is creeping towards midnight. I'm aware that once it reaches midnight, something very simple and enormous will begin to happen. My grandfather will turn on some sort of contraption full of drugs. He will close his eyes and die. Hopefully he will close his eyes before he dies. I do hope so. The awareness of this situation happening is hard to hold and so I'm not really holding it. I am staying in the living room, half-talking. 

Then I realize that I'm about to cry. That there is a laundry pile of tears next to me. I put them off and put them off until my legs are now standing me up from the carpet. I don’t interrupt the talking. I go outside and sit alone on a little bench by our front door. 


In front of me, there is the beach towel hanging over the balcony railing.
There is the moonlight on it. There is the wide moon that sees everything. There is the oxygen that can and does carry anything on it. There is my grandfather in the same world as me, and so the world has in it our oxygen, and our together oxygen is on the breeze probably, eventually, inevitably. And now, finally, I am crying. Because the breeze is lifting the corners of the beach towel over the balcony. The palm tree is shining. And it is the most beautiful thing I feel I'll ever see, for no reason other than because it's what I'm seeing. Everywhere I look becomes wider and stiller. 


I don't know what time it is, or what is going on with my mom and her dad who is my grandfather across the world, how much time he has left. So I am saying his name over in my mouth and my hands are on my chest, then cupped in front of my mouth, then in between my eyebrows. I’m saying, it’s all easy, very easy. I focus on that full and moving feeling before the cry gets born. I place my self inside of it. I fold my entire self into my heart. 


At some point, I look up again. There are no stars out. So my eyes go into the nothing sky without a focus, and in the nothing sky, I see an even greater wideness which is life, life as wide as the moon, as the breeze on the beach towel, as my seeing in my eyes. I am going to cry forever about everything. 


Then suddenly I'm fine. I am done crying. It completed itself. Without even a finale, not a big sob or a sigh, not anything, nothing.


I wipe my crying from my face. Like taking your playbill and trash out of the theater with you after going to see a play. All just a little drama. Over now. Time to go back.


Inside, Shubhra and Liv and Lucian are still talking. I note for no reason at all the time on the microwave. It's 12:35am. I say nothing about anything. I talk, but I say nothing. And they talk too, and more, and I hang around a little, and then I sleep. 

 
The next morning I wake to a text my mom had sent. My grandfather had died at what was for me, last night, at 12:32am. 


I didn't watch my grandfather die, but I did watch him go. I was getting up off the carpet and walking outside and he was walking into a quiet room with that recliner chair and contraption.  I was crying so much and my mom was saying goodbye Dad. Then his heart stopped in Switzterland, 12:32am, and we were, at this same time, seeing a sky go wide. Me observing a massive space, him swirling into it. And not long after that was my very sudden, shockingly neutral okay-ness. 


My grandfather is a different person now that he's dead. he's defenseless now, which he has never been, he was always only defensive. So it's strange. I imagine him reading this and being surprised he meant anything to me at all. I don't think he considered himself to be someone who was important to me. I keep thinking about what he said to me in the hospital about our non-relationship. 


I wish I hadn't consoled him the way I did and disagreed with him instead. I wish I said, I disagree Grandpa Ken, because what constitutes a relationship is having vivid and complex memories of some one. So yes, we did always have one. I would have liked to tell him to look at all of the facts we share together.  

1. You are my mother's father. 

2. 
You are my grandmother's ex-husband.  


3. You would pick me up and try to give me kisses on the cheek. I was always trying to squirm away. I was always laughing. I never liked it. Mom would always try to intervene and say Lola only wants hugs. But there was always that wetness on my face, it always happened regardless. 


4. You saved us all a lot of money with the cars salesmen.


5. You gave me driving lessons. 


6. When I was sixteen, you said something to me, and I stopped our driving lessons after that. 

7. 
 I told no one what you said, until I told Shubhra what you said, and she was the first person I ever told, and I didn't realize I was going to tell her until I was, and when I did, she gasped, and buried her head in my knees.  


8. You always brought unique fruits to the family dinner. 


9. You believe that anything should be possible. 


 10. You have green eyes. 



11. You are left handed. 

Look at all of my vivid and complex memories of you. Of course we had a relationship. 


Although now I realize that the technicality of our having or not having a relationship isn't what he was crying over when he burst into tears in the hospital. Not actually, not completely. He wasn’t wondering about semantics. I think he was wondering about love. If it was really real. If it was there for him within the people around him. If he could have it. 


   It is a normal problem to have. Not very big and not very small. Because relationships consist of reasons, histories, and facts, which we use as proof to verify the existence of the relationship itself. And love can exist with or without all of that. So love is much harder to verify. Love is one of those things where the amount of it is irrelevant and impossible. Love, at even its most minimum value is vast, immeasurable, and still expanding. An irrational number. 

My grandfather and I, neither of us are able to understand that I love him. Couldn’t understand it when our lives overlapped, despite saying it in all the birthday cards. And can’t understand it now too. Cannot understand how I was pulled out of the living room and into a silent night. And how space and time collapsed into one blinking feeling. And why I was the one in the family who got his left hands and green eyes. And how that was all love, yes, that was love, and that is love also, and that is love too.