"What do you think happens when we die?" I asked her, as we sat across from each other, playing our third and final hand of solitaire before lunch.
"I don't know" she said. "Nothing?"
‘Nothing' is such a bleak thought. I can't accept that we live all of our years here on earth and when it's all over it is followed by nothing. I asked her if she was afraid of dying and she said no. No? She is 86 and presumably far closer to death than I am, and I am obsessed with dying, like some sort of cliqued Woody Allen character, I lay awake at night and am laser focused on what will happen after I've taken my last breath.
I asked her if she believed in heaven and she said she supposed she did. We talked about what she would want there waiting for her: my grandfather, a gin and tonic, soft shell crabs and dancing were all on the list.
The whole conversation made me want to scream at the top of my lungs. The room smelled of feces as it had for the entire hour I'd been sitting there, despite my two requests to please have someone come in and clean her up. I try to be nice to the nurses because I know their jobs are tough and also, I feel if I'm nice to them then they are nice to her.
I wanted to record her talking about death and family and what she remembers about her life, but I was conflicted. Even if she gave consent, she doesn’t really understand what she’s consenting to. I want to have videos of her to remember her by after she is gone, but the truth is I have a fantastic memory, from what I had for lunch in first grade to what shirt my husband was wearing on our first date. I don’t need a video to remember her voice, especially her voice now, which is often slow and slurring its words.
When she is gone to heaven to dance with my grandpa and golf all day, I will remember her the way she was, driving her cadillac too fast and brushing my hair too hard and giving her unsolicited and often inappropriate opinions to everyone. I will remember her tucking me in at night when I slept over, making me mashed potatoes with the perfect little well of gravy in the middle, holding my hand when we played cards.
I don’t know what I’d hoped she would say to me about death, what possible wisdom I was looking for her to impart to me. I guess I wanted her to tell me to not be afraid, that everything would be okay. I told her I was scared, that the idea that one moment you are alive, and like a light switch that’s been flicked off, everything goes dark and its over. I said all of this to her and she just looked at me and said “Yes, like a light switch.” And smiled. And played her next card. And with that our only talk ever about death was over.
