Death in the Family.

So my grandfather died. Shit happens, huh? This isn’t such a big piece of news, actually, seeing as my mother told me several weeks ago that he had a kidney infection. And, well, kidneys are pretty crucial. In a way it’s weird to think of my grandpa dying like some old weak man because he was always physically very fit for his age. He would brag about being able to swim twenty laps or something two or three times a week. I guess that’s one of the reasons Mom and her brothers decided to end the treatment, because they realized he wouldn’t want to live in a physically weak, incapable body trapped in some godforsaken nursing home (I say this having worked in a nursing home before, and I agree with her). Or more to the point, because it’s better to go quickly. Things were so bad at that point, any recovery would really have not been much of a recovery at all—just not death. In the end, the treatment was all that was keeping him alive and he died four hours later.

And here I am stuck in Israel, and I don’t know what to feel.

It’s just those last months before I left, things were getting so bad. I’m sure I wrote about it, and if I didn’t, it was because I had bigger things on my mind. Everything was going through crisis so quickly. Grandpa was going crazier and crazier in the worst way possible. And the word crazy just didn’t seem sufficient to describe his sickness. It felt like all the words in the world wouldn’t be enough. Later on he was diagnosed with stage 5 or 6 Alzheimer’s; there are 7 stages altogether. And the hospitals were shit. Do not believe that nonsense that Johns Hopkins is a good hospital, because it’s not. It was shit. The doctors were just leading my mom around in circles, referring her from one guy to the next. Anything to pass the buck. Gimme my money and go home. And this is leaving out Grandma breaking her hip, me finishing school, etc, etc…Sometimes I got so angry at my uncles for not being there, for not supporting us. It felt like we were carrying the burden all by ourselves, that Mom was doing all the work. And it was killing her, and really hurting the family. Like having an unwanted, obnoxious guest in your house 24/7. We all felt like shit.

And here’s the thing—I made a conscious decision not to go see my grandpa during that time. I’m not sure why. Probably partly because I was afraid, partly because I was angry at him for making our lives so miserable. He’d call Mom up in the middle of the night to rant. And then there was the whole aspect with Grandma. Once we got her out of that house and got her into an assisted living home, she recovered a bit. Like she started talking in sentences again, she could sort of understand what you were saying some of the time. And she definitely brightened up, was much happier in that home. This might not seem like a lot, but she could not even form sentences during the last few months she was living with my grandpa. All this from the stimuli around her—the comfort of a friendly home where people were looking out for her. And I got so angry at Grandpa. All these years, we knew she was going down hill in part because she was isolated in that godforsaken apartment. But here was solid proof. If grandma had had all this comfort around her all this time, if she had been in such a friendly environment, how much better would she be today? Grandpa had been the major block to that. He didn’t take her out, would leave her in the house while he went out. And he wouldn’t let us move her to a home. Let’s be frank: my grandma would be much better today if it weren’t for my grandpa. But then, how can you get angry at a madman?

All this time, we were afraid to take that final step, to rip the family apart by using the law to take her away. What were we thinking??

And then there was my grandfather’s insanity itself, its sheer abrasiveness. It worsened all the most terrible parts of his personality. He was just this kind of boogeyman lurking over the phone. And you know, as time went by Mom started telling these stories. She started saying that he had always kind of been like this—not crazy, but antisocial. Mean. I had always known my grandpa was kind of hard to get along with, but never like this. I don’t know how much was true, how much was angry feelings brought out by this crisis. It was like having poison poured in my ear, and what’s more it worked. I believe my Mom, she’s generally a reliable person. The way she talked, the only phrase I can use to describe it is emotional abuse.

And that was a revelation. I mean, you’re a kid, you want to think well of your family, right? That’s why abused children are so fucked up, because they feel they should love the source of their abuse. It was just a mind-shattering idea: my mom had an emotionally abusive father as a child. Like that’s only stuff you read about in the papers or in books. It doesn’t happen to you. And what does this mean to me as the grandchild? This was completely changing the way I thought about my family, and in the worst way.

So in the last few weeks before I left, I started fantasizing about my grandfather dying, because it would have made everything so much easier. We’d just be able to deal with Grandma, whose problems were much more straightforward and easy to solve, and who (though also crazy) is pretty sweet and passive. And don’t forget the economic side, too. Let's be frank: doctors are expensive, and we don't have that much money.

So when my mom told me that Grandpa had a kidney infection, part of me felt guilty. Like God had answered my prayers in the worst way. Maybe this sounds ludicrous to you, but I feel that God has answered my prayers before, when a cousin was badly sick with cancer. He got four more years with his family, four relatively normal years to see his girls grow up, when he should have died much earlier. And all this time I was praying for his recovery--it felt like an answer. So I believe in miracles, small ones like these--like the rabbis say, it's not the event itself so much as the timing.

So hearing about this, it felt like God had heard me, even though I never prayed for Granpa to die--just fantasized about it. And part of me felt guilty. But another part went, "Yeesss."

And now that I got this phone call yesterday, I don't feel anything. I should feel guilty, or sad, or even happy--I should feel something, but I just feel empty. I feel like I should try to get closure, but how? I'm in fucking Israel!! While my family will be attending the funeral tomorrow, I'll probably be laughing with my friends and joking about hot army guys. I mean, what should I do? Say Kaddish? Wear black? Rip my clothes? I'M ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING ATLANTIC FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!

But also part of me is glad I don't have to go to the funeral, because I don't know what I'd say. And because I have a feeling I wouldn't cry. Or feel unhappy or anything. Just empty. I'd thought about the funeral before, and all I could think of was, "How unpleasant."

I wept at my other grandpa's funeral. And all these people came out to see him buried. And afterwards at the reception everyone told stories about his life, laughed at funny anecdotes. I just can't imagine that happening at this funeral.

But there probably was a whole side of my grandpa that I didn't hear about, and now I never will because I'm not going to be at that funeral. In the end, all I had were these pretty bitter thoughts about him, and I guess I expected my mom and her brothers to be the same, because the hell we've been through in the past few months.

And of course this happens over Pesach. I wanted to talk to my rabbi, but I couldn't, because chag lasts so long in the States (which is behind us by seven hours). And (being the rabbi) he's shomer, so he doesn't pick up the phone on holidays. I called him this morning, but it WAS 11:30 over there, so he couldn't talk long. Also he had to write the eulogy for my grandfather. So I felt slightly depressed when he politely told me he needed to go. I went to the bathroom, and for a moment I felt a lump in my throat. Like I was all alone, that no one understood me. No one over here, anyway. Like I couldn't express how I felt. So I got dressed and came down to the computer lab to write this emergency blog entry.

(As a side note, I slept really badly last night. Went to bed at 12, fell asleep around 1, woke up around 3 or 4 and didn't go back to sleep. Subconscious maybe?)

I dunno, I guess I feel kind of isolated now...maybe I'll try to talk to Peter later.