When I was in the 4th grade, I was in an academically gifted program. We met in a trailer at my elementary school near the end of the day, I guess, because one day my grandmother came to pick me up from school early and I was in AG and my teacher, Mrs. Purcell, said, "Oh, look, it's Mama Jo coming to pick up Mama Jo!" We all call my grandmother, whose name is Sara Jo, Mama Jo, and in elementary school, my friends called me Jo (without an e, thank you very much, years of childhood scarring) and Mrs. Purcell called me Mama Jo on occasion, probably because I'm bossy and protective and in general a domineering, matronly figure.
This is a trademark of many of the women on my mom's side of the family. We know what's right and we're not afraid to tell you that we're aware of the best way to handle any given situation. Ten seconds at Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter with my family is all the scientific proof you need to see that fact.
Which is why, I guess, I'm not surprised that Pawpaw waited until after the Carolina game to pass on.
Man, I balked at that idea the first time someone said it. I think we were standing in the hall, waiting for my dad and my older brother and Diata to get to the hospice center and exchanging hugs when someone seemed like they were going to break down in tears again, and someone asked me if it was me that said that he had waited for the game to get done. And I said no because I was appalled at the idea, that life and death waited on Carolina basketball. I might be a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred and when I die, I will be a Tar Heel dead, but I know that my time of death isn't going to depend on a game unless they actually succeed in giving me a heart attack one of these days. It just seemed crass and terrible and a joke in very poor taste. We had all just lost someone close to us all. Why on earth would someone say something like that, minimizing the traumatizing event that had just occurred down to a glib comment about the timing of a basketball game?
We had all tried to be quiet during the game too, which is quite a feat, considering it was me, my mother and my two aunts all in my pawpaw's room with him sleeping on his bed and my grandma sleeping on the chair. If you've seen me at a game, you're aware of the amount of passion that goes into my support of the team and I can tell you for a fact that I didn't get that from my dad's side of the family. My aunt got up and walked around and left the room for good luck while my mom listened to Woody on the radio and grabbed my knee every time a shot went in, and I only clapped every once in a while and was probably loudest when I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the game. It's nice to see the Heels win an ACC opener.Seems like it's been a while.
Then we all walked down to the sun room because the nurses were going to give him a bath and let him sleep in a different position. It's strange how it's always too soon, even after a more massive heart attack than we had thought on Monday and the move to hospice on Thursday, Friday? It was around three o'clock on Saturday, because I was going to wait on Jackson to get back and trade off the grandchildren duties and drive back to Chapel Hill. My stuff was all packed in the car. I was just going to head out of town, be back for everything that needed me on Sunday, and come back for the funeral that I knew was coming sometime next week, with them stopping dialysis.I was counting days in my head, next Wednesday, next Thursday, maybe I could get a ride back with one of my cousins, hopefully the snow won't be too bad... then the nurse comes running in and my mom and aunts are running down the hall and my cousin is helping my grandma with her walker and me and my little brother walk slowly down the hall behind them.
The thing that gets me the most isn't how I feel because I couldn't actually tell you how I feel right now. I guess I'm peaceful. I went to go see him in the hospital on Monday, that seven county drive behind me, and he seemed OK. That's what I'm going to keep as a last memory, if I have to keep one. Mama Jo told me that I used to say, "Pawpaw, it's getting dark outside... Pawpaw, it's dark outside," in the winter, when it gets dark outside early, just like this. In my mind, I'm on my knees on the couch looking out the big window in my grandparents' house at their street, with the white curtains framing the deep dark blue outside and happy little worried me turns to my grandfather in his chair by the couch, letting him know that the sun's gone away for the day. Mama Jo says, "Do you remember that, Jim?" and he says, "Yeah." And I have to laugh because my pawpaw was never a man of many words.
The thing that gets me is everyone else's sadness. I'm getting better at telling people that he's passed when the thought of it initially just made me start crying. And I'm not going to think about graduation and how I won't have to get an extra handicapped parking pass because that can't end well. But I can't think of my mama crying or my aunts crying or my cousins crying because all that vicarious pain is just going to set me off again into a red-nosed fit of grief. See, my pawpaw was a man who loved his family and it's too beautiful to bear to see us love him back.
He and my grandmother were together for more than sixty years. He didn't ever say much, but when Mama Jo came back in when I was visiting for a second time on Monday night, he dropped the entire conversation with my aunts and me and put up his arms to hug her saying, "I love you." And she is so strong, you know, standing up there and praying with the whole family in a circle right after he'd gone, and I don't know that someday after I've found someone who's loved me that well that long I'll be able to stand up and say anything at all when he's left me.
My mama has two sisters and my pawpaw was a deacon in the Baptist church. We went back to the house my mama grew up in (how can you just leave people there? Is that was people do, when someone dies, you just leave them there? I just don't understand death, can't deal with it, don’t want to face its reality) after everyone had gotten to say goodbye again and the hospice people knew which funeral home to contact. Mama Jo was in the dining room searching for a phone number and she comes out and all her daughters are standing around, beers in hand. She says, "You know the preacher's coming over." And my aunt says, "We'll tell him we're Methodist." And my grandma says, sassy as anything, "Well, you may be Methodist now, but I am Baptist and you were raised Baptist and the preacher's coming over." And somehow the beer found its way to the hidden back bedrooms of the house.
And so it goes. The everyday beauty of life doesn't stop just because the darkness has come in for a little while. I didn't ever pray on my own today because I thought it was a little redundant, telling a God that was already there to be with my family. Even as the night comes early, little lights pop on in the distance, like my aunt chasing my uncle around their living room for making fun of her in front of the preacher or my dad holding my mom or my older brother getting to know my grandfather in months before today or my little brother high-fiving me as we left my aunt's house tonight, making sure I drove safely back home.
And if a patient man who knew and cared for his family wanted to wait until the end of the game to head on to the better place that's been prepared for him, so be it. I'm just glad we didn't go into overtime.
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