Last Monday, my grandmother Wiwi died. It was right after breakfast – the only meal she could handle these days – when her body weakly seized, emptied its wastes, and finally stopped functioning. My mother called to tell me just a few minutes later.
What struck me most about Wiwi’s death was how its story preceded its happening. I don’t know if this had to do with the shock my uncle’s suicide two years ago, or perhaps because of my family’s unease in dealing with anything but joy, but a full week before that final breakfast, my mother was already spinning anecdotes of Wiwi’s final days into rote cliches.
Folk songs. No regrets. Pain masked by uncomfortable laughter. Champagne. In other words, exactly like every other story my mother tells about her family. And so Wiwi’s death became just another story: distant, sterile, and quaint.
But that’s not what it was; that’s never what death can be. Death is ugly, painful, and humiliating. Nobody just stops breathing. Nobody just collapses in the street after life has painlessly and suddenly left them. Nobody was ever just “killed instantly”.
Over the last few years, I’ve forgotten this distinction between memory and reality, between story and truth. And since this last week has been filled with more uncomfortable truths than the last twenty combined, I feel it necessary to take the figurative minutes of this important time.
In short, I’m back.
