We encountered "graphic" in a different way this month. Didion was intent on sharing with us precise details about the occurrence of John's death and Quintana's illness(es), letting the reader expereince the scene first hand.
She also seemed moved by grief to gather information, via Internet, reference materials, Doctor friends and by hounding hospital staff. Did you appreciate the vividness of the scenes she described and her explanations of all the medicine involved?
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Yeah, I appreciated that a lot.
It's impossible for me to imagine losing my partner and having my kid dying in the hospital at the same time. It's just impossible to know how one would act in that situation.
I know that if she were my partner or my mom, though, that I'd get down on my knees and thank God that someone like her was in my corner and relentlessly advocating for me. I can imagine that the easier path would be to lapse into self-pity (and no one could deserve the pity more), but she resisted that and always seemed on hyper-guard against it. ("The question of self-pity," she called it).
Her attempt to marshal all the facts, down to her researching the medicines and procedures, seemed like an attempt to regain some "control" over situations that one has very little control over. I was very touched how she would seem like the "cool customer," completely self-possessed, then she'd bump into a memory that would knock her on her ass.
I bet she annoyed the hell out of the medical staff, though. She dropped hints of that as she described how they would evade or ignore some of her questions, especially at UCLA.
Not that I think she was completely out of line. I feel great empathy for her approach too and would/will probably act in the same way when immediate family falls ill.
She seemed aware, at some level, that her persistence was more about her (need for control as you say, kc) and less about the care, "the trach would have happened anyway" she says at one point. Like the medical staff had asked her permission simply out of courtesy.
Once in a while I have had a family "manage" a funeral situation like she was "managing" the hospital staff. It's tough to not fight back with them and instead try to step back and allow them to work out their emotional anxieties in all the details of the service. Especially because it is exhausting for the family, they get more and more frayed over service order or where people are going to sit or other stuff that they could choose to let someone else handle.
AEL, I imagine a big part of your job is dealing with grief and loss — comforting the terminally ill and their families, performing funeral rites. Most of us face grief mainly on a personal level, but you do it "professionally" as well as personally, and that has obviously given you added insights into the matter. This may be kind of a weird question, but I wonder how you process all of that day to day, and I wonder what sorts of things people find most comforting (assurances that the loved one is not really gone but awaits us in a better place?) I remember having a kind of epiphany at my other grandpa's funeral years ago about the comforts people find in religion and religious ritual. The repetition of the rosary, the "baptism" of the casket, the perfuming of the casket with incense, the chanting. It took something chaotic and unfocused like grief and formalized it and "communified" it. And I remember thinking I would like to have a Catholic funeral, even though I'm lapsed, just because the rituals seemed so comforting to the living. Is that bizarre?
I think it is totally different to deal with death on a professional level than a personal one. There is a great amount of detachment that is required. Mostly I think that's important because the last thing a family needs is a pastor up in the pulpit crying through the service, no matter how closely I knew the deceased.
I think that funeral rituals are one of the most important parts of my job, actually, to be a guide through those difficult first days, to be one of the first to elicit and hear their stories of the deceased, to be the one at the coffin saying, "this body we commit to its final resting place, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." That is a singular moment in a family's life. People don't quickly forget the person who "buried" their mother. All that to say it is a responsibility I take seriously and I think they are crucial moments for the bereaved. I wonder how non-religious or rather non-ritualized families do it, how do they pull something together that expresses their love and devotion as well as their loss?
You can see I don't think your desire bizarre at all. For Didion obviously too that funeral was so important and she grieved for Quintana that she lost the memory of the service (standing there in her black dress, saying "more than one more day").
Yeah, I can see the importance of detachment — of not falling apart so that they can.
One thing that happened at my grandpa's funeral that bothered me (there were several) was that at the wake the sacristan went to the lectern and basically tried to get a laugh. He said that the priest who was supposed to do the rosary got tied up so he asked the sacristan to come recite the rosary. He acted like it just got fobbed off on him and said something like, "I couldn't say no, like usual, so here I am."
I wanted to tear him limb from limb.
I thought the proper thing would have been for someone to tell my grandma privately that the priest was not available and that the sacristan was going to say the rosary, if that was all right with her, then for him to go up and just do it without drawing any attention to himself or his "martyrdom" for the church.
The church was really important to my grandpa. He converted to Catholicism to marry my grandma. He sent my mom to Catholic school. He gave a TON of money and time to the church. He never missed a Sunday. He deserved a classy rosary.
Another thing that bothered me is that my brother's kids wore old jeans and T-shirts to the wake (with the excuse that they just came from athletic practice). I found this deeply offensive. They had to get dressed after the practice, so they could just as easily have put on nicer clothes. I'm no stickler for dress codes, but, good grief, my grandpa would not have left the house unshaven or with a single wrinkle in his clothing. He wouldn't have worn jeans to do anything but mow the lawn. He was very dapper and from a generation that regarded appropriate dress as a given. It's not a worldview that I necessarily share, and clearly my brother doesn't at all, but he should not have allowed his children to attend Grandpa's wake dressed like that.
Sorry for all the personal sharing. I guess my point is that protocol and ritual and respect are terribly important at funerals.
I think laughter can be really healing at a funeral, as long as it is a funny story about the person everyone loved and honored. No place for a joke about the speaker's own incompetence. But don't get me started on clergy with no sense of worship or ritual ...
I think you are right on about how the personnel change could have been handled better in speaking to your grandmother privately.
As to the clothing, you've simply demonstrated again how far your compassion and sensitivity outweigh those of your brother.
I don't think we can talk about grief w/o it being personal. I can still vividly picture each of my grandparent's funerals and they happened years ago.
You guys are totally right about funerals. They are memorable moments. I still have vivid memories of my Uncle Bill's funeral, when I was about 7. Walking past the open casket, sobbing on my brother's lap, riding in the limo to the cemetery.
My dad's funeral was fantastic. There was a lot of laughter, which was appropriate because my dad was a really funny guy. It was actually the funny stories about my dad that made me cry the most, because they were so personal, so meaningful, and underscored the reasons we would miss him.
Erin, I still can't imagine what it would be like to lose a parent as a teenager.
I had a friend Kelly in junior high whose mother had died. She lived alone with her dad, and I always felt so terrible for her. I think she got to a point where it didn't consume her, but it always consumed me when I was around her, because I just could not fathom my mother dying.
The other day my mom said "frickin'," which, trust me, is the closest she'll ever get to the f-word, and I tried to tell her it was OK. You can say "fuck" if you've buried two dads.
Yeah, losing a parent at any age is terrible. Ben's mom lost both her parents within a two-year period recently, which must be so hard. I think it must a sort of helpless feeling to have no parents around anymore.
Losing a spouse after decades together, though ... I can't even imagine.
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