Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Waiting On a Miracle

My grandmother, Martha Louise Hollingsworth Williams, passed away earlier tonight sometime around 6:45 p.m. at the ripe old age of 84. I wrote this some three weeks ago. It didn't seem appropriate to post at that time.

Sunday, November 4

I laid awake in bed for a long time last night, staring at the ceiling of a small bedroom with blue walls and red carpet. The room once belonged to my father during his adolescent days. Now the room receives as many visitors as my family receives visits from their eldest son to the chaotic, sprawling metropolis of Atlanta.

I'm in Georgia right now, having made a hurried decision Friday night to leave Saturday morning to visit some three hours away for an indefinite period of time. And being that the house that I grew up in has gotten no larger over time, and that the people it housed through my formative years have gotten larger, I made the short trip across the street to my grandmother's house to spend the night on a bed rather than a couch.

My grandmother's house is quite a contrast to my immediate family's home. She, an 84-year-old widow, is about as unorganized as a fishing tackle box. It seems that every little thing of her's has its own unique place, along with other related things. There are entire rooms that see little to no activity for extended periods of time. The notion even came to me last night that her floors are so clean that I could probably eat a meal off of the kitchen linoleum.

Now, it should be noted that there is a strong contrast also between an 85-year-old, petite woman living alone in a three-bedroom house and six people ages 12-55 living in a smaller three-bedroom house. Still, it makes for an odd transition at night. In some ways, I feel like I'm introducing calamity to a seas of tranquility just by pulling back the covers of the bed to lay down for the night.

But that's not what really kept me up last night. Though exhausted from the day, what denied me rest was the same thing that caused my impromptu 200-mile visit, my grandmother.

Since Oct. 13, she has not slept in this house, but instead has split time between a hospital and now a "rehabilitation center," which is really just a euphemism for what is truly a nursing home. What started as her not feeling well quickly escalated into a loss of most of her faculties, both physically and mentally. Doctors were optimistic when they gave the order to move her into this "rehabilitation center," but now it appears that those hopes were ill-conceived and really just efforts to delay the inevitable. Someone didn't want to be the bearer of bad news.

It's been a hard three weeks since then for my family, especially my father and my great aunt, my grandmother's only child and only sister. I know that it's also been difficult for the rest of the family (my mother and four siblings), but I suppose what I didn't anticipate was the struggles I would face through this turmoil. Because as I looked into her eyes yesterday afternoon for some two hours, listening to the ramblings of someone that is neither fully in the present nor in the past, I became troubled that our physical bodies break down in such heart-breaking fashion.

As I spoke to her and with her yesterday, it was very evident that the synapses in her brain were misfiring, though trying so hard to make sense of things. I heard about a lady named Venita, and an unnamed girl that was "so cute" but was "mad as all get-out at me and pulled my hair." I heard her tell the story of her seeing a man walk down a road and deciding to flirt with him, and about how her husband Clarence and son David were probably "off getting into trouble somewhere" because she hadn't seen them in a while. "Does anyone have a piece of chocolate candy?"

A mere 21 days earlier, she probably feared ending up in the situation that she is in now, I thought as I laid in bed last night. I now here she is, seemingly a prison to the combination of time, age and what is probably the "miracle" of modern medicine prolonging a life that is past due. She remains my paternal grandmother but yet is bereft of the pride she carried about for 85 years. Flashes of that soft-spoken pride flashed occasionally yesterday afternoon, but most of what I saw was a person returning to the state in which she entered the world and human life breaking down to make way for the life eternal to truly take hold.

What is most troublesome in watching this take place is new-found understanding and old ignorance. I now understand what it means to truly want God to bring someone Home. In this world of temptations and sin and ill-placed desires, it's so difficult to see that it is far better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. But I've never seen this contrast so clearly as I did yesterday. And I feel bad for saying that somehow..."are you really praying for someone to die?"

And then there's just my own ignorance. How does God receive glory from this, a person losing herself in the clutches of age, having to be cared for completely by both family and strangers? Is there dignity in dying this way? Why the pain? How does the duration of time please God? As David cried out, "How long, O Lord?"

And in the midst of two hours yesterday, I sensed a quiet fierceness and strength resonating within her that I can only guess is the true person, the soul just bursting at the seams, waiting to break forth into eternal glory from the broken-down temporal shell that is holding her captive.

"I'm so tired of this...I'm just waiting for a miracle," she said to me, gripping my hand. "I just want a miracle so I can feel normal..."

"Your miracle will come soon, Granny Lou. It will come soon," I answered.