Mari Nakamitsu
27 January 2011
Creative Nonfiction
J. Shimabukuro
The Last Hour
The room still had the early morning feel. It usually felt cold and uninviting, but this time it was different. The machines that usually endlessly chimed in metronome indicating heartbeat and signs of life were now vacant and silent. Tile floors stood clean and reflected the dim light shining above the hulking bed. Time stood still and I was numb to the cold seeping in through the air vents. (This was the hour I realized that I was not weak, this was the day I realized how life slips through your grasp). From seven stories up the sun began to rise, the sun letting out pink streaks through the cloud, I had forgotten I had been there before sunrise, though I had not been there very long.
My grandmother looked vacant, yet undisturbed as she lay, still bundled up in covers, on the unfamiliar bed. This was not the bed we spoke for hours on, laughing and talking as she took drags off of her “Kool” light brand cigarettes. This was not the bed that I saw her in as I left her room telling her goodnight and that I would see her in the morning. This was not the bed that I had seen her in every night for the last (then) 16 years of my life. The woman whom I loved the most and could tell anything to since I was a baby was no longer there. Although she had not been this way for very long either, the life was drained from her body as she was colored various shades of white and gray rather than her usual yellowish-peach tinge. As I looked on, I was not shocked or surprised. I knew that this day was coming since I could remember. She was always a sickly woman, type I Diabetes, arthritis, and more recently (that did her in) lung cancer from her chronic smoking. But though she had always beaten the odds when it came to her illnesses, I always felt from somewhere deep inside that I had limited time. I learned to take her blood and inject insulin from an early age. I always knew I had to take care of her and I enjoyed it.
Everything I had remembered about her changed in those few hours. I didn’t feel as if I was in shock or a deep sadness. I just looked at her, she was motionless and looked as if she were a still life painting. I felt sad, however it was a different kind of sadness than I had ever felt before. I was not aware of the sadness I was feeling, tears simply began flowing down my cheeks without any kind of emotion at all. Usually when one feels sad, it begins small like a tiny flame growing within them and gradually getting larger until he bursts into tears. I felt an uneasy calmness, like I shouldn’t be feeling this way. After all I did not think I would react this way even though I had been preparing for it my whole life. I remembered that I had just gone to visit the night before, no one talked much because she was tired. She wasn’t in pain that night though. She had not been there fore very long. Just a week ago she was back in her room at home. It was only when the cancer began to eat away more painfully did she have to leave. They put her on a morphine drip to alleviate the pain whenever she wanted, or at least in 3 minute intervals. That’s what they give to people that are about to die anyway. I appreciated that. When you are at the end of your life you should not be in pain. Addiction doesn’t matter, being comfortable does. I sat in one of the chairs next to her bed, tears still coming down from an unknown source.
Though my mind could barely think, I knew I still had a job to do. It was Thursday, opening night of my theatre performance. We didn’t have understudies and it involved a heavy amount of stylization and martial arts. It states in the School of the Arts handbook that when someone misses school, they cannot perform or go to any kind of rehearsals. I could not miss this show. People were counting on me. Mourning wasn’t going to bring my grandmother back, I knew that. I had to push those feelings of loss behind me and make sure that even though I could not be at school, that I could still perform.
I realized a lot about myself in those hours. My grandmother was alive just a few hours ago, she was alive now nearly 4 years ago. It still seems like yesterday we were talking. I matured then. I realized then how precious life was and how it so easily slips away and disappears. I used to think that I was so weak, that I could not handle anything, especially loss. However, in those few hours I realized that even though I would be sad and missing her for a long time, even forever, that I would never let this destroy me. This was the worst loss that had ever and will ever happen in my life, and I could move through it. I never looked at myself as a weak person again. Afterward, loss seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life and I handle it better than I would have ever given myself credit for.
