Grandma’s death (and life!) taught me so much . . . about the art of living and dying. It’s been 12 years ago this month, but I still have every moment etched on my mind as if it happened last week. The smells, the colors, the feelings, the food, the family, tears, and music . . . all of this remains fresh.
She died at home in her own bedroom surrounded by her family. Family had come from New York, Michigan, California, Baltimore and Mississippi to Kentucky to visit with her during her final days, it was natural for so many to be there with her as she was the center of our family wheel and had held us together for many years.
Her knees were new because the summer before she’d had them replaced in order to travel to Africa with Grandpa, it was a trip of a life time and she wouldn’t have missed it. Her painful knee arthritis was gone and she felt great, though after the long plane trip back home her feet and legs became noticeably swollen and they stubbornly wouldn’t go down to normal again. Her old breast cancer had returned after more than five years, this time had spread through other parts of her body, and she progressively began to suffer when she tried to breath. By Thanksgiving she was on oxygen and beginning chemotherapy and radiation treatments which further zapped her energy.
I began to be in charge of cooking Sunday dinners and bringing large amounts of food to the house for all our family to eat. We’d fill her home with love and music, food and laughter . . . taking turns with visiting her, serving her food and keeping her company- and my aunt, her daughter, took on the bulk of personal care for her.
Grandpa was very serious about creating the perfect environment for her death experience. He had studied up on spiritual crossing over and wanted us to cooperate with him on his plan to have it go as smooth as possible. He’d designed a unique goal that we all were aware of, with the help of hospice, to assist her peaceful entrance into the spirit world.
Many of my family are skeptical and non religious and even non spiritual, but everyone respected and understood Grandpa’s wishes for her end of life. Of course Grandma was in the loop and had agreed to his plan, too.
Our minister came by and sang her songs and read to her from inspirational books and our family proceeded to gather all sorts of special items, such as photographs, sentimental trinkets, homemade carvings, gifts from friends, memorabilia and more to place on a alter in her living room which was actually a large old antique organ with many memories attached of Grandpa playing during special occasions on that instrument from upstate NY to down south Kentucky.
As Grandma became more ill, we boiled cinnamon on the stove in order to cover up the odor of taking care of a person who is dying. She began to speak to us less and less, but she was still very alert, lucid and responsive all the way to the day before she died. As that day grew near, she began to tell those around her what she needed to in order to say good bye. People in her life showed up for last conversations and left feeling that closure had occurred.
Our last conversation was about 1976 the year I was ten years old and she took me an Arts Fair in NY and I got lost. She laughed about my reporting a ‘missing grandmother’ to the workers there. In that year she’d moved from NY to KY and I had moved from MI to KY to live with her. We arrived at her new home before Grandpa had arrived, and when we entered it there was a shag yellow carpet swarming with fleas. I remember that she wore an all white pant suit and within a minute she was covered with black fleas from her toes to her shoulders. The grass was taller than I was . . . we ran back out to her car and went to find a motel room.
That year our phone number ended in the numbers ‘76’ and I thought that was cool because it was 1976, and Grandma had a ‘thing’ about it being the bicentennial and she collected the special bicentennial quarters and silver dollars that were made that year in a white canister with a press down flat lid. I would bring her one of those quarters if I found one and she would trade me a regular quarter for a bicentennial one.
So our last conversation at her death bed had to do with our memories of that year. It was one where we laughed and also felt close and remembered bonding as granddaughter and grandmother. It was the year she taught me to sing harmony with her to an old fashioned song that went like this: “Tell me why the stars do shine, tell me why the ivy twine, tell me why the ocean blue, and I will tell you . . . just why I love you. Because God made the stars to shine, because God made the ivy twine, because God made the ocean blue, because God made you, that’s why I love you.”
Our family always sang together on road trips, in great big bursts of beautiful harmony for miles and miles. We knew multitudes of rounds and harmonies, as Grandpa was a music professor, in fact a pretty well known jazz professor, so music was a part of our every day life. Grandma taught me that song on a long road trip to KY that year and it sounded really nice with my singing the low part and her singing the high part.
She was like my mother and I her youngest daughter, we were very close; so our death bed goodbye was especially poignant. There are still some things I’m only just allowing my memory to embrace due to the intensity of feelings involved. Her influence on my life is immense and endless, there’s no comparison to anyone else in my family who I’ve ever been close to.
She kept saying to us, “I’m so very lucky! There are people who die alone in hospitals and in nursing homes and yet here I am surrounded by all of you, so much love and care!”
It was true; many had taken entire vacation weeks off just to be in her home as she lay dying. Our family knew the true meaning of love and bonded care for each other, our holidays and events were filled with love even if eccentric and weird, uncomfortable at times due to the variety of personalities, we learned through grandma how to embrace and accept everyone for the individual they were . . . we learned tolerance and love of each other through her unique ability to like most everyone. All my friends called her Grandma, too, and they loved coming to our home because the atmosphere was comfortable and welcome.
On the night before her death I had just come home to bed, my pajamas were on and I lay reading a book to fall asleep. Suddenly I felt the air in my room change and I knew that I wasn’t alone, there were spirits who had entered and were there with me, though I couldn’t see them. I sensed my uncle who had passed and who I felt was a great grandmother, maybe grandma’s mother, as well as a few others who I didn’t know on earth but who I recognized in spirit.
I was told to go to grandma’s house- that it was ‘time’. This was more of a feeling of urgency than actual words, but I got the message strong and clear. Without hesitancy I trusted the communication and immediately got up to get dressed. I explained to my family that even though I’d just returned an hour earlier, I needed to go back to grandma’s house because I was being ‘called’ there. Because I’m just ‘odd’ this way, my reasoning was accepted without question.
When I arrived at her house several family members were awake and sitting in her living room. They looked at me in surprise because it was unusual for me to return so late at night and so soon after I’d left for the day- I could only explain that I felt I needed to go to grandma right away and let them sort the situation out as I rushed down the hallway to her bedroom.
She lay there in bed, in her final death coma . . . the one she’d entered earlier that day and it appeared to be a deep sleep. I took her hand and could feel her squeeze mine back. I announced my presence and I know she knew I was there. She didn’t like the pain I could tell. I told her goodbye and that I’d one day see her on the other side and that I loved her and she squeezed my hand a little bit more in response so I’d know she could hear me. I saw other family members peeking around the doorway and when I finally stepped out another person took my place and for a while it was like that, one person coming to say farewell after another.
The night before she went in to her coma she’d asked one of us if the sky was going to be clear, she wanted to have lots of stars out she’d said. She’d announced that morning when breakfast was brought to her that she was no longer going to eat, that this would be her last meal and thanked everyone for being so good to her. Later that day she’d slipped into her deep sleep state as she had warned us that she was going to do.
I went straight home and the phone rang at about 4 am, I knew what that call was about and I lay there resisting the necessity to get up and go to her house, delaying the inevitable of accepting her death state. I finally got up one last time, got dressed and went to her.
Two of her daughters were cleaning her up, she lay there with eyes closed in her Africa t-shirt with a knitted blanket she’d made covering her lower body. Her sister had been the last one to see her alive, she’d come in after grandpa had come to visit with her, and I heard that when grandpa left the room grandma had cried a little bit and then her sister came in and then when she left for a minute grandma had chosen that moment to die.
I crumbled inside when I saw her lying there, it was very sad to see the reality of her body and know she was really gone. Grandpa had planned for us to have an all night vigil with two to three family members taking two hour segments of the night with her until hospice came to get her later that day. I, my cousin and uncle took the first shift together, and sat at the end of her bed together in our last goodbye.
The morning sun turned to early afternoon I avoided her room for a while but soon entered again with my camera. I noticed a significant difference when I entered her room, almost like I was walking through a piece of soft pink silk, and even when I closed my eyes I could tell exactly when my body entered her room as my heart sped up my head felt sort of dizzy but nice. I lined up a photograph of her through the mirror on her dresser because she looked peaceful lying in profile there on the bed, more like she was asleep. The picture that developed later was of a pink vortex slipping into a dream catcher and her body was completely occluded by the winding ripples of the mist. It’s a great shot of a vortex!
When I left her home the hearse hadn’t yet arrived and I couldn’t bear to see this occur. I’d grown up in that small KY home with my grandparents and the thought of seeing a hearse come down my childhood road and take her away was like a worst nightmare scenario of mine, so instead at this time I took off to Lexington, 36 miles away, where I visited a psychic fair with some friends.
I entered the large room and began to look around at all the tables with jewelry and offerings for sale. I saw that there were several psychics doing readings, a couple of them were mediums and I needed a medium at that moment. After a few moments of circling the room I settled on a chair in front of a man who went by Orion with some penetrating blue eyes and Irish voice. He started his tape recorder and began his reading with me:
“I’m picking up an older woman who announces herself as ‘Talia’, she’s recently deceased, no more than five foot two, blue eyes, why she’s your grandmother!!” He practically yelled this at me.
I confirmed it all, that she died just the night before, and that Talia was a short way of picking up that my grandmother’s married name was actually Tallmadge- and she was five foot two with blue eyes, a scotch Irish woman. He’d nailed it all in the first few sentences and I was captivated.
“She had all her ducks in a row before she died” He told me, “She was met by an uncle on her level with a red nose and an old rugged pick up truck that has wooden black beams fitted along the back end in a unique and homemade sort of way. He took her in his truck up to his farm. Your family has a photograph of this truck in a book”
I didn’t know this and couldn’t confirm it, but was grateful he was recording it all.
“She is holding a large bowl and throwing flour out of it, just tossing it”
I saw this as her way of reminding me that she wanted her ashes scattered at the wild flower falls walk she’d requested before death.
“I smell cinnamon!” He exclaimed.
We had kept cinnamon burning on the stove her last week.
“She has a white canister which is full of coins and she’s shaking it, this means something to you”
Yes, it was full of bicentennial quarters.
“Her last words to you are INDIAN DRUM”
I work as a shamanic practitioner and this is a significant spiritual tool for me.
I rushed home with my tape, could hardly wait to have family hear this. They’d stayed home and watched the process of her leaving the house, an event I couldn’t bear to watch, I think I would have fallen apart. Grandpa had played on the piano their lifetime ‘song’ of ‘Five Foot Two, Eyes are Blue” as they’d rolled her out, a song she had once sang as he played for her many times over the years. A love exchange I’d witnessed, it was as deep in me- fixed in my heart- as deep as any memory could be.
The recorder came on and they began to listen to Orion; my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my grandma’s sister and a couple friends. My uncle remembered how her last conversation with him was to say “I have all my ducks in a row!” so this part was meaningful to him.
My cousins and great aunt rushed to the old photo albums and found a large picture in black and white, of the truck just as Orion had described. It was owned by my grandma’s uncle Roger who owned a farm in New Hampshire when grandma was a child and had helped raise her. His truck had a name and everyone called it Thundering Ann, there it was on the page of an old photo album, just as Orion said it would be.
Grandpa gave me the white canister of coins she shook in Orion's reading, feeling very convinced this is what the message was conveying. We all had a spring day a few months later (may) scattering her ashes on the beautiful flowered pathway.
Her funeral was as beautiful and as memorable as her death, with everyone receiving a piece of rosemary from her giant rosemary bush from the greenhouse, in remembrance of her life. Her friends gathered, they sang and they spoke of her -with much love and honor. She was indeed an amazing and wonderful person.
My grandpa passed away a few years later and we did the same for him, a few family and friends could swear they heard the sounds of celebration and laughter in his bedroom where the vigil was being held after he died. I choose to believe it was more of my lovely family coming to meet him on the other side as he crossed over.
Grandpa had lived a full and good life, he was a world champion race walker and accomplished pianist, author and professor. When he died I wondered who would play the piano for him at his funeral, as he was the one who played for everyone else’s funerals and significant occasions.
I soon found out that he’d had that problem covered- for at his funeral a recording sounded on the speakers throughout the grand old church- it was grandpa, playing the piano - a piece he'd chosen for himself.
I should have known!!
These people taught me so much about a good life and a good death. I’m forever grateful to them.
My father died 12 years ago on Feb 17th at the Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto California, just yesterday, so I want to mention him in this essay as well. As with my grandparents, my father also suffered from cancer and died from it.
I'm sure your coffee is either long sipped away or grown cold by now . . . thanks for stopping by to read my blog!
Luv,
Fawn
. . . I’ve learned to give in to this energy that consumes me each February -and acknowledge it through writing.