Gloria's death was not my first grief rodeo. I lost my favorite cousin when I was seven. This may be unfair to my other cousins, but she was eight, and therefore close in age, and we saw them quite regularly: possibly as early as every couple of weeks. I can remember the drive to see them. In my memory, it is a long dark mysterious route. Looking back on it, it was only about a little over half a mile into deepest darkest South Burnaby, from our home in Southlands, traveling along Marine Drive, which probably now has even less traffic than it did then, since most of the traffic has been removed to the new Marine Way.
I lost my favorite sister when I was fifteen. That is definitely unfair to my other sisters, since, until shortly before she died, at the age of twelve, she was my only sister. She had been sick with various ailments since she was a baby, and had been in and out of hospital. So, when she went into hospital this time, I didn't think it was any big deal. Even though she had had cancer previously. She had had liver cancer, and they had removed two thirds of her liver. One would have thought that that would have fixed it. But two years later it came back and it fixed her.
I do, very vividly, recall my grief at that time. It was of course, strange, and I didn't feel what I thought I was supposed to feel. But what I do recall is that absolutely nobody, but nobody, was willing to talk to me about Fiona. And I was desperate to talk about her.
So, when my favorite grandmother died, about three years later, I was a bit more prepared. I knew that nobody would talk about it. My grandmother died while I was at the Older Boys Parliament of BC. I was not told, and did not know of her initial stroke, nor of her few days in hospital. I was only informed, and a family friend sent to fetch me and put me on the ferry, when my grandmother had actually died.
By the time my paternal grandfather, and then paternal grandmother, died, I was getting used to this. Not only the fact that no one would speak of it, beyond the hushed "My condolences," which I would later learn to translate as "I don't want to talk about it!" but also the fact that my parents were the only ones who are allowed to be in attendance at a death. My parents would then fill us in on the story of that particular death. A story, which we were later to learn, was largely fictitious.
When my father died, my mother was, briefly, away from the hospital. My little brother and I were, therefore, allowed to be with my father when he died. I was actually able to see my father in the moment of his death. That was a grace that is hard to explain, but, after all of the fictional stories that we have been told about the other deaths, it was a blessing. (Of course, my mother never forgave me for the fact that I was there, and she wasn't.)
My father's death was not a big surprise. He had had failed brain surgery, ironically to prevent the occurrence of a major stroke, which left him with effects very similar to an absolutely massive stroke. He had major problems with communication, and, as far as we could tell, with cognition as well. With the impairments in communication, it was difficult to assess his level of cognitive skill. Essentially he was lost to us after the surgery. When he finally stopped breathing, almost exactly seven years later, it was only closure on an already existing fact. I had, in fact (and I mean this quite literally), written his eulogy seven years earlier after the surgery.
And, I should mention, that a few months before Gloria died, my mother died as well. She had had a stroke shortly before the CoVID pandemic hit. It was rather ironic: some months previously mother had had a fall and, because of poor hygiene with an eye procedure, which resulted in the loss of most vision in that eye, mother squinted that eye, rather like a pirate. Therefore, when she had a fall, the staff at her residence, and at the hospital, assumed that she had had a stroke, and that the facial contortion was due to the stroke, rather than her screwing up her eye. When she *did* have a major stroke, just before the pandemic hit, it affected the side of her face with the problematic eye. Therefore, mother no longer had the muscular control to screw that eye shut. Therefore, the hospital staff didn't actually think that she had had a stroke, because she didn't look like she had had a stroke: she looked normal.
She had had a stroke of course. And she went pretty steadily downhill over the course of the pandemic.
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