Circle of life

It's been quite a while since I've posted... October and November have been interesting months.

Interesting. A word I use a lot. And one that doesn't reveal much.

I went to Los Angeles with Anthony the last weekend of September. And that weekend my grandmother broke her shoulder and was taken to the hospital. While there she broke her hip, and very quickly her prognosis worsened. My dad and his siblings made the difficult decision to move her to a hospice.

I flew home that week and spent several days with her. Based on my conversations with my parents, I wasn't sure if Granny Jean would recognize me, but as soon as I walked through the door her eyes lit up, and I was so happy that I had made the trip back to Kansas. She said very little in the four days I was there, but I know that she knew she was surrounded by people who loved her. My Aunt LuJean and I spent one night together in Granny's room, and I woke several times and found myself listening closely, relaxing only when I was sure I heard two different people breathing in their sleep. And while Granny ate little, I had the opportunity to feed her and give her water to drink: just a spoon tip full of ice cream or a straw full of water. I found myself feeling terribly protective of her. The cheap tissues in the room weren't good enough; I had to buy lotion-enriched Kleenex for her. Tap water wouldn't do; she needed Vitamin Water. And the room was too quiet, so I bought a CD player and CDs so that she could hear the music that she loved.

At the end of the week I had a difficult decision to make: to stay in Kansas or return to California for my fourth life coaching class. I checked the schedule of upcoming classes, hoping I could reschedule, but the earliest I could get into the fourth and fifth classes, if I didn't stay in the classes I was registered in, was January and April, delaying the completion of my training by five months. And so I returned home.

The following Monday, October 9, I saw a movie with Anthony, and when we left the theater there was a voicemail waiting for me. It was my father, and I think it was the first time I had ever heard him crying. By the time I called back Granny had died.



RACHEL JEAN GIGGY WAS BORN March 4, 1915, in Burrton, Kansas. She married my grandfather Lewis Short in 1936; they had five children. When my father was still a child the family lived in a box car. Years later Lewis would be the mayor of Burrton; he died in 1973.

Six years later Granny married Chick Shaft, and they enjoyed four wonderful years together before he died in 1983. Until her death Granny continued to live in the house she had shared with Chick. We still refer to the house she lived in with Grandpa Lewis as "the blue house" despite the fact that it was white when they lived there.

Wherever Granny lived, her house was known as a place where everyone was welcome. Family and friends came and went, sat where they wanted, and joined the conversation or remained silent as they chose. When my cousins and I were young, we explored the house: we had certain bedrooms that were ours to play in, along with the a large enclosed porch and the basement. And the house was situated on a huge lot with a garage and a barn, not to mention a collection of farm equipment in various states of disrepair.

Until I was six I lived in a mobile home in Granny's yard. My Dad later built a house for us across town, but I always felt incredibly lucky to have gotten to live right next to Granny, free to visit whenever I wanted. The year my mother finished high school, Granny watched me each day. This was something I hadn't ever really known; learning about it made getting to take care of Granny at the hospice all the more special to me.

When I was older and my parents had become hippies, their friends were just as welcome in Granny's home. You were as likely to find long-haired men in jeans as white-haired old ladies in polyester around Granny's table.

As my cousins and I grew up, we began to call ourselves "Jean's Kids," and we sang the name to the tune of the Batman theme song.

I RETURNED TO KANSAS for the second time in a week for the funeral. The night before the funeral, we gathered at the funeral home for a viewing. I began to get a sense of who my family was; in a way, I had never really paid attention before. They had always just been my family, and like the water I swam in, invisible.

I noticed how we remained upbeat and boisterous while friends came to pay their last respects. But when the parlor cleared and only family was left, we began to break down and cry. We can be stoic, even hard, people.

We are also rambunctious, and it occurred to me that I didn't know of another family like us. When we gather back in Burron, a small town of 800, we take over the local American Legion which serves as the town's only bar. Sometimes they open just for us. We've always been ones to play hard.

That night, my parents, Aunt LuJean, and cousins Joey and Kim returned to Granny's house where we sat around her kitchen table and shared stories of Granny and growing up with her. I sketched the floor plan of the blue house; we used it as a visual aid for our stories. And in the process we downed a bottle of whisky, one shot at a time. (I'll leave out the wine and the beer, not to mention the resulting hangovers.)

I was a casket bearer for the first time. I was quiet during the service; getting up to speak would have been far too difficult. I cried when my Uncle Jerry and LuJean shared remembrances of Granny. LuJean read the lyrics to an old bluegrass song that Granny liked to recite.

The rest of the weekend was good for the family. The 2004 election had resulted in a lot of intrafamily tension; there were occasionally some heated exchanges between the Reds and the Blues. I knew that this time together would be a healing experience for us. And it was also a milestone, a reminder that the default reason for getting together--and the default place for gathering--was gone. Granny had always been our center, assuming the role of the matriarch in a quiet, unassuming way. If there was anything that we all agreed upon, it was that we simply adored her.

BACK IN SAN FRANCISCO I found myself taking stock of my life. I looked back over the past few years and questioned some of the choices I had made. I looked ahead and felt some fear about the new career I'm creating for myself. I felt mired in the uncertainty of where I would live. I had moved into a friend's in-law unit on what I thought was a temporary basis; eight months later, I'm still there, and almost everything I own is in storage in Portland.

And I'm in love, facing the fact that Anthony is moving up to Sacramento for six to seven months, and then likely south down to Los Angeles. What will I do? How to not live the next half year of my life in a state of limbo?

In early November, I went to my final life coaching course. I found myself sitting there thinking about how absolutely mysterious life is. What a thing it is to be conscious... to be a conscious being living inside of what is essentially an animal. I thought that my whole life could simply be an inquiry into the question, what does it mean to be me? What does it mean to be human? What is it like in your world? Why am I here? What place do I want to make in my life for a partner? What am I going to do with my life?

There are no answers. This is simply what it is to be a person. These are the things we do. Fall in love. Question it. Feel pain. And joy. Make choices. Second guess them. Move on.

And ultimately, for most of us, we leave the world as we entered it: helpless. Unable to control our bowels. Unable to feed ourselves. Life moves in a circle, perfect in its way. We feel no sadness for the baby that needs our care, perhaps there is no reason to feel it for the elderly. It seems unfair, somehow, that youth and strength should give way to old age.

But that's what happens. Maybe that's a small price to pay for all the glorious living that can happen along the way.

Or maybe that's just the way it is.

(Tags: Rachel Giggy, Jean Giggy, Jean Short, Jean Shaft)