Champagne and Socks

This was a pretty highly emotional week. My grandmother has been ailing for some time now and her health had taken a rapid decline in the last 6 months or so. My family had to make some difficult decisions about her living situation and so on but then last week, she really took gravely ill. On Tuesday I headed up to visit and sit with her after work and she was very distressed. It was very upsetting to sit and the only thing you could do was hold her hand and whisper comforting things to her which you hoped she could hear or sense as she was pretty out of it by then. I didn’t head up Wednesday. Thursday I waited til I was in Bunbury and had sat at my desk for an hour before texting my mum for an update who told me to head up straight away. I did so and that was one really long 2.5hour drive. Thanks to The Writer and the Critic for keeping me company and something to focus on. After that, we sat with Nana pretty much that whole day, she was much more peaceful. As I left at about 8/8.15pm, I kissed her and told her I loved her and I knew that would be the last time I saw her. We got the phonecall at 4am (though actually 6am cause I’d put the damn thing on silent) and then I headed back up to be with my family.

I’ve posted before how much I appreciate the Jewish death rituals. They are so clear about what to do and how to comfort mourners and they offer mourners themselves a very direct course towards and through grief. We bury our dead as soon as possible. Since Shabbat (the Sabbath) is on Friday night, funerals need to happen before 3pm on Fridays. So my family were organising the funeral by the time I arrived at my Nana’s house where everyone was gathered. We sat and drank tea and talked about what the eulogy should say. And we just sort of existed in that limbo stage of shock where the reality hasn’t really set in. I’m amazed by how much of the rest of the mundane world just melts away when you’re so focused on intense emotions and moments in life. The complete loss of the sense of time.

I’d headed up to my sister’s to drop off food as she’d made her place the gathering for Shabbat dinner. And we had taken over some lunch for everyone. You can’t think about eating at all and then you eat something and realise how starving you were. After everything was organised,  I headed back to my sister’s to finish a grant application that was due Friday night and I’d intended to work on on Thursday night and Friday afternoon. That’s one interesting way to write a grant application – you couldn’t be more removed from the words emotionally even if you tried.

We headed to the funeral – it’s amazing how many people showed up without much warning. And that’s when the reality hit home – we were burying my Nana.

My uncle gave the eulogy and it was a very beautiful one. It’s so important to me that women have decent eulogies. So often, and especially with women my grandmother’s age, the eulogy consists of “she was born in blah blah, met her husband, got married, had x number of children and loved to cook and clean for them. It made her happy. And she will be missed”. And these give you no sense of the person she was or what life she lived outside of cleaner and housekeeper. It always makes me kinda mad.

But this wasn’t that kind of a eulogy. And I do think he gave a good sense of who Nana was and what was important to her – family, Jewish community, the wider community, philanthropy and so on. And that she was someone who gave good advice, never pulled punches but also was someone who thought it was better to not say anything at all, if it wasn’t nice. She lived to be 96 and as my uncle said, she had a long life, well lived. She travelled to far and exotic places. She saw the most amazing changes in her lifetime. She was someone who learned how to record her shows off the Foxtel – she wasn’t afraid to embrace new technology or new thoughts for new times. She never judged me for the choices I made in life or for who I was and she loved me unconditionally. I enjoyed hearing her stories and she had lots to tell. She showed me that nothing much had changed in 100 years – I wasn’t doing or thinking anything new at all

She will be greatly missed.

After the funeral, we headed back to my Nana’s where most of the family was milling about, drinking tea, eating eggs (I think it’s because it’s the symbol for life and rebirth) and talking. It’s very comforting to come from such a sad and confronting event to a house full of people. I think it eases you back into reality in a way that would be so much harder to do it you went home to an empty house. (At the funeral, it is considered a great deed (mitzvah) to help bury the person so every one lines up to shovel three shovels of sand in. It’s a very upsetting thing to do but it also forces you to accept what is happening and pushes you forward into grieving.) Now, you remember that you have life and family and that you will and can go on.

We sat with the mourners – my dad, uncle and aunt – for a bit before heading back to my sisters where I finally finished the grant and submitted it. Her sister in law and mother in law had kindly cooked most of dinner and were fussing around setting things up. My cousin’s fiance had flown over for the funeral and was napping. And there was this sense of family, love and comfort in the house. And then everyone (half of the family) came over for Shabbat dinner and the house was filled with people and we were just together as family. I find that very comforting. Though I was actually unwell and couldn’t eat.

After the day of the funeral, we hold evening prayers for the dead. And that is where we are at the moment in the phase of all this. Still very much in that post shock place and still very immersed in family.

Tomorrow, back to work and life goes on.

I’m going to disable comments to this post as whilst I appreciate words of condolence, I didn’t post this for those. Thank you for your thoughts at this time, I do appreciate them.

Photos taken by my cousin of photos in my Nana’s photo album.