I was on my way back home from visiting Bob and Linda when I got Paul’s call informing me that Steve had died. Steve is the father of Paul’s daughter-in-law, Katie. Paul reported that Steve had died just three weeks after complaining of stomach pain and getting a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
I did not know Steve very well, nor, for that matter, his wife, Marsha. I briefly saw them this past August at Deer Tick Manor for our celebration of Lee’s life. Before that occasion, I think the last time I saw them might have been at one of Joe’s show concerts while Lee was still alive.
I stay in regular, if infrequent, touch with Katie and Joe, and with their kids, Allie, and Dean. Lee would never admit it, but it was easy to see that Joe was her favorite nephew, and Allie, their 10-year-ol daughter, her favorite great-niece. Each October, Lee traveled to visit them in Michigan to celebrate Halloween and to trick-and-treat with Allie. Unfortunately, Lee did not have sufficient time left to get to know Dean well. He was only three or four years’ old at the time she passed.
As for Steve and Marsha, the fact is they were no more than peripheral players in my own little drama. And they would say the same about me. I am certain that Paul understood these relationships when he called me with the news of Steve’s death.
Consequently, I suspect Paul may have been reaching out to me because he had been thinking about his own sister, my Lee, who died at the hands of this same relentless killer which dispatched Steve so quickly. Maybe he thought, because I have gone through it myself, I have special insights to pass along to Steve’s widow and his surviving adult daughter. If so, he would be wrong. I have nothing insightful to share with them but did not say this to Paul.
I have been thinking of Allie, however, because I am sure this sweet and sensitive child will be deeply affected by the death of her “Bumpy.” At the time of Steve’s death, Joe, Katie and their two kids shared a large house with him and Marsha. Steve therefore would be someone with whom Allie had interacted every day of her young life. He would be a central figure to her reckoning.
***
I had a similar relationship with my Grandma Kate. She was my mother’s mother, who, as far back as I can remember, lived in the same red brick, multi-unit, courtyard apartment building as my folks, sister, and me.
I recall that Grandma Kate, who lived alone, was located on the first floor. Her husband, my grandfather, died after I was born, but before I had any conscious memory of him. I only have his photograph to remember how he appeared.
Today, even my own recollections of Grandma Kate are mostly sense impressions. After school visits. Running up carpeted stairs. The feel of a wooden banister while peering up to the second and third floor landings. The smell of cooking wafting from various apartments through a hallway leading to her front door. Inside, she might make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or produce a brightly colored porcelain bowl from her refrigerator with some green grapes or offer me and a buddy a homemade chocolate chip cookie, or two. I remember that my grandmother would sometimes gently rub my back, and even now a soothing back rub acts on me like a mild tranquilizer.
I remember that every year Grandma Kate would go to a mysterious place my mom called Hot Springs, Arkansas, and would bring me a bronze animal sculpture when she returned home. I have no idea whatever became of such sculptures, but I am told some of these pieces were collectible and are now worth quite a lot of money.
***
Grandma Kate died young from breast cancer; I think. I have the vaguest memory of going to see her at a long-defunct hospital. At the time I did not know that she was dying in the hospital.
I also don’t recall much about the day she died, except that at some point in the day I climbed back into the car with my sister and parents and returned home. Later, in the evening, I would hear the doorbell ring and the sounds of other adult voices filling our apartment. It was only then that my father told me Grandma Kate was gone. I recall acting like I was unfazed by this news. However, that night, I lay in my bed unable to sleep, so I cried, sobbed, heaved, and moaned. Lying in my kid’s bed I remember suddenly feeling the enormous weight of her loss. I could not have put a finger on it at the time, but this was my first encounter with real and profound grief.
Many years have passed. My mom and dad are both gone. So too, all my favorite aunts and uncles. Even some dear friends have departed. Yet, other than Lee’s passing, I never experienced the overwhelming power of raw grief I experienced the night that Grandma Kate died. I was eight years old. The year was 1960. Yet, whenever these memories rush back, the images and feelings I experienced that night feel fresh once again.
***
In the days ahead, I expect that Allie will experience personal grief for the first time in her young life. Like me, she will come away with memories of her experience that she will be revisiting at various junctures throughout her life. There are bound to be other, possibly even deeper, losses in store for Allie in the years ahead. Like everyone who has ever gone before her, Allie must learn the hard lesson that we are mere finite creatures for whom grief inevitably awaits, one unavoidable consequence of our humanity.
