Memories from Earth: First Experience with Death

This memory again comes from this lifetime. I promise it's not actually as heavy as it sounds. This is the first time in this lifetime I encountered the death of a family member.

This happened in late 1997, just around Christmas time. Just after Christmas. First, let me wind time backwards a little bit.

We called my great-grandmother "Mama", because everyone called her Mama. (And to do the pronunciation justice, I will include how it sounds when you say it like you're from the southeastern United States: maw-mah.) From the time that my brother and I first started going over to grandma's house, Mama was like grandma to everyone. She was already in her 80's, and spent much of her time in the bedroom on the second floor of grandma's house.

My brother and I would go up to her room, and she would tell us stories about growing up on a farm. She was born in 1906, and to us that meant she had knowledge of a century and a time that was forever beyond us. She was like an ancestor incarnate, and we often treated her that way without meaning to. For she came from a time before electricity reached the southeast. Before refrigerators. Before radios. Before any of that. And so we found her fascinating.

I remember she had sugar-free candies and butter mints. We'd sit at a little side table next to her blue recliner, which was squashed into a corner next to her bed. Sometimes, we'd have to scoot the table and little chair in front of the door to the bathroom, blocking it off. It was a small room. On the other side of the bed was an armoire with a three-paneled mirror. In the opposite corner from the recliner was a TV, but I don't really remember that being on very much. And then there were bifold doors for the closet, and the door to the room. The floor was an old carpet.

I really don't remember what the bathroom looked like, because I didn't spend much time in there. I do remember off that bathroom was another spare room. This room was like a time capsule, my goodness. Grandma still had her old rotary phone, that for a long time would actually work. My brother and I were fascinated by this. The bed in that room had shiny brass posts from the 50s. And the bedside table had a lace doily on it such as you don't see anymore. In the closet, grandma had her old little antenna TV set that only showed black and white and had a dial. My brother and I, again, were fascinated by this.

Grandma didn't like us going into that spare room. I don't know why, but that didn't stop us from sneaking up there and playing with the things inside. It felt like we were in some kind of archaeological dig or we were time travelers going back in time and just being floored by a time we forgot existed. It felt simultaneously like looking back at old pictures from childhood and like we were explorers from a whole other world. Funny feelings you get when you're small.

Anyway, every other time we were at grandma's house, part of our day would involve sitting with Mama and listening to stories. It didn't matter if we'd already heard the story. We'd listen anyway.

Around the years when I turned 9 and 10, Mama had started to go down hill. Grandma would get mad at her for not eating. She was bruising easily, and her skin had become like rice paper. Mama was also forgetting who people were. First she forgot who grandma was. Then she'd forget who my dad was. But somehow, she didn't forget my brother and I, and I think that's because her memory was dissolving backwards through her life. The time period she was only able to access was when she was around 12 years old. So, she'd remember the children, because she was a child. I know it hurt grandma to be forgotten, and sometimes it'd exasperate my dad. There were arguments that would happen about this between them.

One day, Mama fell in her bathroom and had to go to the hospital. She broke her hip, which is a fairly common occurrence for elderly women when they fall. She never came out of the hospital. We'd visit her, and most of the time she was asleep, her hair had thinned to a faint little wisp of cotton on her head. They moved her to hospice in October of 1997, and a few days after Christmas that year, she died.

I wasn't there when it happened, but my dad was. He said she saw her husband and Jesus right before she died, and she had the most peaceful smile on her face. So her passing was gentle, and she was filled with joy at the thought of moving on.

Such was my first experience with death.

When I went to the funeral, everyone was sad, and I felt a little out of place because I wasn't very sad. Mama was sick before she died, and now she wasn't sick anymore. She had been happy when she died, and she was old. So, what was there to be sad and cry about? I did miss her, though.

For a few weeks after that, I had dreams about her, but the dreams were confused and nonsensical. Until one night, I finally had a clear dream. I was in her room again, only it was empty and no one was there. I sat down on the end of her bed, which was covered in the same white, crocheted blanket that had been there before. Suddenly, I felt someone sit down next to me, and I knew it was Mama. I couldn't see her, but I felt her there. We talked for a while, maybe about an hour. Then she said, "I have to go now, and I can't come back anymore." We hugged, and I said, "Okay, Mama. Goodbye." Then she floated away into the ceiling, which had turned into a plane of light.

I didn't expect I'd cry as I wrote that last part, but I am. I'm not sad, just emotional.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. I enjoyed revisiting that memory.

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

​--Kyriel