Always Surreal

Zach's grandpa died on Monday. It was quite sudden, though he has been frail for quite some time, only leaving his house, as my mother-in-law often loudly pointed out, for his daily cup of coffee. We went to the hospital separately after the doctors told Zach's grandma, about an hour too late, that she better start calling people. He'd been in the hospital for pneumonia, but planning to transfer to a rehab center for recovery when he died. Zach got there at 5:30, but he'd already been dead a half hour. Zach couldn't get a hold of me, of course, because my cell phone was out of batteries, so I came even later. I'm always worried I'll say something inappropriate at these things because I (well my entire family, really) has a bad case of gallows humor. What can I say, tragedy brings out my inner Chandler Bing.

Zach's grandma encouraged us to go look at the body, which was gruesome to be quite honest. I will never take morticians for granted again. She came with us to see the body and proceeded to talk to us for several minutes next to it. After a half hour or so camping out in the hospital situation room (mercifully down the hall from the body rather than the same room), the family decided to head to Zach's grandma's house. Zach and I stopped with his brothers at Maui Taco (not good) and none of us said anything about the death, just some about likely funeral dates since Zach needed to go to Cali.

Only Zach, his brothers, and his great aunt Bernice came to the house. His parents and sister were on vacation in Montana. His brothers came straight from work and by the time they got to the hospital it was too late for their wives to have a reason to join them. His aunt and uncle stopped for a dinner somewhere better than Maui Taco and didn't get there for quite some time. At first it was silent. Zach's grandma offered to get us drinks from the fridge, but we declined. Then Zach's brothers started talking about work and Zach tried to bring up his new infatuation with his road bike.

Finally I asked his grandma how she met his grandpa, what they did for fun, where they lived. They met when a man named Mr. Schwartz, who sometimes dated Zach's great-grandmother, gave his grandmother a free ticket to a show in Salt Lake. Zach's grandpa was in the service and he and his friends flirted with her friends. His grandma even remembered which of her friends were with her at the show. They wrote to each other through the war, met up again, and were married a week after he came back. Their first child, Zach's uncle, was born nine months and two weeks later. She talked about Zach's grandpa worked two jobs and went to school at the same time, how they had an ice box in their first apartment (Great Aunt Bernice could not believe that Zach and I had never seen one), and about camping at Fish Lake while she was 7 months pregnant with Zach's dad. Zach's brothers sat off to the side and talked about the Georgia-Russia conflict and the conquistadors--at least that was what I could make of the conversation from the words that drifted our direction.

Once the phone rang and Zach's grandma answered in the other room and told another person that her husband had died. She kept it short, and when she was done, instead of coming back she called someone else to share the news. I had a sense that she wasn't the one that should have to make those calls. "Hello . . . Not so good, J___ passed away this afternoon . . . . Yes, it's hard . . . No, I don't know when the funeral will be . . . I'll let you know." It felt like she made the call to help absorb what had happened, to reinforce what was real by saying it again out loud. The night before she had been trying to find his shoes so he could make a smooth transition to the rehab center. They had been married for 63 years.

"I told him I wanted to go first," she said to Zach's aunt when he got there. "I can't believe he didn't listen," I joked (gallows humor, it is hard to suppress). She was taken aback, but she laughed. "I know, how could he? I told him I wanted to go first."