Worst. Slumber Party. EVER.

On the morning of Saturday, April 21st, at approximately ten minutes to eight o’clock, my paternal grandmother passed away.

She was my last remaining grandparent, having already lost my paternal grandfather in September of 2012, my maternal grandmother in October of 2012, and my maternal grandfather in August of 2017. I don’t know how many people can stand up and say, “I had all of my grandparents until I was an adult,” so perhaps this isn’t as odd as it feels, but never mind.

She was ninety-three. She went reasonably peacefully, surrounded by family. She had been on hospice for about a month already, and while it wasn’t a surprise, it was still an event, and an upsetting one. It was that call you’re expecting, but until you get it you don’t know how you’re truly going to react.

On Friday night I got a text from an uncle letting me know that hospice had started my grandmother on morphine. She hadn’t really been ‘there’ for about a week already, and she hadn’t been in any pain, but in the final phase she became somewhat restless, and morphine is very often used to soothe and ease in the last stages before death — I knew this to be the case from my six months of work in an assisted living facility. I started calling around to get opinions as to whether I should pack a bag and go up for the night, or if she might make it until Saturday morning, which was when I was planning to visit anyway.

I packed a bag.

I arrived at my uncles’ (plural) house at about eight-thirty on Friday night. (I had just seen my parents, who were en route back home, having been to see my grandmother Friday afternoon and stopping to have dinner with me on their way south.) Present were my uncles whose house my grandmother had been living in since 2014, one uncle/aunt set, another uncle, and one of my grandmother’s two caregivers when I arrived. The caregiver said her goodbye and left shortly after I arrived, and we spent the next several hours sitting with my grandmother in turns — alone or in groups, until it was late enough to think about sleeping, at least for some of us. The aunt belonging to the uncle who had been there alone showed up and they were allocated the air mattress. I was on one arm of the L-bend sofa and my aunt on the other, her respective uncle leaving to go home because someone had to mind their dog for the night. My uncles whose house it was were obviously in their regular bedroom.

What with the weird energy and the unfamiliar sleeping arrangements and ALL THE SNORING, no one really got much in the way of sleep that night. At about two o’clock in the morning a bunch of us were back in my grandmother’s room with pillows and blankets making an attempt in there, but that didn’t really work, either. At that point we were all pretty punchy, so jokes about my aunt not remembering The Act of Contrition from catechism all those years ago and having to Google it were being thrown around. I said I was pretty sure it didn’t count if you attempted it but had to peek down at your phone every other line. The Death Rattle was getting to my uncle something fierce, so I told him to think of it like an old-school coffee percolator, and apparently that helped a bit. (Also, it appears that I can come up with coherent metaphors in the wee hours of the morning on not a lot of sleep, so… one for the resume?) Then there was a rash of cracks about my deceased grandfather — who was a wizard with a blowtorch — having made modifications to the Pearly Gates, reinforcing them with wrought iron, welding them open while waiting for my grandmother.

Eventually I gave up because I am officially too old to sleep on floors, and I went back to the sofa. There was a trickle of followers then, and at about seven the next morning we were all awake again, or more awake than we had been while attempting to sleep while listening to the Sleep Apnea Symphony in It-is-Impossible-to-Sleep-with-All-This-Racket-Going-On Major. My grandmother was still clinging on, and between gallons of coffee and toothbrushing and whatever else we passed in and out of her bedroom, spending the odd moment with her. In the kitchen with one of my aunts, I looked at her and said, “This was the worst slumber party ever.”

That made her laugh, and then we all went off on a tangent, making a list of reasons why it was a terrible slumber party.

“No ghost stories!”

“No junk food!”

“No makeovers!”

While we were all releasing some tension through laughter, one of my uncles was in with my grandmother. That was when she passed.

You never really know what people are waiting for while they’re dying. I think my grandmother wanted to hear a house full of people enjoying themselves, getting along, like everything was during the halcyon days before all of the little familiar civil wars broke out.

When she heard it, she let go.

There were a couple of odd things that happened Saturday morning. After my grandmother passed and we were all in the living room, one of my uncles went to shift to a more comfortable position on the sofa and his hand slipped between the cushions, where he felt something. He pulled out one of my grandfather’s tie clips. I’m not much of a one for ‘signs from the ether’, but in that moment we all agreed that it was a confirmation. She had made it and he was letting us know. The other little phenomenon was that the geese in the pond out back didn’t make a single noise until the funeral home gentlemen drove away from collecting her body. It was a little eerie.

My grandmother’s five children — of whom my father is the oldest — are now faced with the task of organizing the funeral services and dissolving the estate. Thankfully, everything is in good enough order that the funeral part will just about take care of itself.

It’s the estate that’s going to cause problems.

Stay tuned.

This shit is about to get ugly.