Waiting

It is hot now in Indiana. Beginning around ten in the morning and not breaking until well after midnight, the heat sits upon everything as the sweat sits upon the foreheads and upper lips of the people I see. The window-unit AC stays off, and I suffer the nights beneath one thin sheet, the window open, a fan humming at its slowest speed. Getting ready for Africa, I tell myself; I lose the last of my clothing and kick off the sheet.

There is too much time to wait. Insurance company mistakes have once again postponed my required dental work, which means that my invitation (and therefore definitive statement of departure) for Africa remains in limbo. A job interview yesterday yielded only the possibility of a drug test, which they'll let me know about in a week. And I've been summoned for jury duty, but that, too, will have to wait.

Right now I'm killing time waiting for a friend to arrive to spend the weekend here. I've spent all day waiting, walking twice to the post office to send out: check for utilities, check for rent, juror questionnaire and reasons why I can't serve during the term specified by the US District Court. I've gone to the library, two computer labs, and walked past the same newspaper racks, restaurants, and bookstores at least three times. My armpits have been damp since I stepped out the door.

Times like these not even music will cheer me up.

In Ulysses, which I am so close to finishing it's almost frustrating, Leopold Bloom, or the narrator, or whoever it is, mentions that, in a life aged 70 years, 20 are spent in sleep. That's 2/7 of an individual's life spent sleeping. The longer you live, the greater the fraction becomes. I've even heard that 1/3 of our lives is spent in a somnolent state. These figures don't bother me so much, because I like sleep, and, while glancing through a random book at the little cornershop on Kirkland today, I learned that sleep is more important than food when it comes to a person's health.

What bothers me is the waiting. How much life do we spend doing that?

Here's what I did yesterday:
1000: woke up, performed waking duties, i.e., urination, cleansification, food-preparation, mastication
1045 - 1300: waited to go to dentist; filled time with: dog-playing, book-reading, tan-getting, mail-retreiving, newspaper-perusing
1300 - 1330: drove to dentist's office
1330 - 1340: waited for dentist to announce name, upon which speaking of said surname, was informed that insurance company, i.e. Aetna, had chosen to drop us at some point in the two-and-a-half (2.5) weeks since I'd been there last
1340 - 1342: punch car in frustration
1342-1346: drive to local location of secondary education
1346-1350: wander through halls in search of paterfamilias
1350 - 1403: explain to padre the gist of what hath gone down
1403 - 1427: immemorable
1427 - 1600: drove to Bloomington
1600 - 1800: waited for job interview
1800 - 1822: drove to job interview
1822 - 1846: filled out another application, pre-employment survey, laughed
1846 - 1900: person-to-person interview
1900: told to wait another week
1901 - 300: waited for sleep

What was accomplished? Some money was spent, some gas was wasted. All debits, no credits. And still, I wait.

And once I do get a job, once I get my teeth fixed, once I graduate, once I go to Africa, won't I still be waiting? For lunch, for dinner, for another drink, for something exciting, for a night with a woman, for what's next? And when I get to what's next, then what?

My grandma lost two husbands in her lifetime. Grandpa Buck in 1984, Jerry in either 2003 or 2004, I can't remember. She wasn't left with nothing, but she'd lost so much. All that came next was more cancer, the usual Christmas celebrations, a surgery or two, chemo, again and again. I would visit her as often as I could, because she was my grandma, and I loved her more than I've ever loved another human being. We would sit, first in the house I'd always known, her house, Grandma's house, and then in the condo her children picked out for her when it was decided that Montpelier was too far from Toledo, that the five acres and the basement stairs were too much for an 81-year old woman. We would play cribbage on the back-porch of her house while corn sizzled in butter and aluminum foil, or in the sunroom of the condo, watching her neighbors move in and out of their garages, or trying to spot hummingbirds, the occasional American goldfinch. It was our way of waiting. For dinner, for dark, when we'd put on the Dean Martin tapes, or for bed, when she'd kiss me goodnight, and I'd watch her walk to her room, floating inside a nightgown, her bones and skin no more than a collection of marrow and dust. She was so tiny, so old and weak, so much in pain, so tired. I would lie awake at night wondering if she was waiting to die.

And then we were told, for the fourth time, that Grandma had cancer. Was it before she went to Florida? It must have been. But while there, visiting Aunt Teeny, Grandma was taken to the hospital. Fluid in her lungs. Totally incoherent. Falling fast. Uncle Pete and Aunt Denise flew down to Florida, spoke with the doctors, and decided to hire an Air Ambulance, a small private jet to fly Grandma back to Toledo.

An Air Ambulance is not cheap. Luckily, the doctor at St. Luke's agreed to accept the transfer, and arrangements were made. The nurses and doctors in Florida were being difficult, saying little to my aunt and uncle, shooting patronizing looks of pity towards them, repeating, over and over, that what they were doing was very expensive. Aunt Denise, nearly in tears, couldn't take it.

"Will you stop looking at my brother and me like we're idiots? We know it's expensive. We know she's dying. We just want her to die at home."

At St. Luke's, she was in pain, and when I visited she slept while I watched television with no sound. She would do her breathing exercises, or try her best to answer the questions the nurses and doctors asked, or bug anyone she could for another pain pill. Aunt Denise and Uncle Pete worked rotating shifts, feeding Grandma as much as they could, asking doctors questions, writing down the answers. The weekend I was there I went in for breakfast, so they could rest a shift, get some sleep.

When it was decided there was nothing they could do, Grandma went to hospice.

In the hospital we were supposed to get her to eat as much as possible. The goal was to make Grandma better. But in hospice, things are different, as we learned when given the standard informational packet, which included the pamphlet The Dying Process. Nobody would force her to do anything. The weekend I was there I watched the nurses give her as many pain pills as she wanted (provided she wouldn't OD), and take away her untouched food trays with no admonishment. Why yell at her? She was there to die.

Aunt Patti had done Grandma's hair, but still, it was thin, and the skin was tight to her skull. She slept most of the time, her mouth open, her hands held tight in the air in front of her chest. The breaths went in slow, held. We waited, wondering who to call first. Exhale. We sat back in our seats. She twitched occasionally. Aunt Teeny said, "I wonder what she's thinking about." I wish I knew. Growing up. Raising her siblings. The way her mother used to sing to her father, that song she'd told me so many times, the song whose name I can't remember, and now will never know. Hopefully she thought of me, of all her grandkids, of washing us in the sink in Montpelier, of rides on the four-wheeler, of Christmases in her living room, when we were young and Jerry was still alive, when nobody thought about anybody dying.

Guests would come in, all tiptoes and whispers, asking, "Is she sleeping?" It's okay, we told them, you can say hello. They would sit on the side of the bed, grab a hand or a shoulder, nudge her awake. Don't push too hard, I'd think, there's not much there. Her eyes would open, adjust, widen. "Oh my God," Grandma'd say, "I can't believe it."

And then, two weeks later, with Uncle Tim back from Australia, with Aunt Teeny flown in just that day from Florida, Grandma died. All six kids were there, holding her hands, telling her how much they loved her. She took a breath and never let it go. I like to think she held onto that breath like she held onto their hands. The last piece of them she could take with her, all their breaths swirling around inside of her; she swallowed it whole, made it a part of her, and when it was complete, she left.

The only time I cried was at the funeral. Standing in the front pew while Aunt Patti sang "Amazing Grace." I was a pallbearer. It felt good to carry her one last time. It was like dancing.

I miss her. No similes can tell how much. I'm waiting for the day when I can finally erase her number from my phone book. I'm waiting to cry again, because I know it's not over. I'm waiting to hear from her, in a breeze, in a song, in the sound of a kitchen sink, or a too-loud television, or a laugh, or the pfth of a BB gun. I'm waiting to see her again, and I know I'm going to be waiting a long time.