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My grandmother passed away in late September of 2019. I had gotten news that her condition was worsening, and that I should call her. I was making my way across campus when I received a text from my mother saying that I'd better call right away if I wanted to speak with my grandmother again.
I stopped off in a lounge with glass walls in the center of the commons. I called my grandmother's phone and my uncle picked up. He said she could barely speak anymore, but just as he was saying so, my grandmother mustered some strength and took the phone from his hands. When I heard her frail voice, I suddenly knew this would be the last time I'd speak to her; that it would be our last interaction. It was a different world suddenly. I wasn't prepared for what that would feel like.
I felt so profoundly feeble, suddenly trying to express anything in that moment---trying to touch on everything, trying to recall every memory, and detail all the ways I was grateful for her. All my words were sand through a seive. I knew that this day would come, but having never lost anyone close to me I was naive about the nature of passage. I had always imagined everything would come together and climax in a profound sense of closure; that it would be somber but sober. That day I was hysterical. An infant wailing for his mother.
She was not scared. She had been ready to move on for a long time. She had always been in good health, but at the age of 97, she had watched her world and everyone in it slowly recede into history. It must be lonsome approaching a century. She was very religious, a pious disciple obeying the will of her god. She always told me she would be ready when he was, and that was the only way it could be. I didn't share her views, but I always agreed in understanding---which in hindsight I realize was easy to do because I didn't understand death.
When my grandmother said to me that day, "I'm gonna have to say goodbye now," everything became illuminated. I fell to a terrible depth of grief, sobbing hysterically and barely able to say my final goodbyes and thank yous, but my condition was not one of mere despair. I was utterly bewildered by the wonder of nature; of time, of life. I was arrested by the impossibility of it all, the sheer chaos in which we find so much order and meaning. No one was in control, no one was driving this thing. It occurred to me how mirculous it is that any of this could happen, which is a bittersweet epiphany to have just as a big part of your world is about to become accessible only in memory.
I sat for a long time in that lounge, reeling through a kaleidescope of emotions. Eventually I gathered myself and headed to my study. When I emerged from the basement commons, I sensed how _September_ the day was---maybe the most September a day could be. It was warm and sunny out, but the sunshine had lost some of its power. The air was cooler, the shade was deeper. Everything sighed in anticipation of relief. From the mellow stir of the oak canopies a lifetime of memories jumped out at me---first days of school, first kisses, band practice, saturday morning cartoons. The funny thing is, all of these things are "gone." They occurred, and they feel so far away in space and in time. Yet, they are right here. The way the world appears and feels is so because of all these past experiences that have made it that way. They color the world, flavor it, because they _are_ it. And not just in the abstract sense that "everything is one." Everything moves, and the momentum of our experience qualifies the world of which we are. Meaning compounds and enriches experience and transforms the world which is our habitat. Experience itself is the involvement in this tensive aspect of nature, and its development is itself the passage of time.
There is no course. Only current---the force of everything existing and interacting in just the unique ways that they do.
Today felt especially Septembery, so here I am, again, grasping for some sense of time.
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