The Other Side

Dan's Grandpa Dave died last week. He was two months shy of his 99th birthday. Dan and his sister Sarah will travel to Yakima, WA along with their mom Mary Anne to bury her dad on July 31st.

He had been fading from this life for several years, and though we thought he would let go soon after his wife of 72 years died, his body held on for three years longer. The last couple of times we visited Grandpa, he could still lift Felix's 35-plus pounds from his chair to sit him on his knee. They would play ball together, with Grandpa still expertly throwing and catching. But his mind was somewhere else. One of my last memories of him is from summer a year ago, when Mary Anne brought him to the house for lunch. After we ate, Grandpa sat looking out the big picture window while the rest of us chatted in the living room. I looked at his profile and at first felt sorry that he could not participate in the conversation with us. I wondered what was going through his mind. Then I thought to myself that his state of meditation or quiet, removed from the activity and bustle of our typical existence, is considered ideal by many of the spiritually inclined. I felt that his situation seemed neither good nor bad, but also made me melancholy. I felt that it epitomized that what is, IS. We might not like it, but it will continue to be, so the key is to not struggle or worry about it--not that that is an easy thing to do.

The day Grandpa died, the skies were moody. A storm roared in at 3pm, flooding the streets with sheets of rain. A few hours later, black clouds massed again and turned the afternoon dark, then unleashed a biblical rage of wind, sheets of rain and hailstones that shredded leaves, sheared off branches, flowers, and fruit, and broke windows in some parts of town. Our power was out for over 12 hours.

Later, I lay on the sofa next to a window waiting for lightning flashes. The blank gray sky seems as if it will fade to black imperceptibly, but then the lightning shatters it with a blinding white fury that disappears as soon as it arrives, so quickly it's as if I only imagined its coming and going.

I have some photos of myself on a bulletin board that were taken at various stages in my life: a Christmas in 2003 with my dear sister Mary and dear friend Ann, a New Year's Day in 1996 at a Shinto shrine with my Japanese aunts, a school photo from preschool, my cheeks still pudgy with baby fat. In the middle of the bulletin board is a photo of Elise. When catching a glimpse of these photos, I realized that Elise would never accompany us as a family member experiencing the events and milestones of our lives on this planet. And I thought that the line between life and death is so thin, yet somehow she is unreachable. Grandpa Dave was unreachable for the last few years of his life. Part of him was here with us, but another was somewhere else--maybe in the realm of the dead.

Grandpa's soul is finally freed from his body and the cycle can begin again. When Felix was born, my aunt Mitsuko died. When Elise's cousin Reeve was born, Elise was conceived. The day after Dan's cousin gave birth to her son, Elise died. I want to believe our next baby will come, and soon. I want to believe she has taken the torch passed along by Grandpa, and is making her way to us now.

Walking home from the park with Felix yesterday, which was full of two-children families and babies and preschoolers, I realized that the heaviness inside me was an ache of longing for Elise. And I realized also that it would always, always be with me. That doesn't mean I can't also ache for another baby: the two exist in different planes of myself. And it doesn't mean thoughts of Elise only bring me pain. There are at least two sides to everything, even when, as with death, the other side remains a mystery to us here.