Apparently, you people do. You're here. You're reading. I might as well tell a tale.
I come from a big family. My dad is the oldest of five kids. All the others girls. They all have kids of their own. At least two each. In two cases, four kids each. His second youngest sister, Patty, was my kind of people.
She spoke up, loud and proud for what she believed in. She was famously unreserved with her opinion. She married a really nice, smart guy, settled down, and had two kids. My cousin, Kaye, was the first baby I can ever remember holding. She had sooooo much hair! Thick, black, hair. I remember asking Patty why she had so much hair. I don't remember her answer though.
I remember a family reunion in B.C., where we spent our summers. I remember a party, where an older cousin of mine was drunk and swore in front of Patty's kids. She was so mad! She got right up in my cousin's grill. It was quite the sight.
I remember playing baseball with her. We had a lot of female athletes in the family, but I and a younger cousin were the only coordinated grandkids, so we ended up playing on a woman's team with all my aunts. I remember long-ass car rides out to one small town or another where we'd warm the bench and occasionally get sent into right field, even though we wanted to play second base and back-catcher, respectively. I remember Patty giving me some money at one tournament to buy sunflower seeds. I got to keep the change and buy a 25 cent charm bracelet made by some girl guides who were selling them there. And I accidentally flung it into the lake. I was inconsolable. Until Patty consoled me. She was a catcher herself. She taught me to pop up from the stance and throw a perfect drilled baseball to second from a crouch.
I wish I could have known Patty longer. I wish I could remember more of Patty.
I wish my cousins could have known their mom because she was just so cool.
I think it was Easter. I know it was. The family was all in my home town. Except for my other aunt and uncle and Patty and her hubby and all their kids. They couldn't make it down, but we all talked on the phone that day. I wanted to talk to Patty. Tell her I'd hit two home runs in my little league game the night before. And that I was trying out for a travelling baseball team. Back catcher. I wanted to, but I couldn't. She was resting, my dad said. She'd complained of a headache earlier.
Later, I'd hear it from my cousin Cee. They were playing cards. Whist or Canasta, or maybe even Rumoli. I'm not a big card player unless we're talking poker, which I love. I couldn't tell you what it was, exactly. She looked across the table, tapped her nails on her cards, said she felt sick, like she was going to pass out and then, she did. She kind of slumped over. They thought she was joking. That she didn't have a good hand. Everybody laughed.
She didn't get up.
Clearly, this story doesn't have a happy ending. You're all bright people. You're all aware that I'm talking about my favourite aunt in the past tense.
I guess...that they got her to the hospital pretty quickly after that. They realized it wasn't her lack of face cards causing her to slump. I think it was the cousin who had told me the story who also discovered that she'd lost control of her bladder. One of the relatives present was a nurse who knew something was very, very wrong. They did CPR. They called an ambulance.
I can remember being at home, eating an easter egg with salt when my dad got the call. We were told to pack. Immediately. We were going to Alberta to be with Auntie Patty who was really sick.
All the cousins were there too. We went to Grandpa's where the silence was just...unbearable. I put my head between my knees in the living room and let my tears drip onto the carpet. I was in Grade Six and I didn't know what to do. I had a report. A school presentation to give in a few days. Being a procrastinator even in those days, I hadn't started it. I felt bad that I was worried about some stupid school report on Paraguay while my aunt was sick.
What we didn't know then, was that she wasn't sick. She was dead. She'd had a seizure. A blood clot or a brain aneurysm or something like that. Oh, she was technically alive. She had tubes and wires and machines up the wazoo. She was breathing on her own, and sometimes, she would blink. The doctor said it was an automatic response. That she wasn't seeing us or hearing us. That she had no brain activity.
I didn't know what to think. Part of my 11-year-old mind couldn't grasp the concept of brain dead. Patty was playing catch with me just last year! How could she not have a brain that worked? We drove for something like eight hours straight in a big, green van. I think it belonged to another uncle. I was making notes on index cards for my speech. My mom had placated my brother and I with candy. He had a mouth full of licorice and was making some annoying gun noise while pretending to shoot cows.
I think he was in grade three. I wonder what he'd say if I asked him if he remembered Patty.
I remember saying goodbye to her. We each got about two minutes with her. I went with my dad, who was crying. I'd only seen him cry a couple of times. He cried when my Grandma died, when we visited her grave and when we went to pick my mom up from the hospital after a cancer-eradicating operation. He scared me. I scared myself. I touched her hand. She had tape over her eyes and I remember asking why. My mom said "because her eyes won't close by themselves anymore." She had been blinking rapidly. The doctors said it was nerves. That was it. There was no brain activity whatsoever. I stood there, in my spandex bike shorts with a mosquito bite on my leg, I remember because it hurt, and I asked my mom to take the tape off her eyes. My dad wanted it off too. And they took it off.
My dad turned around and hugged my mom and I looked at her and her eyes drifted open. I was standing on my tip-toes. I thought: They're all wrong! Understand, I was 11. This was the woman who'd taken me to an emergency room when a fly-ball hit me in the face when I ripped of my catcher's mask and the ball seams sliced open my nose. This was the woman who got me back behind home plate by dressing me in lots of padding and pitching for me as hard as she could. This was the woman who made me stand in the corner because (for some reason) I ate a hunk of playdough while she was watching us. She was tough and fair and smart.
And when I saw her eyes, there was none of that left. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe, that she would blink at me and tear up because she wanted to get out of the hospital, but she just wasn't strong enough.
When I was 11, I saw my aunt for the last time. I saw her and I saw her eyes and it wasn't her in there. She was gone. She was nothing. There wasn't anything. I started crying and sobbing. I hugged my mom. Buried my hands in her skirt and bawled. We had to leave then, but I remember the nurse leaning over to put the tape back on and I was glad.
My uncle spoke with my Grandpa and my dad and aunts. They all agreed that Patty wouldn't want that. Wouldn't want to be some husk. I think some of my aunts wanted to wait. But the thought, maybe, of my grandmother, who'd died in a car accident about seven years before that, sobered them. You've heard of WWJD? There's a saying my family called What Would Gramma Do? Gramma would want to respect Patty's wishes. Gramma would believe my uncle when he said they'd talked it over, as husband and wife, and decided, together, that there would be no machines feeding or breathing or doing things for them.
Her wishes were respected. They shut the machines off. I don't know what happened. My uncle was with her and soon after, their pastor came to the hospital. I remember him well. I don't go in for religion much, but when my cousin Kaye was baptized, he used a nerf suction cup dart gun to symbolize the love we all had for Kaye by shooting a suction cup dart through the rafters of the church where it stuck to the ceiling. I actually remember that so well because it was his son's toy dart gun and I went to school with his son. He was a hip dude, that pastor. I believe he is now serving somewhere in New Jersey. I have no doubt that he would remember me.
Don't worry, this isn't turning into a relgious rant. Just a memory.
I just sat here for five minutes, wondering what to type next. I have nothing to say really. Isn't that so like me? This happened. And then this. And then that. Big whoop. Let's get down to the grits.
It's been almost fifteen years since the day my aunt went into the hospital. I'm glad Patty isn't still lying there with tape on her eyes. It would be cruel, I think, to not make your peace with the fact that what you have there is, essentially, a body. She had left it and went, somewhere else, I guess.
I think about her when I see my baseball equipment. I pulled my cleats down the other day and looked at them. I haven't worn them since I was 18. I played in a tournament then. They're still full of red shale. My glove is bloodied (Literally, I broke a finger catching and didn't tell anybody and it swelled and they had to cut the glove off after the game and I still can't wear a ring on my ring finger.)
Shit, life got in the way, you know? For awhile, I had a dream that I would be the first woman to play in the bigs. I wasn't anywhere near good enough, though. Didn't have the drive. Wanted other things more. Years have went by and I've realized other dreams.
Patty didn't get to live hers. Her kids are growing. Kaye looks so much like her that it hurts. She doesn't really remember her mom, I don't think. She was so young when it happened. She's sporty too. We've played catch. I taught her to throw to second. She wants to move to the city. She's almost 18. I miss her mom and I curse whatever the fuck it was that killed her. But there are no miracles to make it not so. You can't fix something like that. There will be no advances that will enable surgeons to magically replace a large portion of your brain after it's turned to mush. Trust me.
I hear the family on the news today talking about how it's judicial homicide. Terri Shiavo is being murdered by a judge who wants her dead. I hope, I HOPE, nobody really thinks that. I hope it's the grief that is FINALLY coming out. It hurts. I know. It gets better. Sort of. Nobody is killing anybody. Terri Schiavo isn't dying. She's already dead.
Patty's eyes ... were brown. Like mine.
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