nascent is a good word. I don’t know why I don’t use it more often as it is truly a great word. It has a nice sound….nay-sent.

I am listening to “Sparks”, by Coldplay and talking to someone about a family friend that died unexpectedly. I sometimes wonder about sudden deaths. My grandmother, when she died, I mean, I was upset and I still am kind of upset but it wasn’t a surprise. Damn, I lie. Now that I think about it, when I realized she was about to die, because she wasn’t connected up to any electronic weird equipment tracking her pulse and breathing and she had requested no special means be used to save her, it was kind of scary to know. And it wasn’t just like, “beeeeeeeeeep” and the nurse came in and turned off the machine. She was lying in her bed and it was almost midnight. My uncles and I hadn’t eaten in 9 or 10 hours so we went to arby’s in my uncle’s blue rental car. It was a 2001 Mazda 626 DX and the three of us barely fit in it, since we are all over 6′3″. We drove to the Jack in the Box parking lot and decided to eat there. It took us about 20 minutes to eat lunch and for a moment, I think I forgot about the fear that was waiting for us only 3 miles away. We drove back to the hospital. When I walked into the room it was 12:05AM July 22, 2002. She had been breathing really heavily, because of the phlegm buildup in her lungs had become so great that each breath was really labored. When we came back, her breathing was barely audible. Her chest had stopped heaving up and down stiffly with each breath, but it could still be felt passing in and out of her mouth. I think she was officially pronounced dead at 12:22AM but I can’t remember exactly. I remember the nurse came in the room and changed the date and time and wrote down things on the file and carefully disconnected the IV and wheeled it out.

I had never seen a dead person before and I was rather glad that she had died so peacefully, it was almost as if she had died in her sleep and in a way, I was glad that she had died. Not in that I was glad that she was dead, but she had suffered so much and recovery was so remote that it was better for it to end as opposed for her to fight through so much. She had dealt with leukemia for 7 years and had already entered the blast stage around January.

I touched her hair and her face. It was strange. When she died you could tell there was a definite relaxation in her body, as if it had deflated slightly. Her face relaxed into a kind of slackened state, as though all the muscles in her face had atrophied suddenly. The only thing that didn’t change was her hair. It had been recently put into curlers and was the same beautiful soft salt and pepper color I had always remembered it. I couldn’t remember ever touching my grandmother’s hair.

Its funny in a way, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t upset by her death. Then during a conversation I was having with Jesse, he so kindly pointed out that I was mourning then. I apologize for talking about this once again but its kind of cathartic for me.

cathartic is another one of those words…

djno sanityhere

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