The Journey towards “Grief Counselling”

My first experience with death was when I was about 5.  One of the church members had died at the paper mill where he worked.  He fell into some sort of pressing machine and was crushed.  I remember hearing the adults talk about it and wondering what a “crushed person” would look like.

 

We went to the funeral and as always, I wanted to sit next to my mother’s Native American friend Pat.  She always let me stand up on the pew and my head was even with hers.  I liked being able to look at her black eyes straight across from my blue ones.

 

Anyway, at some point it was time for the congregation to file past the open casket.  I begged Pat to lift me up to see him.  As I looked down at his face, I was glad to see that they were wrong about him.  He wasn’t crushed…he was just asleep.

 

As the years went by, there were kids at school that died, some friends, some aquaintinces, some older relatives, some neighbors or other people on the outskirts of my life.  But it wasn’t until I received a call from my mom in 1977 saying that the pain my sister had spoken of at the family reunion a few weeks before had been diagnosed as terminal cancer, that the reality and finality of death landed like a ton of bricks on our collective hearts.

 

She was the beautiful one in the family.  The perfect cook…the perfect housewife…the perfect mom.  Her dream in life was to be a mom and it took her longer than most to get those beloved children and then she was suddenly gone in 42 days leaving a 6 year old daughter and a 9 year old son.

 

In those 42 days, a cure was sought by any method available and she wound up in Alabama at a clinic that gave “Laetrile” treatments on the sly because it wasn’t approved by the FDA.  It was from peach pits or something but it didn’t work.  I remember having a conversation with my mom asking when they were all going to come back to California for regular treatments here.  My mom cried and said that they wouldn’t be bringing her back home.  She said she was going to die there and it wasn’t going to take very long either because she was close to death that day.  I asked how she was going to transport her body home and my mom said “O honey, she and her husband talked about this years ago and agreed to be cremated.  I asked if her ashes were going to be interred or spread around somewhere and my mom was shocked at the thought of either of those choices.  She said “Well I don’t know what they will do with her ashes…she’ll be gone…what does it matter?”  I was stunned.  I knew I had to get there.

 

I flew into Birmingham on a Sunday afternoon just as her husband was flying home to intercept their children who had been on vacation with family friends.  It was just me, my mom, my sister, her mother-in-law and the incredibly sweet staff of that hospital. 

 

As I came into her room, she was coming out of the bathroom with the help of my mom and I was so shocked to see how she had changed.  She was completely bald from the one big blast of Chemo they gave her after the damning biopsy and she wanted her wig so she could sit on the side of the bed and talk about normal things like everything was alright.  That was the last time she was out of bed.

 

She slept through the next two days needing only liquid Valium.  At one point a nurse told my mom that they were going to have to put a feeding tube down her throat to keep her alive.  My mom knew that my sister has a real thing about her nose and would have a fit.  She told them that they would have to wake her up and get her permission before proceeding and that if she didn’t give her permission…it wasn’t going to happen.

 

My sister was very reluctant to come back to consciousness but she was finally there and when she heard what they wanted to do she said no.  The nurse tried to reason with her explaining that if she didn’t get some nourishment, she was going to die.  The nurse said “You don’t want to die, do you?”  Her mother-in-law was on the other side of the bed asking her the same question “you don’t want to die…do you?”  I could feel my sisters frustration as she raised her waisted body up a fraction and said “I’ll sue you if you put that tube down my nose”.  

 

At that point something caused me, the little sister who never really had a voice in the family or any credibility because I was the “hippie child”, to rise up to be her advocate.  I moved the nurse out of the way so I could look her in the eye and ask her the question: “Janice…are you ready to leave?”  And she said “Yes!!!” I told her to just go back to sleep then and it would be alright.  I knew it upset her mother-in-law but I also knew that my wonderful practical mother was relieved.

 

That was on Tuesday.  That night it was my turn to sit up with her because we never let her be alone as she slept.  At about midnight I nodded off and was immediately transported up to a corner of the ceiling where I sat visiting with Janice.  I was listening to her talk about her situation.  She told me that the only thing she really regretted was the fact that she wasn’t going to get to raise her children.  In my dream, I didn’t have any ties to the earthly plane so I told her “Well if you want…you could take my body and use it to raise your kids and I will take your place and move on”.  She turned to me and said “You really wouldn’t mind doing that?” and I assured her that I was serious about believing that what came after death was really exciting and I was looking forward to it.

 

So she thanked me and we switched.  She went down into my sleeping body in the chair and I realized that I was probably going to have to go down and fit myself into that cancer riddled body and at that moment, I jerked awake with the realization “That’s why she hates to be awakened…it causes her to have to come back into the physical form” and I knew that I would do anything to keep her asleep until she died.

 

The next day as my mom and Janice’s mother-in-law were at breakfast, the doctor came in and as we were standing there quietly speaking while looking at my sister so peacefully asleep, he was saying what a shame it was that she was dying so young and leaving such little kids behind.  I told him that what was bothering me the most was that she was going to be cremated and her ashes scattered there in the South.  He said “O honey I know what you mean…none of mah people have evah been cremated”.  I told him it wasn’t cremation that was bothering me, it was the fact that her ashes were going to be left there in the South and she had always hated the South and their prejudice  ways.  He turned to me and said “Well I could have them mailed to you…would you like that?”  

 

Boy…it was decision time.  I knew I should call her husband and ask him but what if he said no?  What would I do then.  I looked down at her and in my mind said “Janice…what do you want me to do?”  And I swear I heard her say “Get me out of here”.  So I said yes and he handed me a piece of paper on which to write my name and address.

 

When I came back from lunch later that Wednesday morning, my mom was rushing out of the room.  She said my sister was dying right then and she couldn’t stand to be in the room.  I knew there was no place I would rather be and as I went in, I could feel my sister’s presence so strongly.  I wanted the nurse to leave which she did and I got to be alone with her.  I was so happy for her and she looked radiant.  I remember her skin looked flawless like a baby’s.  

 

She and I stayed with her body until the ambulance came.  We stayed while they zipped up the body bag and we walked behind the cart down the hall and out the door.  We watched them load her remains into the ambulance and as it drove away I said to her “Well Janice…I’ll see you in California” and at that moment I felt her lightly and in gratitude, fly away home.

 

Back in the adjoining room, my mom was throwing things in a suitcase.  I asked when she thought we could get a flight home and she said, “We’re getting out of here right now”.  It was something she could control and boy she did.  We were on a plane home within a few hours of Janice’s death.  I remember seeing huge headlines on the front of newspapers at the airport “THE KING IS DEAD”.  I remember thinking “Hey Janice, you and Elvis left close to the same time”.

 

Two weeks later at home in California, I got a slip from the post office stating that there was a package for me from Alabama.  I couldn’t wait to have her home with me.  I didn’t tell anyone in the family but all of my friends knew I had her and what a relief it was to me.

 

Three months later I got a call from my remaining sister.  She called to tell me that my dad was having a really hard time with my sister’s death.  She said that it was driving him crazy that her ashes had been “thrown away” in Alabama.  She said my mother just couldn’t understand why he felt like that.  Dead is dead and the Bible says…well you probably know the drill.  Anyway, I said I understood how my dad felt but my sister felt the same way as my mom. 

 

I got off of the phone and called my parents.  My dad answered the phone which was unusual and I asked him how he was doing.  He said “Not too good kid”.  I asked him why and he shared his feelings about her ashes.  I thought I had called to try and comfort him without admitting what I had done because when I told my sister, she had a fit and was appalled that I had gone “against Janice’s husband’s wishes” and I felt guilty but not sorry.

 

I decided to fess up and I told my dad that the doctor had offered to send the ashes to me.  My dad said “Yeah but it didn’t happen and now there’s nothing we can do about it and it’s about to drive me crazy”.  

 

I can’t explain the depth of joy it gave me to tell my dad that I had said yes to the doctor and that I had her ashes in my possession.  How often does a child get to give a parent that they love dearly, the greatest gift ever?

 

A few months later my parents came down from the Sierra Foothills where they lived for a visit.  While my dad was out doing errands my mom said, “I want you to give me Janice’s ashes because we have arranged to have them buried in the little Georgetown cemetery (where they lived) and even though your dad is happy to have them, actually dealing with them will be upsetting for him.  So I want to put them in my suitcase before he gets back”.  I told her that I had wanted to have my friends who were glass blowers, make a glass container that nothing would be able to get inside of and she said “O shoot…I have a big Tupperware container, and nothing gets through Tupperware.”

 

So that’s the first installment of my “Janice” story.  There’s more but I have to go to Curves now.  Thank you for listening to my story.  Later I will be writing the rest of it and how it led me to become a “Grief Councilor”.  Do you have a story?  I would love to hear it.  

 

Have an alive day.  

 

Sharon