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When my grandmother died in 2013, my mother was at her side. To the untrained eye, mom surely appeared the same to all who knew her- but us closest could tell there was a very slight, clear change. Seemingly unaware of this, my beloved mother had assumed a few distinct traits of my grandmother’s that she previously did not possess. The difference was almost instantaneous. While some might easily explain it away as hereditary or something else, Dad and I knew better.

Helen, my grandmother, was famous for starting a conversation as if you were in the middle of it. Pronouns instead of proper names, a patent lack of identifying details, and no introductory sentences made the game of ‘getting up to speed’ kind of funny, but also a way Gramma could make you feel dumb (also funny, but only for onlookers.)

For example, she might come into a room, sit down and say, “I told him, if that’s what they plan on doing, I don’t want to have anything to do with it!”

She wasn’t senile, disoriented, or delusional. She just didn’t have time for the lay-up. The time-consuming groundwork of starting a conversation was of no interest to her, and I get it. When I need to relay a story and it’s not dramatic or fun, just information, I, too, want to skip right to the good stuff.

Mom absorbed this one right away. Dad and I looked at each other as if it was a joke. She was not amused, especially when I said, “ok, Helen” to explain our stifled giggles and perplexity. Now I’ve just come to embrace it, like a charming, warm reminder. As if my departed grandmother left a sweater behind that still smelled of her perfume.

When we lose someone significant, and they no longer take up space in a physical body, I’d like to think that a little bit of their essence/soul/person stays and comes through us loved ones. Like a spiritual “leave-behind.” It needn’t be a major character trait, just an idiosyncratic demonstration of their presence. Something distinctive… I have yet to figure out what mine is. I’m hoping my bouts of seven to ten sneezes at a time are made possible by ragweed and not my Dad’s way of continuing to torture my mother with his sneeze-routine.

I’ve begun thinking about bodies as carrying cases. We often say, “it’s what’s on the inside that matters” but what’s on the inside literally is just more tangible, fragile stuff like organs and blood. If you know even a tidbit about the functions of the internal body, you know it’s a fucking miracle that we’re up and walking around- so many details and things that need to go right to work- it’s a wonder any of us are here at all. That said, it’s still all physical. Inside or out, we’re talking about stuff. I want to understand the ethereal, the intangible, the enigmatic.

When Dad went into the hospital it was a Tuesday. He’d elected to go to the ER because he was weak and couldn’t get in to see his regular doctor. This wasn’t our first visit, so nothing felt different than previous instances of illness and recovery. Mom and I did our Doctor Jr. routine of listening, digesting information, and then putting it through the Rube Goldberg machine of our minds to pop out a reasonable a palatable reality to live in.

Only this time, there wasn’t one problem to pin point. It was more like a number of symptoms and test results had formed a Rorshach that we all kept looking at, turning sideways and looking again, and again. Where was the thing to root for? Where was the place to pray?

One issue was a stomach bleed, and so we hopped on that- get the medicines right, the positive thinking, visualizations of healing tissue, the prayer trains were rolling into station. We clung to this stomach bleed because it gave us a reason to believe that, if fixed, all would be well.

But before we could, another problem popped up, and another.

There was a moment somewhere in those first few days where I felt a shift from the usual, identify-treat-solve model that had become our norm, to unchartered waters. The routines and responsibilities of my everyday life drifted away from me swiftly like ice floes. All I knew was that something was happening and I couldn’t seem to brace myself. I clung to my dad’s physical body like a life raft. Somehow willing him to stay pinned down.

But Dad’s carrying case was in need of replacement.

Later at home, when we knew, but couldn’t imagine, what lay ahead – there was another shift. My consciousness knew we couldn’t knit torn tissue, or make repairs. Reluctant at first, I slowly and wordlessly switched teams and began rooting for lasting peace for a tired case. Silently coaxing free the little stuck parts of Dad that remained inside so he could be free.

It’s hard. It’s so hard. We’re accustomed to so much of this life being so physical. We hug. We have and we hold. But what we need sometimes is to feel the ferocity of the ethereal, the intangible, and yet it’s just out of reach.

I’m on the lookout now for new behaviors in myself, to see what Dad might have slipped into my pocket before leaving his body. In the meantime, I’m finding comfort in holding the ones I love, and letting go of the stuff I don’t, while my own case is still intact.

-e