I don’t know if I’m the only person who draws comparisons between the airport and the hospital, but I can see some. When you walk inside there are these awkward little stores serving coffee and selling magazines nobody actually reads. The floor, for some reason, is always impeccably smooth and bland. Both places serve the same purpose in a weird way–people are going places. People arriving, people departing. Though at the airport, you don’t feel as sad to see them go because you can see which way they are headed just outside the window. Hospitals, however, they leave you right there in the same room and you aren’t sure where they have suddenly gone. For that reason, hospitals can be much worse to visit than the airport.
In the hospital I was led to a place that housed people somewhere between arrivals and departures. A place where you can see their open eyes, though nobody is looking through them to see you. The Intensive Care Unit cares for the people who are only hanging onto life by the definition that their heart is still beating. A beating heart means life, though a beating heart does not necessarily mean ‘alive’. The ICU separates these things. It is a place for both arrivals and departures.
I am an emotional person, though admittedly, it didn’t feel like I cried because someone’s life was over. It was a mixture of things, though it was definitely apart from that. It was the shock of walking by a guy my age covered in bruises watching the edge of his curtain will cloudy glass-eyes. They were empty and unoccupied. It was the sight of an old man whose skin looked like paperbark ready to tear away from his bones. It was the sight of my grandmother’s hair dishevelled and partly shaved with a covered line of clotted bloodstained stitches. Her lips hanging loosely and the nurse autonomously swabbing her pale gums as saliva dripped from the side. Her swollen face was contorted and irritated. Her breaths were heavy and arduous, her exhales pushed hard out of her dripping mouth.
I cried because I saw that this was hurting absolutely everybody. Her family replaced by manic workers, answering phones constantly and rubbing their hands into their racoon-eyes. They were exhausted and hyper-conscious of each obscure movement my grandmother made. Repeatedly assuring themselves that it was only spasmodic. She was not self-aware. It was only spastic movement. I cried because I was seeing my grandmother undeservedly suffering there with us. A tube in her mouth, two in one arm, one in the other. I don’t know why but I focused on the worst possible tube, which led to a plastic pack filling weak yellow liquid. I suppose I looked at her piss to kill the atmosphere around me. It was so unreal. We were all there in the ICU with my comatose grandmother. My cousin’s grandmother asking her if she can hear us. My aunt clutching to her hand. My other aunt clutching onto my cousin. It was a messy image. I sat there totally stiff in a seat the nurse provided me, staring at a yellow bag. I cried because it felt like a pretty bad way to go, a way that wasn’t really justified when I think of the cards she was already dealt. It was her second stroke. She had zero activity in her brain but her body was perfectly able.
Now here we are a week later watching her breathe slower and slower each day until she can peacefully pass away. It’s crazy that the mind can switch off, but the body can still have a great capacity to live. Unfortunately, it needs to be switched off too. But she was lucky in some respects too. She lived sixteen years after her first stroke and in that time she met some of her grandkids and experienced life a little more. I like to think that I shouldn’t be too sad because she was a very memorable piece in all of our lives. She lived a full and happy life. It’s sad that she was taken too early, but I feel like nearly everyone who lives is. My dad’s parents died before I even met them. So at least I was able to experience a grandmother’s love through her. For that opportunity I’m really grateful. I’m happy that she was around to give me too much food, to care for me too much when I was sick and to always rub my back when I did something right. I have more to be happy than to be sad about. The best I can do is to keep her love and give it to others so they might feel it too.
