We so often talk about burnout in the mental health stance, in the psychological exhaustion and drained sense. In the “I don’t have the motivation to do the thing” sort of way. But what about the literal burn-out of a physical body? Is our psychological burnout merely a foreshadowing, a gentle reminder, that we are mortal?
My husband’s grandmother, Judy Pippin, is currently dying.
She is 88.
It went slowly and then quickly. A cancer diagnosis, a UTI, not wanting to get out of bed, refusing food/drink except for a few bites of Alianna’s bday cake over Thanksgiving, now an impacted colon. “I wouldn’t put her through surgery if she was my own mother,” the surgeon said, eyes welling up with tears.
We are told her skin is so dry and parched it looks like a fragile, thin layer covering her 4 ft 10 inch, 83 pound frame. She was officially put on hospice just yesterday, and reportedly has days or possibly a week or two. She wakes up occasionally and smiles at her visitors, sometimes reaching out to hug them.
She was a dancer, she reminded us when we all crawled in bed with her a few weeks ago over the holiday. She danced her whole life. But then she added a tidbit we had never heard before: she had been asked to teach lessons to other kids starting at the age of 9-10.
She’s been saying goodbye, more or less, since she lost her beloved husband a few years ago to a mercifully quick brain tumor. “I miss him,” she simply said on repeat. “I want to be with him.”
The last year or so conversations with Grandma Pippin have been circular.
“Are you behaving?”
“Are you keeping him [my husband] in line?”
“It’s a tough job!”
“I’ve sure been blessed.”
“When I see your Grandpa in heaven I’m gonna bop him on the head.”
And then always back to “are you behaving?” and the cycle ensues.
One of Grandma’s most enduring joys was music: first as a dancer and then, as she aged, singing in her church Cantata, an event that (I am ashamed to say) we were invited to often but rarely prioritized the time to attend. Then, as she aged further, attending the Sunday night band concerts the Brazil Concert Band (for which my dad proudly plays baritone). Every Sunday, no matter the weather, she tip tapped her toes to the music. “I just can’t help it,” she would explain, “my body is moved by music.”
When we entered her home several weeks ago during our visit to Indiana, we were met with the characteristic smell of cats and the wave of heat she had blasting. (Gma truly should have lived in the south, she so despised winter.) We walked past her rows of family pictures into her bedroom where the TV is always blaring: Survivor, Law and Order, Jeopardy. It is so loud, we cannot hear our own words of greeting.
“Oh that? I just have that on for the noise.”
Grandma Pippin has never been the kind of smothering grandma that covered her grandkids with kisses and warmth. She brought rutabagas, not sweets, to Christmas dinner each year. She maintained a fierce independence, even as entering dementia, leaving family gatherings promptly after her 45-60 minute dedicated window of socializing. “I like to have my own space” and “I don’t want to be in people’s hair” she reminded us. Her signature greeting to the grandkids and then great grandchildren was “who is taller than me now?”
The latest stray cat she brought in, Blacky, hisses from the corner of her bed. Blacky is not domesticated and isn’t trained and leaves poops all around the house. Still, she is the definition of a dutiful guard.
Grandpa Pippin is the kind of fierce lady that has seemed old to my husband her entire life. She has always been tiny and terrifying in the “go find a switch so I can whip you” sort of way. I find this kind of loving incomprehensible, (I who never once was spanked a time in my life except for the traumatic time when I was four and I couldn’t find my mom in the house so I carefully crossed the street to ask my friend Kimmy if she had seen her.) I look across the bed and all of us are keeping respectful distance, sitting or standing on the bed corners, all except for my husband. He lays ungracefully sideways so his head is parallel to hers. His hands are laced in her hands. She occasionally looks up at him and the love between them makes the rest of us squint.
I find the corporal punishment version of Grandma completely incompatible with the woman I have known since I first met her when I was 17. She and her past-baker, now-methodist-preacher husband, Grandpa Pippin (who was notorious for an incredible wardrobe of punny sweatshirts and slightly inappropriate jokes that can’t stop/won’t stop) had an entire crafts workshop of a garage. They worked tirelessly cutting out ornaments and decorations and the kind of thing that I rolled my eyes out like the jerk I was at 17, when things that seemed corny or cliche (but took actual work) were the worst kind of sin. The Pippins were consistent fixtures at all the Saturday fairs. The two of them came as a pair as far as I was concerned, sending out gallon-plastic-bag after gallon-plastic-bag of Christmas cookies (ritz crackers with peanut butter enrobed in chocolate or, my favorite, butterscotch) to family members, gifting us all massive rolls of toilet paper for Christmas (the pragmatic side I would grow to appreciate later on, when I too became an adult). Grandma Pippin was also famous for her flea market-level yearly garage sales, which would take about 600 hours to set up and made actual real money.
“I just feel weak,” she confessed from her bed last time we saw her. Indeed, even after days in bed sleeping almost 24/7, dark circles undergirded her eyes. It wasn’t like her to look so tired.
The Survivor episode blared in the background. “I have no idea what they are doing,” Grandma commented, blinking in disbelief as incredibly tan, young, and fit young people worked to slowly pull objects on a rope without losing balance to win immunity or something like that. We all took our eyes off of Grandma and focused on the screen. What a weird, strange, manufactured emergency, simultaneously slow-moving and impossible-not-to-watch. One young woman was ahead of her peers, until she got a little too hasty and one of the objects fell. We all gasped in unison.
Aunt Rene interrupted the TV spell, bursting into the room to cajole Grandma to try a bite of the pizza re-warmed on the plate. She grimaced and put the plate on the bedside table in silent protest. Remembering her sweet tooth, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a huge piece of white cake with white frosting leftover from Alianna’s 11th bday party.
Food had always been a point of contention and control for Grandma Pippin. She had apparently been a life long “Weight Watcher,” although I had almost certainly never seen her have an ounce to lose. She was notorious for taking tiny portions at huge family feasts and moaning at how full she was. (This is a topic for a different blog. The ways in which our human relationships with food are often at odds for our evolutionary need to survive, to nourish and be nourished. The ways in which control and scarcity and hunger are rewarded with “you really look great.”)
I set the cake in front of my dying grandmother. (We are all, of course, dying.) She sat up with interest, picking up the fork with what could almost be perceived as enthusiasm. As she lifted her first bite in days into her mouth she paused, white buttercream dangling precariously, and my visibly gaunt grandmother-in-law said, with a smile, “You took the calories out of this, right?”
At the moment of typing this, Grandma is no longer eating cake at home with Blacky and the TV blaring. She is surrounded by monitors and being given comfort measures only. I like to imagine that there are quiet waves of Christmas music funneling in from the hospital hallways. I like to imagine that in her dreams she alternates between tap dancing away and lovingly punching Gpa in the shoulder for his ridiculous jokes. I know she is meeting this moment of mortality, this moment we all will face, with characteristic spunk and grace.
Last night as I lay down with Alianna, just as her breathing started to even out into sleep, she suddenly turned over. “Momma, I don’t want Grandma Pippin to die.”
“Me neither, baby.”
Alianna was the last of the great grandchildren to still be shorter than Grandma Pippin, a fact that she celebrated and relished. “Don’t you dare pass me up, Alianna,” she would tease, pointer finger out.
“But Momma, I just realized something,” [small sob]. “I’ll never be taller than Grandma Pippin.”
“None of us ever really were, baby,” I said without thinking, kissing the top of her soft forehead. “None of us ever really were.”
Note: Since writing this piece, Grandma Pippin passed away peacefully, just one day after being put in the hospice unit. You can read more about her life and legacy in her obituary here.