Ave Atque Vale - Grandma Holmes, 1916-2019

Every day, the rolls of the dead expand, never to be shrunk again.

I am fortunate to have gone as long as I have knowing personally only a few such entries. My friend from childhood who got killed in a nightclub. My family friend who died in a diving accident. My other grandma, twenty years ago. My uncle, whom I only saw every few years, because he and my Dad didn't really get along.

And now, alas, you.

The world must be a strange place when you get sufficiently old. Every friend you had from childhood is dead. All your peers from work and school are dead. In fact, the only people still alive that you spent any sizable fraction of your life with are necessarily at least a generation removed from you. How many people form lifelong friendships with those twenty to thirty years their junior? Not very many. So who's going to still come calling?

In other words, all that is left is family.

One of the great joys of talking to you in your later years was you being the repository of all family news and lore. I could find out immediately by talking to you the latest news from my cousins, or aunt, or even my parents. It was wonderful. You'd always have endless questions about how my life was going, and what I was up to. But not just in a general "tell me some stuff" sense. Rather, it was specific questions about the details of my recent life events that you'd heard about from Mum or my brother or someone else, and you wanted to know more about how they were unfolding. It was very touching, and made me feel embarrassed at my conversational tendency to just tell stories and grandstand during conversation, rather than interestedly just ask people about their lives and listen to an answer. I tend to treat this phase as a prelude to "let's exchange some great and fun stories and witticisms". Talking with you made me realize how self-centered this must come across as.

Getting old is somewhat like getting drunk, or perhaps like being a small child. You find out that the ability and willingness to mask and master one's impulses in order to achieve social ends in fact requires quite large cognitive resources. When people get old, they lose a lot of their inhibitions. Whatever they have in them just tends to come out. Some people become lecherous old people. Some people become angry, or pontificating. And some people just become endlessly sweet and easy-going. You were in the last category. Everyone loved you deeply. I literally don't remember anyone saying a bad word about you, which is true for very few people I know.

Modernity being what it is, when someone is described as being "a product of their time", this is usually meant in a pejorative sense. It mostly means that they failed to be on board with the latest particular societal preoccupations. But you were truly a product of your time in a way that's much less remarked on, and reflects poorly on our utterly narcissistic modern world. Namely, there was a strong sense that one shouldn't complain or be an imposition on those around you, because life wasn't just about you. Naturally, this made everyone around you want to look after you and provide for you as much as they could. The closest I ever heard to you complaining was recently when recounting a heart attack a few days earlier. "It was very distressing," you remarked, when asked about the specific incident. This made me realize how bad it was, that this was the only indication you gave that you genuinely thought you were dying. But a few days later when I saw you again, you were doing well, in your account. It made me think about the writings of Theodore Dalrymple:

No culture changes suddenly, and the elderly often retained the attitudes of their youth. I remember working for a short time in a general practice in a small country town where an old man called me to his house. I found him very weak from chronic blood loss, unable to rise from his bed, and asked him why he had not called me earlier. “I didn’t like to disturb you, Doctor,” he said. “I know you are a very busy man.”

From a rational point of view, this was absurd. What could I possibly need to do that was more important than attending to such an ill man? But I found his self-effacement deeply moving. It was not the product of a lack of self-esteem, that psychological notion used to justify rampant egotism; nor was it the result of having been downtrodden by a tyrannical government that accorded no worth to its citizens. It was instead an existential, almost religious, modesty, an awareness that he was far from being all-important.

I experienced other instances of this modesty. I used to pass the time of day with the husband of an elderly patient of mine who would accompany her to the hospital. One day, I found him so jaundiced that he was almost orange. At his age, it was overwhelmingly likely to mean one thing: inoperable cancer. He was dying. He knew it and I knew it; he knew that I knew it. I asked him how he was. “Not very well,” he said. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I replied. “Well,” he said quietly, and with a slight smile, “we shall just have to do the best we can, won’t we?” Two weeks later, he was dead.

I often remember the nobility of this quite ordinary man’s conduct and words. He wanted an appropriate, but only an appropriate, degree of commiseration from me; in his view, which was that of his generation and culture, it was a moral requirement that emotion and sentiment should be expressed proportionately, and not in an exaggerated or self-absorbed way. My acquaintance with him was slight; therefore my regret, while genuine, should be slight. (Oddly enough, my regret has grown over the years, with the memory.) Further, he considered it important that he should not embarrass me with any displays of emotion that might discomfit me. A man has to think of others, even when he is dying.

As Mum noted, you always said you wanted to pass away in your sleep, so as to not be a burden on those around you. You got your wish, with your daughter sleeping in the next room.

We shall miss you very much. This has been a salutary lesson in humility. One fancies oneself that years of Buddhist reading and contemplation of impermanence will make one calmly accept the mortality of loved ones with equanimity and contemplation. And then one finds out that, after all, one is more like everyone else than one suspected.

But Buddhism is indeed consolation. In times like these, I often reflect on the Maha-parinibbana Sutta, recounting the last days of the Buddha. The incomparable teacher had told all the monks three months ahead of time that he would soon pass away and achieve his final parinibbana. To make matters worse, the Buddha had not appointed any successor to take over in his stead. The uncertainty and misery surrounding their future must have been extraordinary. Not only were they losing a beloved teacher, but also all sense of certainty as to what would happen to the Sangha, the order of monks. How ought one go on, in such a time?

And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.

...

Then, when the Blessed One had passed away, some bhikkhus, not yet freed from passion, lifted up their arms and wept; and some, flinging themselves on the ground, rolled from side to side and wept, lamenting: "Too soon has the Blessed One come to his Parinibbana! Too soon has the Happy One come to his Parinibbana! Too soon has the Eye of the World vanished from sight!"

But the bhikkhus who were freed from passion, mindful and clearly comprehending, reflected in this way: "Impermanent are all compounded things. How could this be otherwise?"

Indeed, how could it be otherwise?