Letting Go

I was 13 when I watched my first soul depart. My father had called all of the kids into my grandmother’s room. The bedroom smelled of orange blossoms, scented from Großmutter’s favorite cologne from Mexico. She lay motionless in the single bed in her thin flannel night dress. Her skin was pale, porcelain blue, and her eyes were peacefully closed—wooden rosary beads wrapped around her soft hands.

Mom sat on the twin bed in the room, wrapped in her kimono-style robe, made from the silk Dad brought her from Japan. Mom had been sleeping in her mother’s room for the last week, knowing this moment was soon.
Her eyes never lifted when we entered the room. I watched my dead grandmother’s spirit sitting on the bed with Mom, holding her. My mother was the small child in the room, trying to keep her tears from flowing into a river of sorrow. My grandmother’s spirit present was caring for her youngest child.

Both were oblivious to us; five children crowded into the room, staring at the lifeless body in the bed. Dad asked us to kiss Großmutter (Grandmother-German) goodbye. I did. Her skin was cool against my lips.

I touched her hand. The frail, arthritic fingers clenched with bony knots held her rosary. She warded off her pain by fingering the beads day and night, surrendering her prayers to God.
It was the only rosary she used. “The Pope blessed it,” she reminded us often.

Our grandmother had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, passing through Rome en route. The only item she returned home with was this wooden rosary. That was years earlier. The beads are worn, from her fingers counting each Hail Mary and Our Father prayed. Großmutter had said hundreds of Novenas and had countless hours of intimate conversations with The Blessed Mother. I never heard Großmutter ask anything for herself.
Always, her prayers were for others.

I watched my grandmother’s soft outline of her spirit with Mom. I saw her kiss Mom lightly, and then Großmutter faded, her soul slowly retreating from the room. I knew her angels had retrieved her and taken her home — to Heaven. Großmutter faithfully believed in the Catholic Church and its teachings of Heaven. The Holy Father would care for her. We were all taught this. So, in silence, I prayed for Großmutter as I watched her fade away.
“Please, God, hear my prayer. Please hold her tight. Take all her pain away. Let her be rewarded in your home.”
Mom asked us to kneel in the room. And with that, she began the rosary, all of us responding in prayer together.

As we prayed, I listened to the deep, sorrowful breaths of my grandfather, Abuelito, crying in his room. He was alone now; though we were in the house, my Abuelito was alone.

I didn’t know what I felt; I was too young to understand. How could I describe the emotions churning within my heart?

Mom’s, Dad’s, my siblings, and my thoughts merged in a kaleidoscope filled with multi-faceted broken glass. My eyes opened, and I watched unfamiliar pain swirling around my grandmother’s bedroom.

Mom’s shoulders slumped under the weight of her loss. There was nothing we could do as her tears softly slipped down her cheeks.

Her tears embedded into my gut like stone shards, slicing my insides. Each was a cast-off of her extraordinary love.

I didn’t know what to do with this sensation. What is it? I felt as alone as my grandfather. I had nowhere to turn, no adult to tell me this was normal or not; what was this — this pain?

The first decade of beads was completed. But Mom could no longer hold back her sorrow.

“Come on, kids,” Dad encouraged us. “Say goodbye to your mother.”

She hugged each of us and then turned us toward the door. Dad followed us to our house along the brick path beneath the trees. Morning light filtered through their leaves.

Already, it was time to get ready for school— nothing more for us.
I never spoke of what I felt then, what I saw, my Großmutter’s soul holding my mother. I saw no point. Mom was in her thoughts, withdrawn and exhausted from caring for so many every day and then losing her mother.
Dad took us to school that morning. There were no words from him either. Only, “Your mother will need your help when you get home.” He, too, was at a loss. Our mom, his only love, was hurting, and nothing he could do would lessen her pain.

Letting go, watching my grandmother’s spirit sit beside my mother, hold her, and then fade away was the first of many shared deaths I would experience.