New Year's Eve
Jadyne and I spent the last four hours with Graeme and Eve. Eve is Jadyne’s first cousin, a wonderful woman who, with Graeme, lives only a couple of miles away from us. We see them often for wine and cheese.
Graeme is Australian. In the sixties he lived in London and brought in a number of Indian musicians to play in England. The Beatles were into Indian music then, too, and Graeme spent one Christmas with George Harrison. He remembers Paul McCartney coming over with the first tapes of Magical Mystery Tour. Graeme and Eve met later. They have been married for about fifty years.
Eve is the youngest of eight of Jadyne’s first cousins from one family. Two weeks ago we went to her brother Richie’s funeral. Richie was the youngest boy; Eve, the youngest girl. Of all the "kids" we probably know her best.
Eve and Graeme traveled a lot, mostly to Asia. Graeme has been to India dozens of times. We met him over there when we went two years ago. He still loves the culture and the music.
A month or so ago Eve and Graeme were in Laos. Eve wasn’t enjoying the trip because she had severe back pain. When they returned to the US Eve wanted to see a doctor. She discovered that she had a non-treatable cancer that had rapidly spread from her back to everywhere throughout her body.
We spent most of today with her. She came home from the hospital two days ago because there was nothing anyone could do for her there. She’s under hospice care, knows the prognosis, and is ready to go.
Daisy, Eve, and Graeme
While we've been there Eve's surviving brother and two sisters have come by. At 77 Eve is the youngest. Her oldest sister, Corrine is in her mid-nineties and is unable to visit.
Here's Eve with Lian. We went to Lian's surprise 80th birthday party about ten years ago. Her husband, Joe, died a few years ago. She sold her five story house in Point Richmond with views of all the Bay bridges last year and moved to a duplex with her son Mark, who became a paraplegic after a swimming accident years ago. Lian is a good friend, too. She gave me a hug when she left and said, "I'm going to miss her so."
Of the four boys only Larry is left. He was a dentist, but in his teen years he was a movie star. His name was “Ducky Louie”, and if you click on the link you can see at least four movies that he was in. We watched “Back to Bataan” 1945 with Anthony Quinn, John Wayne, and of course, Ducky Louie. Ducky dies in John Wayne’s arms.
Larry, Eve, and Graeme
Graeme can’t spend more than a few minutes with Eve without breaking down. She had asked him to tell her a story, but he couldn’t get through it. He started, "Once upon a time..." and so it went.
Eve and I shared a love for the Beatles. She would send me links to any news that she found on the Internet. If a John Lennon letter was up for auction, she let me know. If Paul McCartney was going vegan, Eve knew. I brought my guitar over, sat by her bedside and played all the songs I knew by heart. Eve was lucid then and requested, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."
January 3. Three days later. Eve has been "sleeping" for the past two days. When her sister Jeanette came by yesterday Eve was unresponsive. Another hug. More tears. Jadyne and I are going over this afternoon.
Two days ago I asked Lians' daughter Kim, a physician, how long Eve had to live. "I wouldn't be surprised if she passed today," she said. When a patient has the opportunity to say goodbyes and to be ready to die, then it can be at anytime." Eve has had those chances. She's ready to go. We spent another two hours with Eve. Her breathing is uneven with breaks as long as eight seconds between breaths. We're watching someone die. Tomorrow I have cataract sugery on my right eye, so we'll be unable to be there. I don't know if there will be a there there.
My sister-in-law posted this on Facebook on New Year's Day:
"In these final hours of 2017 I am reminded how beautifully everything is both a beginning and an end; how we can’t have one without the other and how there is magic in both. To all who read this, may your hearts flood to overflowing with gratitude for this wondrous life."
I wrote back to her saying how hard it was to find the magic in Eve's suffering.
Sean wrote,
"It’s there, David… The magic. It is there.
Magic doesn’t mean no suffering, no sorrow, no broken hearts.
It means that in every thing that ends, something begins and in every beginning, something ends.
It’s easier usually to be a labor coach for a woman who is delivering a baby than it is to be a labor coach for a woman who may be doing the work of dying because in the end of a birth, when things go well, there is a healthy mother and a new life to boot. But in dying all there is, is the loss of someone in the only way we’ve ever known them. And brokenness for the ones who loved her best. And triggers and landmines for a lifetime of losses that all come to beg their due when we are most vulnerable.
And in the dying part of our living we don’t normally have guides and doulas and cheerleaders telling us what to do or reassuring us that we are doing a great job.
So tell her. Hold her closest loved ones in their sorrow and fear. Savor what she will teach you in her dying and don’t even try to look for the magic.
Just trust that it is there…."
January 10th. Before Eve died on Saturday she called out Graeme's name.
Eve was cremated. Sunset cemetery opened a square of grass and dirt about 1' square. Graeme poured her ashes in next to the graves of her mother and father.