But I've got to tell you, there is something that gets under my skin about the internet advertisement for this place:
It is a convalescent, rehabilitation hospital located a few blocks from Santa Monica Beach. One of the other pictures on the brochure is of the beach. I think the residents probably care pretty little about this lovely feature and something in me cringed at the sales pitch when I heard that my uncle would be going there from the Veteran's Hospital. He never got to the beach, that's for sure, in his four days there.
He died yesterday. He was the last of seven children, the youngest, following the eldest sibling by only three months past death's door.
My aunt had been at his bedside until about two in the afternoon. Angie, his daughter, spoke to him on the telephone at about that same time. I wandered in about three, after having gone to the bank, and grabbed a quick sandwich after Mass, and a parfait I sometimes picked up for my Uncle, which he always seemed to enjoy, a little, though not much healthier that the candy the cancer craved.
I stopped at the reception desk, just to make sure he was in the same room as the one I had seen him in on Friday. The woman looked down and then looked up, a little panic stricken. "Are you a relative?" "Yes," I said, not at that moment expecting the expected. "I'm his niece."
"He passed away a little while ago." As best as I could tell, "a little while ago" was about 2:30.
A sheet was over his face. Just like in the movies. I have now been present at or just after four deaths. This was the first where this had been done. Maybe it was because, though there were curtains around each of the beds, there was one occupant in the room. And it wouldn't be good, I suppose, to mistake my uncle for someone alive--he looked like he was sleeping as he did, with his mouth open.
The reception woman, who had been very kind when she saw my reaction, sudden tears having roiled for a moment asked me, as I brushed his cheek, "Is he still warm?" There was a residual of warmth, but it was turning to cool. I did notice how soft his face was. I remember as I write that uncharacteristic of my own father, perhaps of him as well, though I don't know when I think about it, he had held my hand and arm when I visited on Friday. He had noted that they were soft. I was feeling relatively self congratulatory I had a hard time understanding him when I was there, but was pleased he ate the remaining portion of an apple pie and drank some water.
There wasn't much to do. I prayed. "Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him, may he rest in peace." And an Our Father. If he were alive, he might have objected to these prayers, I don't know, as he was a Jehovah's Witness. And unlike my Christian separated brethren, I believe that Steve could hear me, that he has pierced the Cloud of Unknowing and is not merely in some suspended sleep. I felt a strong affection for him because although as a Witness, he was not permitted or his faith did not permit him to step into a Catholic Church for my father's funeral, he had come with me to the funeral home to say goodbye and to the reception after the service. I think that was a big compromise for him. And that was love.
He and his family were good to me, particularly when I first came to California--I only got to know them when I got here. They let me stay on their couch while I found a job and saved enough for a deposit for the apartment across the street that came up to rent. Many times he did repairs for me. And painting. So much. So often.
He was like all the members of that brood, complicated, a Greek-Italian first generation son of a difficult man whose shadow loomed over them all for their lifetimes, although he died in 1948.
It is the day after. I shall never, I think, return to the convalescent hospital by the beach that my uncle did not get to enjoy during his stay. I shall think of my uncle often, as I think of my father, and Aunt Georgia, and my aunts and uncles who went before them.
I am sad. That much I know. Too much change I am thinking requires many prayers for the Graces of Strength and Stability.
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