I have never experienced death before – everyone that has been close to me was alive and well. Until November 30th 2015. I had just taken my French final exam when I got a call from my aunt. In a trembling voice she said, “has anyone called you about Grammy?” I stop mid-step in the busy University hallway, almost holding my breath I reply no. She is in the hospital, she isn’t breathing, at this moment my current reality melted away and I was suspended in nothingness. My ears began to buzz and a sense of dread slithered down my spine. Sitting in the parking lot of Savannah State University my mind was racing. I called Kendall, talking a mile a minute trying to fit fact and emotions into one breath of words. **Click ** I have to get it together. “She’ll be fine”, I kept telling myself . Calm, my mom calls me asking me to keep everyone in the loop when I got the hospital because everyone lived at least 8 hours away. The drive to hospital seemed long which isn’t normal in Savannah, GA where mostly everything this is a 10 mile radius. “She will be fine”, a phrase of comfort I keep replaying in the depth of my mind.
The receptionist in the hospital walked me back to emergency room 4. My grandfather was sitting in a chair a few feet away from the room’s entryway. His face was sunken with exhaustion and although his face seemed positive his energy proved otherwise. He gave me a hug and motioned for me to follow him outside. I was unprepared for what came next. His face squirmed and squished until his emotions burst out of him. Tears fell down his cheeks and sorrow sang from his vocals. My first instinct was to hug him tightly. Holding my grandfather I knew what the future held and my heart broke.
The door to her room was cracked open, I could see whispers of busy-bee doctors working on my grandmother. I could see her body jerking and jolting as they were trying to revive her with CPR. Nurses circulated in and out of the room, some smiling some not – I hated the ones who smiled. The doctor came and told us they got her back, she was breathing but the road wasn’t easy. They transferred her to the ICU but we weren’t allowed to see her. They forced my grandfather and I to sit in the waiting room. There were two vending machines on the back wall; couches and chairs that crowded the remaining walls; a mounted TV playing terrible afternoon soap operas; and the slight smell of urine. We sat in there, not talking, eyes staring off into the distance trying not to think about the fatal future.
I held my grandfather’s hand, squeezing it so tight that my knuckles turned white. Finally in the ICU there she was. My glamorous Grammy bed ridden with tubes jammed down her nose and throat. It all seemed unreal. “Frances”, my grandfather rubbed her head and called her name. As I look upon her face I could tell she was already gone. She didn’t respond to his touch or is words. The noises started again, the piercing, beeping and chiming of all the machines that crowded the room. Nurses rushed in and pushed us out. “This will be the third time we have tried to resuscitate her. If she didn’t come back from this one and we have to keep trying she will be have major brain damage. Would you want us to stop or continue?” My grandfather calmly told him to stop if she didn’t come back. My eyes drifted from their conversation and back into the room. There she was again jerking and jolting as they pressed all their weight on her chest. Then I heard it – the sounds of blood in her throat gurgling as they inhaled and exhaled for her. Eleven minutes passed and the doctor came out to my grandfather. “Stop,” he said and the doctor acknowledged his request. My body folded into itself and I collapsed into the chair outside the doorway. I picked up my phone and called my mom, and two aunts on a conference call, “she is gone”. My mom kept asking me to repeat myself because I couldn’t bring my voice above a whisper. I felt if I whispered that maybe I would be wrong, maybe everything I witnessed.. I comprehended would be wrong. But my mom kept asking me to repeat myself, until I couldn’t say anything else.
This day November 30th 2015 was not supposed to be the day my Grammy passed. She was a woman who loved me when no one else did. This day was supposed to be the day I was almost finished with my second semester of my sophomore year of college. It was supposed to be the day that my daughter came back home from her dad’s house. It was supposed to be the day I went to work and talked craziness with my co-workers. Instead, however, it was the day I kissed my Grammy’s caramel toned forehead for the last time. I wasn’t prepared for this, less than 24-hours before, her and I were driving back to Savannah after attending a wedding in Myrtle Beach. 48 hours before that she was doing the wobble with me on the dance floor in her grey suede high-heel boots. 72-hours prior to that she was telling me how proud of me she was. I wasn’t prepared for this.
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Samantha Halle
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