A last supper

The night of my grandmother's death, we ordered Chinese. It seemed only right. A person should have what they love on their last night. Or at least the air of what they love, which, in my grandmother's case, was the scent of the sweet gingery brown sauce that coats a plate of chicken with mixed vegetables. It was 10 pm and her eyes were closed. Her hands limp. Her head lay tilted to the right side, propped up on a pillow. She’d stopped eating three days ago. She hadn’t had a drink in several hours. Air was all that was left.

Baba was 94 years old. We’d bought a house and moved in together two years ago. Before that we lived in a two-family, Baba on the top floor because, as she said, she liked living up amongst the trees.

Over the past seven years, she’d gone from pushing her cart around the local Price Chopper – it took her about an hour to gather her weekly collection of store-brand pineapple yogurt, Friendship cottage cheese, frozen bagels, rye bread if it was on sale, bananas, and, always, tomatoes – to walking only if she could reach one of the strategically placed stacks of old Smithsonian magazines that she had scattered around the house. About three years ago, even that became too difficult. We got a special chair that could recline into a bed, and this was where she spent her days and nights. Her legs could no longer support her thin frame for more than a few minutes, but somehow I thought of this more as a technical difficultly than anything related to her core being.

Baba, it seemed to me, had little interest in death and dying.

She read two daily newspapers and the New Yorker cover to cover. She played dress up with my three children. She savored my cooking, which made me happier than she knew. She had good days and bad days, she could be mean, and kind, and elusive, and funny. And curious. Insatiably curious. She had opinions about Hillary and Obama and spittle for George W. Bush.

She did make a point to speak with our Rabbi on a few occasions. But even these conversations were more focused on telling stories about her life than on detailed funeral plans or deep pondering of the hereafter. She never sat me down for a talk about what life would be like after she was gone. When her caregivers gathered to discuss logistics – Baba had to sign a DNR, we were going to keep her home till the end, we would call hospice when needed – her death seemed theoretical at most.

I was pretty sure she was going to live forever. This was not an uncommon view. My mother was convinced of it. And, I think on most days, so was my grandmother. When the flu swept through the house she would watch from her chair as the rest of us ran back and forth to the bathroom. She was the only one who could face dinner. My two bouts of strep throat? Nothing. Her eternal life was the reality that both comforted and haunted me for the seven years that I had been caring for her.

Some people spend years on death. My grandmother took three days. On Friday evening she seemed withdrawn and when company stopped by she had little interest in visiting, which was rare for her. On Saturday morning, she had a fever and although she could understand everything that was said to her, she couldn’t find more than a few words. Her left eye was droopy and her left arm weaker than usual. She watched me with her right eye and held me with her gaze. Her eyes had always been the most expressive part of her face, and now I knew from the way she looked at me that this was serious.

Baba’s doctor arrived. Maybe it was pneumonia. Maybe antibiotics would work as they had in the past. We would know in 24 hours.

A hospital bed arrived midday, and we moved her to it. My mother and I sat with her through the night.

By Sunday morning we knew. We switched Baba’s medication to morphine. We stopped trying to get her drink. We gave her whatever she wanted, but we forced nothing.

Baba knew. Her gaze changed again. It grew stronger, deeper, more naked, until it was the soul-diving stare of a newborn. We spend an hour on Sunday afternoon looking at each other. One of my 5-year-old daughters climbed in bed with Baba and gave her Pinky, a fluffy pink bear that seemed to offer comfort. Baba held it close.

At one point, Baba raised her right arm and waved me over to her side. She lifted her chin, as was her way when she was going to say something important. She'd been a speech therapist and an actress for most of her adult life. Until this weekend, everything I'd ever heard her say had been enunciated with her unpretentious eloquence. She smiled and squeezed my hand.

"Thank you for everything," she said, her voice clear.

"Thank you," I said, my voice not clear at all.

I'm not a person given to stability, but what little solid earth I feel under my feet comes from Baba. She was our family's backstop, there when marriages fell apart and money was gone and children needed a roof and food. There with lamb stew and stories. There with books, and words, and history. And Chinese food to mark life's big moments: graduations, homecomings, new babies. Most family occasions found us around the back table at Ichiban, her favorite restaurant and the place she chose to go the last time she felt strong enough to leave the house.

My grandmother loved takeout Chinese food in a way that only Jewish ladies of a certain age can. Often when we ordered it, we would take our plates into her room and sit on the floor around her feet so that we could enjoy the meal together. We called those nights our Baba picnics.

In the last year, if she wasn't feeling well, or she seemed depressed, or if she had been waving away my dinner offerings with a somewhat queenly toss of her hand, I knew that it was time to call Ichiban and order. The smell of pork wontons and chicken and broccoli, and greasy, soy-sauce laden fried rice would waft toward her and she'd poke her nose up into the air, give a few dramatic sniffs in one direction, then a few more in another. Then she'd chuckle at her own humor and all would be well again.

But deep into Sunday night, there was no quick fix to be had, no comfort we could find to ease her pain. We gave her morphine. It wasn't enough. She was scared. It was hard to breathe. She struggled with the oxygen tube the doctor had ordered. She had something she wanted to say. She tried to tell my mother, but she couldn't find the words.

By morning we had increased the morphine enough to give her some peace. We took off the oxygen tube. She could understand us, but she couldn't speak. She no longer wanted to try and drink. The day passed quietly. People came and wept and went. By late afternoon her eyes had closed. We gathered the children around her bed. We held hands and prayed. It was time to say good-bye.

The sun set. The kids went to bed, and my mother and I stayed by her side.

My grandmother's breath was jagged, a deep pull, then shallow, then nothing at all. I would watch her chest stop moving and find myself holding in my own air, tight. The moments would pass. Were we here? No one was pretending anymore that this was anything other than what it was. Her last hours. I watched her face and knew that her eyes would not open again. That part, the twinkling wit, was already over. I watched. I knew. But, still, it didn't seem possible. No one was pretending. This was death. We were here. And yet, and yet, it didn't seem real.

We waited. And watched. And waited. There was nothing left to do. My mom and I realized that neither of us had eaten much in the last few days. All of a sudden we were hungry. It was after 9 pm on a Monday night. Chinese food. Of course, we should get Chinese food.

I called Chef Peter at CCK. Please bring food, I said, my grandmother is dying. Thick and chewy chow fun, a big container of gingery greens, and something with beef for my husband, and, I don't know, what ever else you think might be good.

Then I went upstairs to tuck my 7-year-old son into bed. He was awake with questions. When exactly did we know she wasn't going to get better? How could we tell? It was as if he was trying to master the details, as if that would make it all make sense. I could feel his shoulders shaking.

The doorbell rang.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Chinese food," I said. "Would you like to get up and have one more picnic with Baba?"

"Yes," he said.

We filled our bowls with the steaming food and gathered downstairs around her bed. My son, my husband, me, and my mother. We talked and told stories and even a few jokes. The room smelled like ginger and black bean sauce. My chest untightened.

After the meal, my husband went to sleep and my son decided to stay with me and my mother at Baba's side. After about 10 minutes, the air in the room shifted. We stopped talking.

Baba's chin and chest rose up and we heard her take in a full breath. Then she let out a deep sigh, and her chest fell, heavy. We looked at her for a moment and then something passed through each of us. We all heaved forward and burst into sobs. We held each other and cried, not the silent tears that had been rolling down my cheeks for days, but a throat-ripping, open-chested release. She was gone.

An hour later my brother and his son arrived on a plane from California. He had missed her. I brought him back to the house and warmed him up a plate of leftovers.

"Chinese food," I said.

He settled in, and then he went downstairs to sit next to Baba's bed while there was still time.