JULY 1, 2023 – (Cont.) My thoughts returned to the moment at hand as the driver pulled up to a bus stop. “Here you go,” he said. “You just cross here and climb the hill and on your left you’ll find the hospital.”
Soon I was inside the place. A short time later, I reminded myself that I wasn’t in Minnesota. Most of the staff were people of color, and I saw as much signage in other languages as in English. When I asked a receptionist, a person in the hallway and another at the nurses’ station for directions to Gaga’s room, I encountered people whose mother tongue was definitely not English. As I finally stepped into her room, I chuckled silently at the irony of the setting: here was Gaga, who thought there were “too many dark people” in her world, now surrounded by care-givers who were those same “dark people.”
Gaga lay perfectly still with her eyes closed, and for the first time for me, anyway, she looked as old as every one of her years. UB was on hand and got out of his chair to greet me. “Hi, Uncle Bruce,” I said in a low voice, as I shook his hand.
“Yes, hello,” he said and cleared his throat. “Gaga’s been resting.”
I turned to the bed, leaned over the side rail, peered into her ancient face and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. Her eyes opened but they looked into a distant world.
“Hi, Gaga,” I said softly.
She didn’t say a word, but I heard a faint murmur from her lips. I knew then that she had entered the final scene of her life, her century. I felt no sadness, just awe that this was my grandmother, that she had made it all the way to 100, that she had kept her wits up to just a few days before lying there, taking her last breaths of earth-bound air.
“They put her on a lot of pain-killers,” said UB. “I think she was feeling a lot of pain, so I told the nurses I wanted them to have the doctor write a prescription for [. . .]” In addition to being a self-appointed expert on many other subjects, UB was an established medical doctor—in his aspirations, at least. He ticked off the names of a number of drugs and dosages. I recalled how Gaga had often compared her pain threshold to Grandpa’s.
“Sometimes I think your Grandpa has no nerves,” she would say. “He simply feels no pain. Me? I’m a real sissy when it comes to pain. I can’t stand pain. I don’t want any pain of any kind.”
UB proceeded to describe the events that had led to Gaga’s hospitalization. He said nothing about her prospects, but to himself, he must have acknowledged reality on some level. By all observations—mine and the rest of the family’s—Gaga had been UB’s principal object of affection for many years. If UB’s appearances there in the hospital room showed no sadness, I knew that inside he must be waging quite a struggle.
Just then a very black, a very big and tall, male nurse or nurse’s aid entered the room to look at a chart hanging on the bed. UB took full advantage of the opportunity. “Say, I think we want to check on that dosage of [pretzel-hide-a-zone] that Dr. Markel prescribed this morning. He said 25 milligrams, but I think maybe we can get away with 15.”
“Huh?” said the black man dressed all in white.
“I think maybe we want to re-evaluate the dosage of [pretzel-hide-a-zone] that we’re prescribing for the patient.”
“Ah, yes, mon. I’ll check with the doctor.”
When the man left the room, I drew the chair to Gaga’s bedside. While I sat there, her hand in mine, UB paced behind me. Without thinking, I turned my head just before he pivoted to retrace his steps. I saw his backside—the rubber-soled shoes, the soiled, seer-sucker suit with a coat of stripes of one dimension and trousers of quite another, the janitor-style key-chain, loaded with a gazillion keys, hanging from his belt and the crumpled, pork-pie hat atop his head, pushed forward just enough to reveal the space between his real grey-flecked hair and his going-orange toupee. Quite the medical doctor, I thought.
A while later, a chaplain stepped tentatively into the room. He was dressed in black except for his white, cleric collar. I guessed by his face and white hair that he was in his sixties. His meek appearance did not afford him any deduction of years. He cleared his throat softly and spoke. “Would you like a prayer here?” he asked.
His quiet, modest inquiry brought a swift and astonishing reaction. Gaga snapped straight out of her delirium and opened her eyes as wide as if she had just spotted a triple-word-score bonus opening for Q-U-A-N-D-A-R-Y on a Scrabble board.
“No,” she said, as clear as day. “We’re atheist.” With that, her eyes closed and she returned to her world in delirium.
We’re? I thought. As a man of faith at the time, I didn’t know what to think or say. Neither did the chaplain. With his black, brimmed hat literally in his hands, he stepped backwards, slowly, one black shoe at a time. “Uh, okay,” he mumbled.
“That’s not quite correct,” said UB, raising his finger in the air, as he stopped his pacing and took two quick steps toward the doorway. I was dumbfounded, as was the chaplain, whose feet made a dead stop. What possible thought had just exploded inside UB’s mind? The world itself seemed to lock its breath.
I’ll never forget UB’s next words: “We’re neutral.”
I had always wondered about UB’s thoughts on the subject of God, faith, and religion, and now I had my answer. Not surprising, really; in fact, entirely consistent with the baffling complexity of UB’s whole being. The chaplain was not about to play the role of theologian. He disappeared down the hallway. I wondered if he had any idea that Gaga was all of 100. I wondered what he would have thought had he known that in contrast to my mother’s super faith and hyper-religiosity, her mother, this aged woman, this person in extremis had long professed her non-belief in God, in any kind of Creator, in religion. I wondered what he thought about UB’s agnosticism. And I wondered about my own faith.
Mother, to her credit, had never agonized over Gaga’s non-belief, never harangued, never proselytized, never attempted to influence Gaga’s thinking about matters of faith, though I have to believe, if I believe, any more, that anything is certain, that Mother must have prayed mightily for Gaga’s soul. And likewise, much to Gaga’s credit, she never belittled Mother’s belief, never questioned it, never argued about it, never judged her for it, except to say, “I think in your Mother’s case, religion has done a lot of good.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
