"Just call me Flo"

Guy's step-grandma just died. she chose to. she has been sick for years, on oxygen for five...and then she got worse this past Christmas Eve. She went to the hospital and the family followed. They called, they waited for something to happen, they left. She was told she was dying and if she so desired she could go home and have hospice help.

an ambulance took her home.

her name was Flo.

On the East Coast grandmothers are called "Mom Mom." On the West they are called "Grandmother", "Grandma" or "Grammy." In the Deep South, where i began, it is "Grandmama." When i first met guy's Mom Mom Flo, and she gave me my first christmas card (we weren't married yet, so i got my own), she wrote, "Just call me Flo." i took that to heart and called her Flo for the next 4 visits. guy told me she meant what she said so i did it.

Flo chose to have her oxygen mask removed by her son two days ago. forgive me if it was three, i'm not thinking straight.

Her son, my step-father-in-law (by name only, i feel he is fully my father-in-law and that i have two), removed her mask and then he and guy's mom sat with her until she stopped breathing. the very thought puts a huge lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. can you imagine? can you imagine the love he had for her that he put aside for her sake? so selfless. what i would do in the same position, passed through my mind as i talked to my mom about it. we said, "would we have done that for grandmama?" i said, "yes, mom. we would." and she agreed.

guy is home with his lovely family. they have had their troubles like any family, but they all pulled through and came out the other end together. love and effort does this. faith does this. guy is there now and they are just spanning time together, enjoying each other as always, joking and laughing and going through her stuff. packing stuff up...they're together. all of them on this.

i wish i had that. a family that pulled through tough times and came out the other end stronger, and more closely knit than ever, fully together. they support each other.

so, guy is in baltimore and with his family and they are dealing with a loss together. he said one morning they woke up and went to her house which is on the same property as his parents' and sister and brother-in-law's. they started going through stuff. it was morning. they started drinking beer. that's a funny thing for this family to do. guy said, "it was for mom mom flo." that lady liked beer. she offered us a beer every time we visited. so they drank beer together as they went through every thing and they enjoyed those moments, even though it was morning and it's "inappropriate" to drink beer in the morning.

last week, guy had the sudden idea to send her flowers. i was all over it. picking out flowers for someone is so fun! we sat together and picked out stargazer lillies. they smell so good when open. we sent them to her. when she received them she said (something like), "What lovely flowers. Your gift will come to you next week." we wondered, what gift? didn't she send us a Christmas gift already? we didn't know what she meant.

then tuesday night she asked for her oxygen mask to be removed.

today i thought back to the flowers conversation we heard about through guy's mom. i suddenly remembered her saying we would "get our gift next week." that's this week, i thought. then realized. she knew when she wanted to go. how did she know when it would be? and what did she mean by "your present?"

i asked guy this through texting and he wrote, "family." i wrote, "what? that you'd be there and that's your present?" and he wrote, "yes."

this thought tears me up inside. tears me right up the center. her final gift? family being together.

i am so sad that i can't be there too. i wish so badly i could be. guy has the family that my mom expected to have, was her only goal. family together. spanning lives. making memories. going on adventures. being close. all of them. close. i don't have that. my mom works hard to be with my sisters, her grandson and me. she drives 5 hours each way over Donner Pass from Carson City to Napa every other month and stays with my sister in her tiny house that doesn't really accommodate a family beyond three. my "step"-dad has other priorities. he has work and business to take care of. not to mention his battle with the government. that is what is important to him and always has been. our family vacations throughout childhood were about my mom, me, my two sisters, and our grandparents. i don't know how many times we took road trips across the country together. too many to count. we didn't have the money to go out of country on vacations, we just used this one up to the max and it was wonderful. WONDERFUL. i am very lucky that my mom is adventurous or i would have never seen anything beyond my bedroom walls and magazine dreams.

guy has a family. a real one. a full one. all members participate in life together. they go through death together.

when grandmama was dying in extreme pain in the hospital in the NoCal town where i grew up, my mom, my sisters and i slept on the floor of a waiting room for two nights. waiting...waiting...knowing. feeling, but not for-sure knowing that grandmama did not have the strength to make it through heart surgery at 87. turns out her heart had a defect that did not come up on scans of all kinds. she was missing a crucial valve. when the surgeon was in there with her heart on ice, fixing what was wrong and he went to use the valve he needed to use to keep her alive, it wasn't there. it simply wasn't there. he came out of the OR in tears. he told my mother. when the hallway went CODE BLUE, mom says she closed her eyes and spoke to her mother, her dearest companion of her whole life, "It's ok, mama, go home. go home to daddy." and she did.

i had left by then. i couldn't take it. i couldn't take her face twisted up in pain, her teeth grinding together and distorted with tubes everywhere. i couldn't take it that the only thing i could think of to say to her while in the OR was "your hair looks good, grandmama," while knowing how ridiculous the statement was. i left before everyone. i told her, "grandmama, i will be in the next room." a direct lie. an obvious lie. i walked out then and my sister drove me to the ferry that took me home to the city. the next day at 11am on December 6 of 2000, my little sister called me in tears, "she's gone lou. she's gone." and we hung up and i screamed. i yelled. i screamed and yelled over and over because it hurt so much and i hated everything for taking her from me.

no one supported me more throughout my entire 30 years of life than her. it was devastating.

after she died, my mom and i went to my grandparents' house and packed everything up and moved many things to california. we're emotional people. everything means something to us. i got her sofa. the very sofa that my bio-dad had sat on with my bio-grandma and my mom before i was born. i kept it for 6 years. guy moved in then and pointed out that we could be more comfortable. my mom came to our house and got the sofa and it lays in storage to this day. it will never be sold. it will live in my future studio.

we hold on so tight to the material because the real thing is gone and we need it. we miss it so much. them. we need and miss them.

our family pretty much fell apart after that. my mom's brother stopped talking to her for some unknown reason. i stopped talking to my cousins because they breached a pledge of trust to not remove anything from my grandparents' house without my mom's approval.

i hold a grudge. i won't lie.

back to guy's grandma. and his family coming together over this death that impacts their lives tremendously. and how they came together and bonded and span time. and how grateful i am to be considered a part of their family. and how i can't be there with them and they are still thinking of me and tell me they love me and wish i was there.

i leave with this: peace be with you Flo.

xo



(photos above taken by me in the St. Louis Cemetary #1, New Orleans.)