These Eternal Moments
By: Bradley J Nordell
Tags: Loss, Poetry, Nonfiction, Life Lessons, Short Story

These Eternal Moments

The deaths that bring us together

Photo by Denchik on Unsplash

I held my grandmother’s hand as she lay there — the spirit of an Irish woman, now but a death rattle. I couldn’t stop the tears.

In life, she was always moving, traveling, helping people, or dancing. I remembered watching her and my grandfather dancing one night at the Ralston American Legion. The club smelled of fried chicken and cheap beer. Smoke and music filled the room in a thick dreamlike haze, but in the center, they were the focal point in each other’s orbit swinging majestically. “Faster!” She cried, and he turned her around. We all clapped as she laughed. “Keep up, babe!” He said, but in truth, I think he was saying it himself, for nobody could keep up with her. I had never seen him smile as he did at that moment. He seemed so young. But with her, the impossible became possible — past sorrow transformed into future joy.

That was before the first round of cancer came. But even with that, she still danced in front of death and laughed. Nothing could get her spirit down.

But the last diagnosis was different. The smile on his face had finally departed. And she stopped dancing. Her spirit dwindled with a heaviness she now had to bear. A truth that she did not speak of, but you saw it in her faded eyes — once emerald, now moss gray.

As I sat by her side, thinking how wrong it was that she was so still and glass-like. It was an unjust ending, but aren’t they all?

Next to her sat my grandfather in a creaky chair. His face was ghastly pale as if he were turning transparent. That smile, he once held, now but a lost memory. He was brittle. Each of her gasps for air chipped away at him. Soon he would be a pile of bricks that once composed a house. His eyes, too, were spinning as if a merry-go-round would never let him off. As if he would be stuck here at this moment forever — his was not his first loss, nor would it be his last.

I kept wondering if he was pondering those unvisited graves of his past? He showed sadness in the tremble of his hands. He buried his first wife, two of his sons, and now the love of his life. He was a broken man. The greatest of poets could not describe his lament — or anyone sitting in that room for that matter. For this moment was beyond the words smeared upon the page. But I’m a writer, and I had to try to grasp the ineffable, even when my fingers bleed.

All I could do was cry, tears filled with decades of confused anger. I hated it. I spent my life fearing endings like this. For this was an ending I couldn’t rewrite, only watch it play out. Death makes us powerless. Death makes us chase white rabbits in Narnia.

I leaned over, brushing the hair out her face, staring into sightless eyes as she struggled with her next cycle of labored breaths. Soon, the final spin of the great wheel would arrive. Not yet, I begged time to stop flowing for just a moment — secret prayers to neuronal gods.

“Thank you for your love and light,” I said, words cracked by the lump in my throat and the boulder in my heart.

I remember the nights she read me stories of Celtic myths and tales, reading as if they were real. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. The mind is an endless thing of magic. Maybe she was teaching me that even in death, a person doesn’t end — that is where Celtic magic resides, in love and helping people. As a lifetime nurse, she was always helping people in need. And at that moment, I could hear her motto, “have you helped someone today?” echoing in the quiet room. A motto that I, too, live by even to this day. I just wish I could have helped her at that moment. Some paths, though, we have to travel alone.

Before my grandfather and her met, this family was adrift in space through grief and loss and unfathomable darkness of alcoholic endowments. We were a group of people breaking in time, hiding thousand-pound secrets in dusty closets. And when she came along, she gave us an orbit to follow. She gave us the glue to piece together those broken vases. She planted irises in the garden, and they bloomed. She helped us — a bright star in a dark sky for this family.

But even when stars die, they leave behind their dust of eternal secrets and seeds to new life.

I needed to believe I will see her again, but every part of me knew this was the great lie we told ourselves. We all do in the bitter end when the clocks of life wear down, even as we reach out for that timeless moment — longing to hear the comforts of those ticks and tocks. We cling to any idea when we are falling into the great oblivion. It’s only natural. I needed to think I would see all those that we lost in life. To tell them I miss them. To give them words I could never write, and days I wished to have again. I begged to steal just one more moment out of time’s empty basket — but I didn’t want to be a thief, so I sat there and felt it all, and I didn’t run.

I couldn’t leave her side. I’m a caregiver, made to comfort those I love through the darkest hells. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder: my father’s. He bent down, leaning over her face, whispering, “your son is on his way, he’ll be here soon.”

We all knew what she was holding on for.

I left her side, following my dad back to my wife, siblings, and mother. Others come to say their goodbyes. We sat in silence, sharing that mortal truth between each other. The reaper’s whispers unspoken but always felt, for this was his dominion, but our love kept him at the door.

At least, for now, it did.

Then the songs came — sorrow filtered through melodic goodbyes. Words of Rare old Dublin, Danny boy, Black Velvet Band, and all those Celtic songs you held so dear. We sang with our hearts, knowing somehow she could hear us. That within her mind, her spirit soared among Éirinn’s green lands again.

Do the clocks still tick in these moments? Does the grass know to lay a bed for her?

Then, at last, her son walked through the door. Eyes red, body trembling, he’s by her side. I don’t know what he said to her. It was not for us to know. A final goodbye only a mother can understand, and a son must bear. There are not enough tears to wash away the stains of time, I thought to myself in that fragile moment.

Then she was gone — a silent scream in the chambers of our hearts. The portal, which was the thin membrane between the realms of life and death, had finally closed. I never felt so cold.

The bed was just a bed again. The room, once a doorway for her, was now but a hospice room once more — wood and plaster, fake lilac scented aroma to disguise the actual smell. No heater could warm this room. But this family held the spirit of her passing like a flame of love that not even the waters of Styx could douse.

Because of her, we are stronger. Because of her, we still sing. We share the memories always as one.

I don’t understand death. I never will. But I do know that those we lose become our stories that we carry through life. They become anthems to our spirit, and the only thing we can do is sing to the wind and tell others their truths and beauty and bliss and memories. They become us. And in it, we are transformed through grief, love, remembrance, and the beauty in sharing these eternal moments. It’s what connects us all in the cosmos. The human condition bound to mourn and rise again from the ash we sprinkle upon these undying lands. We are all family. And these timeless stories never end.