Thursday, August 05, 2004

Aujourd'hui maman est morte 

I saw my first dead person today. My mother’s partner, a GP, had to go to sign the death certificate and such for one of his patients who died at home. She was an elderly lady who died of a brain tumor diagnosed just three months ago.


My mother wants me to stay in the car, but I admit a morbid curiosity to see what death looks like in person. We’ve been studying Camus, the absurdity of life and death, after all. Would the sight of a cadaver bring the crushing realisation of my own mortality? I don’t think so. If I’m good at anything, it’s detachment. With the drowsy warmth of the day and the blueness of the sky, I think nothing can dent my good mood.

I am struck by the normality of the house. The front room is strewn with toys, old magazines and ads are piled up in the dining room. The house is full of people talking, walking, some are even laughing. At least half of her twelve children are there, along with some inlaws and grandchildren. They greet the doctor, crowding about him to tell him how it happened. She died peacefully and quickly, they say. She was lucky. And we were lucky, too. Would you believe that our sister was about to leave for America but the flight was delayed? How lucky.

She is lying in a hospital bed. Her body barely makes a contour beneath the blankets and only her face appears above them, white and drawn. A bunch of bananas lies on the blanket, in the vicinity of her stomach. Next to her head is a small tape deck playing tinny Buddhist music, and behind lies a photograph and a bowl with sticks of burning incense. I grip my mother, partly because I know she is thinking of her own mother, partly because I am thinking of her and my grandmothers, mostly because I don’t know what to do with myself. It is ridiculous, but it seems voyeuristic, indecent even, to stare at the body, as if I am violating her privacy. What right have I, a stranger, to look with pity upon a woman who may have been a proud matriarch, a beautiful young woman, or a headstrong girl, once upon a time? Suddenly my shoes seem incredibly fascinating.

In the other room, they are talking about returning her body to Vietnam to be buried with her husband. They talk about vaccinations and accomodation arrangements for the grandchildren who are staying behind and even laugh about getting extra diarrhoea medicine. They ask for compassionate leave notes and arrange appointments with the doctor. I perch on a chair shared with my mother, staring at the Cat-Dog and T-Rex figurines on the cupboard, reading the junk mail, idly cleaning my nails.

The entry of a lanky young man in an ill-fitting black suit is almost unnoticed. It turns out he is from the funeral home. He seeks out the doctor, tells him about the arrangements. One professional to another. I overhear him saying that they must put the woman in a body bag, that this is often unpleasant for the family. I can’t hear whether the doctor translates this for the other family members, but everyone congregates in her room.

The young man signals to his older Polynesian partner, who wheels in a stretcher covered in a velvet red cloth. I see no sign of a body bag from my post at the dining table. There is silence, then I can hear a woman crying. There is a rustle of plastic and the sound of someone pulling up a large zipper, and her cries become louder and louder. My mother cranes her neck to see, and I squeeze her knee in a rebuke, although I don’t quite know why.

The lone weeping has now been joined by a chorus. It is not like on television; they cry unashamedly but matter-of-factly, in regular bursts, moaning at the same time. It is unnervingly similar to hysterical laughter. A mobile phone rings and one of the women crying answers, hiccuping down the line.

The stretcher is covered with the velvet, and they follow it outside as if in a procession. I remain where I am, head bowed, still looking at my shoes. I am not alone. At the foot of the bed, a man stands hiding his face in his arms. People straggle back in, faces slippery with tears. My mother and the doctor try to hold them, pat them on the back. She was lucky to go so peacefully, they say. I clench my teeth and continue staring at my shoes. Somehow watching someone’s grief is even more voyeuristic than seeing a dead body.


Well, I had no existential revelations, but I learned several things. Grief is infectious, for one. The sound of a zipper and plastic is terrifying. The difference between a very old person dead and a very old person alive is not that great. I’m not as hard-assed as I thought. To die in a houseful of people laughing and crying is a great thing.

*Backdated because yesterday Blogger wouldn't work.

# posted at 8:44 pm

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