I Had An Out Of Body Experience in Poznan

My grandmother passed away peacefully at 1.30 pm.

Around a week prior I had an out of body experience in Poznan – a quite charming if pedestrian city whose size feels smaller than its reputation would suggest it should.

A sudden bout of sickness passed as I watched myself in astonishment from above in my hotel room.

I wondered what this all meant but kept silent about it and headed back to London to learn that my grandmother was critically ill following the discovery that she had in fact been suffering from Pneumonia since June of this year – that discovery being triggered by a coughing fit – and the treatment for the Pneumonia itself triggering a series of strokes which resulted in the scans of her brain showing ominous black holes. Dark patches where her personality used to be.

By this stage she was heavily sedated. The prognosis was that this was a state from which she would never again emerge.

Doctors asked my mother what her mother had enjoyed doing before the end presented itself. When my mother replied that her mother had led an active social life visiting friends and family for dinner and conversation, the doctors replied that her mother’s days of conversation were most likely now a thing of the past. A memory to be taken care of and sustained as she no longer could be.

When had I last seen my grandmother?

Not like this – unconscious and helpless. But as she was.

The answer to that question is probably around 1 year ago. Another pointing of the finger at the black sheep. Another ruthless judgment.

There had been times long before then when judgments were arrived at but reserved.

I remember her buying me a toy Bumper Car from an East End market stall which sped into the barriers around its oval track only to reverse by itself and crash all over again in a hypnotic cycle of meaningless and directionless destruction.

That toy did not seem to last very long.

I remember the advice she gave me about women, work and family.

She once complimented me on having excellent skin. “You are a handsome boy. Look how clear your skin is. You have been blessed by God himself. Give thanks to God for your skin being so good.” she said. “And make sure you don’t fuck it up like your mother did!!”

My optician told me she had seen my grandmother for her eye check up recently.

“She is quite a character.” she said.

Indeed she is I had thought. “Quite a character alright….” A difficult character. Impossible. In fact I literally could not invent a character like that one if I tried.

Years ago whilst the family had gone on holiday, she had expressed an expectation that either one or all of my cousins and I would stay with her to keep her company in that huge house.

Slowly but surely we all dropped out of the plan one by one – young men simply had more interesting things to be doing with their weekend. She was also more than capable of looking after herself.

When we broke the news to her, she said: “You little bastards! I knew this would happen! Well – I am going to be buried in my grave by myself. I might as well get used to being alone now to prepare myself.”

And like all women of a certain age – that is exactly what she had done. A pragmatic impulse for good planning and a Mafia boss’s appetite for confrontation.

This strange lady – with her recommendations for eating prunes in plentiful quantity in order to aid digestion and her flawed vision of justice which always seemed to closely resemble revenge – was no longer there to look out for us all.

She was there in body. Now a mere heaving, inflatable mass of putrified flesh kept alive by a ventilation machine.

But what – if anything – would come out from the other side? The strokes had kept coming and coming. The scan of her brain was beginning to disappear into one big black hole.

The news was late by 9 days. It would not wait much longer.

My twin nephews asked the silly questions little boys do.

“Why did Granny die”? “Did she die in a minute?”

Their mother assured them that Granny was now with God.

That much I am not certain of.

But the out of body experience I had had in Poznan little over a week ago now made much more sense.

Over 1300km away. It was not me who watched over me from above in that hotel room whilst I threw the contents of my stomach up.

It was her.

That matriarchal disapproval. That line of questioning. “What have you done?”

There was a reason why it felt like someone else. Alien to me yet eternally familiar.

As more and more of our loved ones leave us, we cling more closely to our past and our history. But the paradox is that history itself is a form of death because neither history nor death can be avoided.

Rest In Peace Grandma. Sorry we did not get to make peace and say our goodbyes.