Reactions to Death

Wednesday 28 November 2018.

On the train on my way home I sit opposite a tiny, shrunken, shrivelled up old lady with skin like a raisin. She watches me assiduously and with some degree of suspicion.

In turn I note the relative size of her suitcase. It is stood up in front of her feet and looks huge in comparison to her withered, receding frame. My train of thought inevitably leads me to think that she could easily fit herself into that suitcase and that this must be the only reason why she is lugging around a suitcase of such an impractical size.

As she gets up to leave at the next stop, I am concerned that she will be unable to carry or drag her suitcase with her. I offer to carry it for her and drop it on the platform when the doors open which she accepts with relatively muted thanks.

That evening at the gym I try out the new “High Altitude Training Mask” that I purchased online a couple of days ago. The idea behind these is that the harder that you make it for yourself for you to breathe, the more resistance you subject your body to and the harder your lungs and other muscles have to work, and so the more effective your workout…

I am sceptical about how justifiable this line of logic is from a science perspective but I proceed to blitz it in the gym anyway. I go pretty crazy hurling myself into a gym session of frightening intensity. My muscles start to bulge and throb and my chest begins to heave violently. By the time I take the mask off, I can feel my heart in my mouth and I think I may be about to vomit.

At home I think about the after work events of the day and it becomes clear to me that both of these occurrences are linked with the death of my grandmother.

I carried my grandmother in her coffin days before. There was some linkage in mind between the little old lady’s huge suitcase with my grandmother’s coffin. Did I offer to carry the suitcase as a result of guilt?

The last time I saw my grandmother alive she was using a medical ventilator in Intensive Care. However because her Pneumonia had destroyed her lungs she was very short of breath even with the help of the ventilator. Doctors advised us that the damage to her lungs could not be cured and that she would never again be capable of breathing without a ventilator at all, although even with use of it, her body was being placed under such strain that it was inevitable she would suffer a huge and most likely fatal heart attack. Did I purchase the High Altitude Training Mask because of a need I had to identify with my grandmother in that desperate situation and feel the pain she had felt?

A relative dropped off a CD with photos of her from the 1970s and 1980s. That was nice of him. I am yet to look at them.