For the longest time I kept my “personal life” out of my “activism” and “political art”. The Patriarchy Polka is a space where I dig into my own past and share what I find. Now more than ever I believe that our personal stories, our histories, our humanity and our art need to be shared. I am going off my planned schedule this week to share the humbling a sacred experience of saying Goodbye to my grandmother, Barbara Czausz, who passed on September 18th. Thanks for reading and supporting my work.
Earlier this month, I got a call from my mom that my grandmother had been hospitalized after an emergency surgery. She had a serious infection and was not expected to survive the week. I live in the Bay Area and it’s a nine hour time difference.
My mom told me not to come, that I should remember her how she was when she was healthy. My grandpa told me not to come, that she would be fine. I thought about the busy week ahead, about the long flight from San Francisco to Warsaw and the jet-lag, about finding backup care for my kids and I almost didn’t go. I sensed that I was needed, even though my family said otherwise. But deep in my gut, in the place impervious to calendars and logic, there was the undeniable urge; I need to see her one more time.
I booked a flight for that evening, called in extra help for my kids and family and steeled myself for a brutal trip. My grandma has had Alseheimers and dementia for years, and her condition was becoming unmanageable for my grandfather and mom. She has been on the same five minute loop for years.
I called my Grandma my Baba Jaga, which made her cackle-laugh every time we spoke. She took an early retirement in her early fifties from being a Labor and Delivery nurse to come help my mom raise me in New York.
By the time I write my mom back and tell her I decided to come, it was already the middle of the night in Poland. Twenty Hours later I am sitting in her apartment, holding hands with my grandfather. I ask him how he is doing and he says he has hope.
Hope dies last, Dziadek says. Nadzieje Umiera Ostatnia.
I walked through the medical university compass to her building at three in the morning, unable to sleep, still stuck on California time. I felt strangely brave and beautiful as I walked to see her. The security guard was asleep in the booth, the cars were done drag racing on the main road. There was the buzz of street lights flickering on and off and ruffle of wind in the leaves.
As I walked through the wells of blackness between the lights, I felt no fear.I wasn’t scanning the horizon for stumbling figures, or shooting glances over my shoulder if I thought I heard steps in the grass or the jingle of keys. I walk-floated forward as if I had a sword drawn - a shield at ready. There was a smile on my face that didn’t match the darkness and the quiet of the night.
On the sides of the road grew wildflowers - all purple and blues and blacks casting shadows in three directions at once. I made a small bouquet of a few blossoms and branches. Usually I would get an app out to help me identify the plant and take a photo of it, then look up medicinal uses or folkloric meanings. But a strange intuition was guiding my hand forward, even though I didn’t know the names of the plants. I knew that the purple floof of a flower would heal, or that a branch of birch would comfort, and the feathery spread of yarrow and its creamy blossoms were going to be good together.
The sprig of birch I pulled from an old tree split in two and nearing death itself. Maybe as old as me. I think I remember hearing they do not live long. Not nearly as old as my Babcia. I stopped at an old linden tree. This one maybe was as old as her. I don’t know. I stopped and gave each one a hug. The trunk of the birch was me-sized, the linden required my full wingspan. The bark against my cheek and palms was rough, steady, real.
That morning I watched her almost leave us a few times. I created an altar for her from her drawer of treasures in her vanity; an evil eye to ward off evil spirits, a plaque of the matka boska cestohovska, a buddha statue and a picture of her mother.
If there are spirits, I thought they would like the window open.
I turned the handle and window opened sideways like a door, letting in the sound of the main road and the breeze and the swirls of outside conversations rushed in.
I brought a few boxes of her favorite chocolate wafer cookies to share with the nurses, because she was once one too, and a had a sweet tooth.
I brought her chamomile tea, rumaniek. When I was little (and even when I was a grown up a few times) she would wash my hair in the bath tub. She would do it twice, and after the second time she would rinse the shampoo out with chamomile tea. The feeling of her fingers sliding through my hair, the smell of the tea, the bath water cooling as the warm waterfall of tea cascaded down my face and back, my laugh gurgling through before she rushed me out of the bathtub and wrapped me in a bath towel.
I put the hot water in a thermos and filled it with a dozen chamomile tea bags. I put one bag on her eye. She sighed and I put one on her other eye. I wiped away the hardened salt path of tears. Her lips were dry and her tongue was dry so I pressed the chamomile tea against her lips and tongue and heard her moan, trying to press the top of her mouth. It looked like relief. I took a handkerchief and dipped it into the tea. I placed it on her forehead, and washed her face and her neck. She moaned, Oh God O Boze, O Boze. I washed her neck and her chest and her shoulders. I washed each of her fingers and arms. I skipped her torso, where she was hurt, and rinsed her feet and her legs.
They talk about this in the Bible. I thanked her feet for carrying her so far in life. Carrying my mother, who carried me. I thanked her for the thousdands of times she bathed me, fed me, hugged me and called me.
The head Doctor came in with a semicircle of nurses around him checking vitals, whispering about sepsis and kidneys. He seemed to notice the chamomile smell, the altar then the open window in that order. He said to me, “She is dying.”
“I know” I said. The group jostled out. One of the nurses stayed. She said that Babcia seemed to do better when my mom or me or her sister or my grandpa were around. It made me smile. It made me wonder. Was she holding on, so I would come back again?
I wondered if she needed my permission to leave, but since I kept coming back, I was in some way asking her to stay, even though I said goodbye each time.
After experiencing a few of those moments with our eyes locked, her trying to speak but not being able to, I decided that if I wanted her to let go and stop suffering, I needed to let go first.
It wasn’t her job to say our final goodbye, it was mine.
Under each of our past goodbyes, in each desperate clingy last hug, was that fear. Will this be the last time? As a child, at my wedding, with my own children, each time we would look at each other and together think What if this is the last time? Our blue eyes reflecting blue back at each other with so much love and so much fear that we would cry. And just like I did on the phone, since she often would cry telling me how much she missed me, I said “don’t cry” nie placz Babciu. And she would say she wasn’t lying through her tears Nie placze, nie placze. But this time I said it to myself. “Don’t cry Patti.” Nie placz patki. I took her hand, heavy and warm and wiped away my tears with it. I took my hand and wiped away hers. For the last time.
I said “You can go now Baba, I am going to leave, and I am not going to see you again.”
On the way back to the apartment I prayed to each tree that I passed, hugged it and looked up at the branches and listened, asking for forgiveness, grace. The sunshine was both cleansing and blinding. The campus was busy now with students and doctors and patients and people like me, visitors. I told the trees goodbye from her. I thanked them.
I went to her room back in the apartment and closed the door. I looked at her things. My baby socks from when I was born in 1985 hanging next to the bed. One infant sock for each of my sons which she slept with,hidden under a pillow. On my hands, her rings. One with five diamonds, as a gift from my mom for her fiftieth birthday just a few months before I was born.
We knew each other for forty years. What a marvel, what a gift.
Hope dies last Dziadek says.
I thought of my children, I thought that maybe I would pass the crown to them one day, the crown that comes with being the person who loved someone the most. To being the most loved.
In ten years I will be as old as she was when I was born. To think that the person she most loved wasn’t even born yet when she was my age. Hope dies last. Because I believe she is with me. I feel her in my hands and eyes and tummy, in my selfies with flowers, in the dessert menus I ask to see, the times I dance or times I close my eyes in revery as I rock back and forth, humming low to myself like she always did. You can’t always hear it but if you put your hand on our knees or press against our backs you can feel the vibrations, humming along to some melody that won’t leave our bodies, vibrating with sound and life.
I don’t know the story of when she was born, but I hope that in the story of her last day we will remember that she left after those she loved most said goodbye. She crossed to the other side with her mother and father, her beloved uncles and aunts, her girlfriends and favorite actors and musicians. It happened just after my mom went to see her one last time.
Babcia Basia is gone, forever, but since she died all I have felt is her presence.
It is unexpected, the warmth, the lack of grief. I’m not sad at all, instead I feel completely full of her love. To those who are sad that she is gone, and feel her absence, I promise you that she is with me. That the other side is here with us too.
She is moving my hair out of my face, patting me on the back. I feel brave like a siren, which is the symbol of Warsaw. A proudly bare chested mermaid with long flowing hair, sword and shield drawn— maybe floating in the water, maybe flying through the air, blessed by my Babcia Basia, and unafraid of the darkness.