Evelyn Kasa

Oh, what a whirlwind week we’ve had.

My grandmother died last week at the age of 97. It’s not a surprise; the whole family had been preparing for it for a long time. In fact, she’d been sent to hospice twice before, and twice she recuperated, recovered, and, reinvigorated, reinvested herself in our lives.

A word about Grandma: she was force of nature. In the dictionary, next to the word matriarch, is a sketch portrait of her. Her little house had been the family focal point probably since before I was born until she and Grandpa up and moved to Florida three decades later. Always on the go, ever opinionated, always doing things her way – and to her, that was the only way things should be done. But she did everything her way because, basically, that’s the way she truly thought things ought to be done, and truly thought those ways were the best ways. She always meant well, however heavy-handed her parenting skills, however oblique her meaning was to us.

Last Thursday I got a call from my mother saying that this time looked like the end for Grandma. She was fighting a losing war against her latest foe, shingles. It would be best, my mother said, to hurry on over if I wanted to say my goodbyes. A priest would be arriving at 2:30 to perform the Last Rites. I left work, hopped in my car and drove to her nursing home as fast as I could.

When I got there – oh the changes in my grandmother. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months, probably since the girls’ birthdays in September or thereabouts. Back then she looked like she’d gone a few rounds with Tyson; always black-and-blue about her checkered face, unsteady behind her walker and more at home in a wheelchair. Disheveled as someone who needs assistance dressing herself often is. But sharp – sharp – SHARP – as a tack, as the saying goes. A little hard of hearing, yes, so we had to repeat ourselves a lot, but there was no mental fog there.

When I got to the small hospice room, though, Grandma was clearly at her end. She was somewhere closer to us than unconsciousness, but not conscious enough to acknowledge us. Her eyes were closed and she did not move, but I felt she was aware of us. Indeed, the priest asked us to recite our parts of the Rites as loud as possible because in all probability she could hear us; who’s to say otherwise? A machine was softly whirring at her bedside to help her breathe somehow, but every inhale/exhale was a loud gurgle which made me think how worse off she’d be without it.

The priest turned out to be the salutarian of my high school class. When I found out I immediately recognized him, even though in hindsight I thought he looked familiar. We did not move in the same circles at school (he was much smarter than me and in all the advanced placement classes), but apparently we took the same bus every day. I, who every day chastises himself for not living up to potential having attended a school of potential movers-and-shakers, was confronted with a very bright and courageous man who gave himself to the ultimate of all causes.

Anyway, the sacrament of the Last Rites (“extreme unction,” I think it’s called), took at most fifteen minutes. We all held hands in a circle around her bed while the priest led us through prayers, taking the Eucharist, and anointing my grandmother with the various oils. Nothing discernibly changed in her (eyes still closed, breathing still labored), but something in me knew she was at peace.

We chatted a bit in her room then I had to leave to return to work. My mother called me a little after 5 pm that night saying Grandma had died fifteen minutes earlier.

That night, after a pizza dinner, we told the girls. We were unsure what to expect: Little One is nine and Patch is five, but both were fairly close to their great-grandma. Both my wife and I are practicing Catholics, so we are candid with the girls about this life and the next and how our beliefs affect both. Also, the girls were kept aware of Grandma’s deteriorating health. I told them that Great Grandma had passed away earlier in the day and was now face-to-face with Jesus, and could be with her husband, mother and father, sisters and brothers. She was happy now.

Patch immediately flopped on the couch and cried out: But I want to see her again! You will, we assured her, one day you will. Little One was cool and calm ... at first ... then her face got red and the tears came. My wife held her and soothed her. Little One was always very close to her great-grandma and always asked about her. Both my children had an almost magical way of cheering up my grandmother, too.

The funeral was five days later. The wake was held in a small room at the funeral home – way too small for the numbers of people who showed up to pay their respects. I took Little One with me to the casket to kneel and pray and was acutely aware, as I always have been the few times I’ve experienced it, of the unreality of looking at the deceased. Yes, that was my grandmother, the woman I knew since, well, my earliest memories I guess. But it did not seem to be my grandmother.

Me, my brother, and my cousins served as pallbearers. I was positioned at the front. When it was time to drive to the church for the funeral mass, we all assembled into the empty viewing room with the casket. On the count of three, at the instruction of the Funeral Director, we heaved the coffin off its stand and placed it on a roller. The heaviness of it completely floored me. I could probably lift my grandmother in my arms (and she was a big woman in life), but now I could barely manage my little corner of her casket.

The funeral procession drove past that little house of hers, my second home all those years ago. How many summer days did I spend there? How many nights did I sleep there? The basement rec room I turned into a weightlifting gym – how many times did I work out there? Two hundred? Three hundred? How many games of running bases did I play in that backyard with my brother and uncle? Though the house hardly looked the same as it did back in those days, it was very nice to drive past it.

Mass was held at my grandmother’s church a town or two away, one she took me to quite a few times when I was a little boy. Us pallbearers wheeled the casket up the center aisle and stopped it before the altar then took our seats in the front row. One of my aunts did a short eulogy touching on the major points of my grandmothers life as well as the major “stories” that have personified and defined her over the years. Little One and some of the great-grandchildren draped a white cloth over the casket. My wife did one of the readings.

Father Stephen – my classmate from high school – presided at the mass and gave a very heartfelt homily, speaking of knowing my grandmother over the past five or six years. He even put me on the spot, all but encouraging me to translate Latin in front of the half-full church when he brought home the tender point that at death our lives are not given or taken but changed. The reality of my grandmother’s death did not come home to me until the last act of that funeral mass, when Father swung the burning incense around the casket. That’s when I knew she was definitively gone.

Subarctic winds beat down upon us at the cemetary; the canopy did little to stop it. “I don’t think Evelyn would mind if we used the abbreviated ceremony,” Father Stephen joked, teeth chattering as all of ours were. Ten minutes and a few brief prayers later it was finished. We all quickly made it to our cars to escape the freezing weather, and drove to my parent’s favorite restaurant for dinner. They rented out most of the first floor for us all, and an early dinner was capped with a toast of Bailey’s Irish Cream, Grandma’s favorite drink.

Trying to think of my earliest memories of her, I came up with three, all of which exemplify the type of person she was. The earliest, I think, is of me around age four. Grandma was coming over to visit and my room was a mess. (Side note: I have a very vivid memory of a peace sign sculpture hanging on my bedroom wall.) Time was of the essence, and it was running out. So my mother told me to just push all the toys under the bed. I did. And guess what Grandma did as soon as she walked into my bedroom? That’s right: crouched down and inspected under my bed. I was busted!

Something like a year later my grandmother and my mother took me out to eat at a restaurant. We were waiting on line. The line was not moving. To amuse me, Grandma stepped into a cordoned-off area, reached up and grabbed a drum stick and banged on a big bass drum perched atop a shelf at the restaurant’s entrance. I was mortified! She was laughing, but I wanted to melt into the background.

Then I remember her more grandmotherly ways. In particular, whenever I would get hurt or upset, she’d scoop me up into a big bear hug and calm me down by having me listen to the tick-tick-ticking of her little watch. It always worked. But then God help you if you had a loose tooth and got a little too close to her ... for a big woman she could move awfully fast ...

Of all the members in my large extended family, she might have been the one I found easiest to talk to. I enjoyed being in her presence – I really did. There was a lot of friction between her and her children. But she was always good to me, and, as far as I know, to all the other grandchildren. Yeah, she beat me with a shoe one summer night in 1984, but that’s because I, not being used to a curfew, ignored the one she imposed on me when I was staying at her house while my parents were away on vacation. But, being Grandma, she thought she was helping me, molding me into a successful, respectful man. And who knows? Maybe it just did work.

Rest in peace, Evelyn.

1916-2014