I walked into my grandpa's room where he was sound asleep - likely exhausted from the parade of friends, relatives, and neighbors who came to say hello today, his 84th birthday.
His last birthday.
I found my grandma there alone, sitting next to him. Her face was turned away from me, but I could hear she was quietly crying, trying in vain to get him to wake up, grasping at hands that would not hold hers in return.
I approached her and the bed railing, to say goodbye to my grandpa before heading back to San Francisco. My grandma tried to get my grandpa to wake up.
"Hon, Nicolas is here."
She pleaded, "Hon, can you hear me? Nicolas is here and he wants to say goodbye."
I also grabbed his hand, squeezed it, "Grandpa, I'm leaving now, I love you very much, happy birthday."
"I rubbed my grandma's shoulder, trying to comfort her as she sniffled. "It's okay grandma, it's okay, he's sound asleep, he's had a long day."
He continued to sleep without stirring, and my grandma started to try to wake him again but I knelt down on my knees to get to her eye level and held her hands. I knew the answer but asked anyway,
"Grandma, how are you?"
"Oh, I'm okay..." tears welled up in her eyes, "...this is, this, is so..hard."
"Yes, I know, it really is..." I said,
"But you're so lucky, aren't you? To have him here, to have all these people here today"
"Oh yes, I'm very lucky."
She turned toward my grandpa, still sleeping, and said to me, "You know, I've been in love with him since I was 12..." She smiled. "But he didn't notice me till I was 18, when he came back from the war!"
I nodded and smiled back at her, getting teary eyed myself. I've heard the story of their courtship many times. Their love for eachother never ceases to inspire me.
As my grandpa's condition has worsened, she has somehow managed to fight dementia and pull herself together to be there for him. For so long she was content to just sit on her recliner wearing the same clothes for days on end. Now, every day, she puts on makeup, for him. She remembers to change her clothes and wears nice outfits, for him. She's wearing jewelry, for him. She demands to be there by his side.
Standing in that room with her, it was hard to hold back the tears.
I had already let a few loose earlier. The family's gift to my grandpa on his last birthday was truly one of the most beautiful and bittersweet moments I've witnessed. At 5:30pm, we turned my grandpa's hospice bead toward his bedroom window, overlooking the garden he once so carefully tended - a garden that at the moment is lush with beautiful blooming rose bushes he planted many years ago, pink, yellow, white, and deep red.
One by one, members of his favorite mariachi band stepped on to the garden's lawn, behind the rose bushes and, while facing his window, began to sing Las Mananitas. Behind them, my extended family had assembled themselves throughout the garden and beyond on to the sidewalk. The three youngest cousins playfully ran about the lawn while the rest of family looked toward the window with smiles and watery eyes. As the mariachis began to play, my grandpa opened his eyes, raised his hand in time with the music, and began to sing along.
My grandma sat near his side, smiling, mouthing the words to the song too, and crying.
I held a video camera - awkwardly tasked by my parents with the responsibility of recording the mariachis, but not really doing a good job of it - overwhelmed by the power of the moment and the flood of memories of all the times I'd heard my grandpa join in to a mariachi band's song.
...knowing that, this would be the last time I'd probably ever hear him sing.
Midway through their second song, I walked out of the room and into the garden to join the rest of the family. As the mariachis played on, neighbors began to notice. Some akwardly scurried by the odd scene of a maraichi band playing in some random house's front garden, with a multi-ethnic assortment of people, all facing toward a window.
One half of the young gay couple next door got out of their car, looked at our gathering, quickly rolled their trash can out, and then went into their house...the house I knew growing up as belonging to an old-time MV Latino family, the Ochoas. The neighborhood has changed quite a bit since I was a kid, and changed almost entirely since my family moved our house there in 1969. One group of power-walkers from the nearby office park looked especially confused. A spandex body-suit-wearing old man, who was what could best be described as jump-walking, led them down the street past the yard. My uncle jokingly shouted in an extra-latino-ish accent "Welcome to the neigggggh-bor-hooooood!!!" as they power walked out of hearing range toward California Street.
But other neighbors came out of their houses and gathered on the sidewalk to listen to the music. A mother and her son, out riding bikes, stopped across the street and watched from a distance. An Indian man and his American wife came from down the block, holding their newborn baby and introduced themselves to the family as they listend to the music.
A 1st-generation Mexican family from the apartment building a few doors down first gathered in their own yard to listen, but then slowly inched their way toward the street. They quietly approached my cousin to ask the reason for the band. They all left then, only to return a little later with a vase filled with beautiful freshly cut roses from their own garden carried by their oldest daughter. I don't know if they had ever even met my grandpa, but as they walked into the house to present him with their flowers, I started to cry.
It was truly a beautiful and heartbreaking moment. Overwhelming. My family's love for my grandpa had literally spilled out of the house and on to the street as the music filled our corner of Old Mountain View and drew us all together as family, friends, and neighbors.
Even though it was so bittersweet, I felt more at home in that moment than I have in few other places in my life. Surrounded by the flowering rose bushes my grandpa once cared for, the family he started with my grandma, at the house he helped build, in the neighborhood where he helped raise me.
As the hour drew to a close and the band sang its last songs, I could see though the bedroom window that my grandpa had closed his eyes, with a peaceful and content look on his face. My grandma remained by his side.
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Swirling in my head right now is a mixture of the mariachi music who's words I barely understand, and the simple lyrics of a death cab song I played on the way home.
"Love is watching someone die."
I don't think that's the most accurate description of love, but for today, for the moment I stood their watching my grandma trying to hold my grandpa's hand as he soundly slept, hopefully still with fresh memories of music, family, friends, and strangers who all were there to honor his birthday and life...well, today, those lyrics felt about right.