Coffin Money - 7

Day 10 at home

Andrew came for the first time since Sarah was moved home. He visited her at the hospital once and couldn’t hide the shock of seeing her like that when he went into her bedroom.

“Oh, grandma, how are you feeling?” he said, giving her a kiss on the hollow wrinkly cheek. His eyes welled up.

“Oh c’mon, Andy, I don’t look that bad, do I?” Sarah winked at Andrew. He was the only one in the family who Sarah truly loved and adored. It was mostly because he was David’s only biological child, albeit by a woman she never liked. But she never liked any of David’s wives.

Andrew now was a young computer software engineer who lived with his wife in a bigger town about two hours away. They’d been married for almost three years with no children. Sarah didn’t like Andrew’s wife either, which never prevented her from nagging them both about when they were going to start having kids. There seemed to be a pattern in the family that Sarah didn’t really like any of the “outside” women.

“No, grandma, you look well, considering…” he looked around, looking for proper words, “how ill you are.”

“I’m not getting any better, you know. I’ll die soon,” Sarah said in a weak voice.

“No, you won’t, grandma, you still have a lot of energy and life juices in you. You just need to stay positive, follow the doctor’s and nurses’ instructions, and you will get better, believe me,” Andrew squeezed his grandmother’s hand gently.

“Look at me! I’m never getting better.” Sarah motioned for Andrew to lean closer and whispered in his ear, “They’ve hired a hospice nurse for me, that big mean woman, you know.”

“I know, she is right here,” Andrew whispered, pointing at Donna sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room. “How do you know she is a hospice nurse?”

“She told me. It means I’ll die soon. The hospital people sent me home to die. I’m glad you came because I need to tell you something important. And promise me not to tell anyone.”

As if on cue, Donna got up and left the room, pretending to need something in the kitchen. She was a professional, the room was small, and she could hear the conversation. She didn’t want to be a part of her patient’s secrets. Sarah nodded with satisfaction, seeing Donna leave.

“Ok, I promise,” Andrew whispered.

“I have some money stashed away, for a nice coffin to bury me in…”

“Oh, grandma, dad told me about your coffin money already. Please stop thinking about it and try to get better, alright?”

“But I want you to know where it is!” Sarah protested. “You are the only one in the family who I can trust it with.”

“Grandma, if you want someone to handle your money properly, you should ask Paul. He is so much better at managing the money than I am!”

“Paaaul? I haven’t seen that bastard ‘brother’ of yours in years!” Sarah put the word ‘brother’ into air quotes with her bony fingers. “And I certainly don’t want to see him now, for him to laugh at how weak and frail I am! In fact, don’t even invite him to my funeral, he is not welcome there!”

“Alright, alright, grandma, be it your way,” Andrew tried to calm her down. “You can tell me about your stash next time when I come visit, OK? I have to go now, to attend to some business in town. But I’ll be back, I promise! And maybe bring Paul. He is a good man, you know.”

Sarah groaned in protest. Paul was the eldest of David’s children. He was not his biological son, which Sarah reminded both David, Paul, and everyone who’d listen at every opportunity she had. David met Paul’s mother Natalie almost right out of his active military service when he was 22, Natalie was 24, and Paul was barely 2. David treated him like his own son. Natalie was a beautiful free spirit who didn’t want to be bound by the traditional family and marriage relationships. Sarah constantly nagged David for “picking up trash with her own litter” and when Natalie cheated on Paul four years into their marriage and ran away with another man, Sarah nagged him with the endless “I told you so, but you never listen.”

Even after their divorce, Natalie continued to “unload” Paul onto David when she needed “time off” or didn’t feel like taking care of the child. Paul and David developed a strong bond and to break it, Sarah told the boy David was not his real father when Paul was about 8. David still could not forgive his mother for that because all it did was the opposite: Paul developed even stronger appreciation for David and what he was doing for him but wanted to have nothing to do with his grandmother. When Paul grew up and married, Sarah never wanted to see him, his wife and their two children unless it was an “all-family” gathering. And even then, she ignored Paul like he and his family did not exist. Just another family Sarah cut off from her life…

Andrew, however, was a different story. David met his mother Margaret through work at the city government office, and they were married within months. Andrew was born nine months later. Even though Sarah didn’t really like Andrew’s mother for any apparent reason other than “she wanted to be with a dashing former military man who had his own house,” she doted on Andrew.

When Margaret died of leukemia, Andrew was three. David started to drink, lost his job, and became an alcoholic. He ultimately had to sell his house. To save the boy, Sarah took Andrew up to their farm where he grew up all the way through the middle school. David was at times homeless and at times couch-surfing his friends. Sarah allowed him to see Andrew only when he was sobber, so he tried to clean himself up and show up at least 2-3 times a month.

Then one day, shortly after David’s father Peter died, Sarah brought Andrew back to David and said, “This boy needs his father now. He needs a man as a role model, and with Peter gone he has none. Sobber up, find a place to live, and make sure he gets good grades. All his teachers are saying he is a math genius, who needs to be in a large city with a good college, not on a farm twisting chicken heads and cleaning cattle dung.” David did sobber up, found a job as a security guard through his military buddies, and rented a basement apartment from… his current wife Anna (that’s how they met, nothing romantic).

Together with Sarah, David put Andrew through the best college they could afford. Sarah never got tired of reminding him how much income from her farm went into Andrew’s education, but she’d never say that in Andrew’s face. To her, he was the apple of her eye. To Andrew, she was the best, loving and caring grandmother one could wish for. Strict but fair, as he used to say. And he never stopped his attempts to reconcile Paul with his grandma, just like today when he suggested Paul should manage Sarah’s coffin money. Paul now was a respectable regional bank manager and knew a lot about money…

Before leaving the apartment, Andrew asked Donna in the kitchen quietly, “Was it wise to tell gran that you are a hospice nurse?”

“I cannot lie to my patients,” Donna replied. “She’d asked me what skills and qualifications I have to take care of her. I told her I’d been a nurse practitioner for over 30 years and hospice-care certified nurse for the last ten. She just put two and two together.”

“She is getting worse, isn’t she?” Andrew asked, concerned.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Donna said, nodding. “She seems to have lost the will to live, but then there’s hardly anything that can be done for Stage 4 cancer at her age. It doesn’t help that she is bad at following the instructions.”

“How much does she have left?”

“I’m not a doctor, of course, and the patients are all different, but based on my experience – days, maybe a couple of weeks at the most.”

“Oh wow, that soon?” Andrew asked, and Donna only nodded, going back to her patient.

Day 15 at home

Donna finally moved in to live with Sarah, mostly for three reasons. First, the stench of bleach and animal feces subsided as Anna paid for a cleaning service to come in every other day. While the cleaners were doing their job, Sarah was watching them like a hawk and constantly yelled at them, “Don’t touch any of utensils, dishes, or food supplies in the kitchen! If my silver disappears, I’ll know whodunit.” The cleaners obliged as they didn’t need a stain on their reputation. They only washed the floors and windows in the kitchen.

Second, Donna took pity on David who had to spend more and more restless nights with his mother as she was in almost constant pain. Third, Donna started to develop a bond with Sarah.

When they were alone in the apartment, Sarah told Donna stories from her life, slowly in her frail voice, as if she wanted Donna to be her human recorder. Donna listened carefully, realizing how hard Sarah's life was and why she turned out like that.

Sarah was born in 1940 during the raging world war, and in 1941 her father was drafted into the army. When he came back in 1945, she barely knew him, and he was not particularly keen on creating a fatherly bond with her. He was mostly quiet, silent, and drinking, as no one at the time knew what PTSD was.

Sarah’s mother died in 1948 of an infection from the ectopic pregnancy, and her father re-married almost immediately. Sarah’s stepmother didn’t like her at all and treated her like a Cinderella, a servant to her two younger half-sisters that were born one after another. Quite predictably, Sarah cut them all entirely off after she married David’s father Peter and moved to his farm. She didn’t even go to her father’s funeral when he died in 1968. She was a hard-working woman, a devoted wife but never really a good mother to her two sons whom she just didn’t know how to love. She was detached and strict with both of them, and only wailed for Sam at his funeral.

“See, with a pattern of neglect and abuse like that as a child, when parents are supposed to provide nurturing care and love, no wonder she turned out this way. She just didn’t have a good role model to be a good mother,” she told David and Anna when they came to visit in the evening.

“Oh, we know her entire life story, she made sure of it. But contrary to Kanye’s ‘wisdom,’” Anna used air quotes, “Hurt people don’t need to hurt people. I know a lot of people of her generation who became much more caring and loving adults exactly because they were neglected and abused as children and wanted to break that pattern.”

“People are different,” Donna said, “And I admire you both for the care you provide for her.”

“If only she appreciated it,” David said grumpily.

“Oh, she does. She just doesn’t know how to express it.”

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