When near ones ache

His grandmother is rather unwell. With no warning, she fell unconscious. Right now, her brain is asleep. He is in pain, and so is his family. I do not know the pain of losing grandparents. My father's parents died when he was very young, so I never got to meet them. My mother's mother passed on when we were living in some other country, far from the place where my parents were born. I suppose that I had met her when I was born, but when she died I had no concrete recollections of those early years or her. I remember how my mother cried. A saddened, desperately lonely cry. I cried too. Not because of my grandmother's passing, but to accompany my mother.   

So I do not know what it is to loose a grandparent. But I do know sadness and loss. They can be weighty and alienating, so I would like to steal some of his sadness and loss, to share on the deep solitude that emerges when we witness the frailty of life. 

I met her almost two years ago. She struck me as a quiet, gentle woman. From him and his mother, however, I learned that she embodies resilience. Most immigrant women do. His mother and my mother certainly do. So I was not surprised at all to hear that. Resilience comes in the form of quiet gentleness many times.  

He and his grandmother did not know each other very well. Language must have been a factor, I suppose. They lived together a few years when he was a boy. Sharing space and time, however, even when in silence, begets memories and fondness. 

His sister and her husband are accompanying his mother in the hospital. In the western world, that is where life begins and ends, a place full of experts endeavoring in the service of life and fighting off illness, pain, and death. Sterile and emotionless, it is a place that functions to promote, paradoxically, health and pleasure.    

We are told that she is feeling no pain whatsoever. What a relief. What can be more despairing than the pain of others, especially the suffering of physical pain? Is non-existence better than pain? But non-existence can certainly cause pain in others...  

It is often said that surprise can be mobilized as an effective cognitive tool. What about sadness? Is sadness a useful too for cognition, too? If so, what do we learn about the one who is ill, us, and our relations to that person, during sadness? Do we get to love more during and after sadness? If decidedly positive outcomes can arise during and from sadness, why is it so ill-reputed? 

Thoughts. Questions. No answers in me. Just the wish that his sadness may not last too long.