May death find us on vacation

My grandmother passed away suddenly. She started to break down without warning, in fact. But dying did not take so long. How much time do we need to die? At what point can we say that we are already dead? She was diagnosed with a type of dementia that in a few months reduced her to a thousandth of what she had been. Or so we would say from the outside, those of us who did not witness her evaporation on the front lines. My cousin Cristina, on the other hand, knew how to find her in the most unexpected corners of her personality – in a wink, for example – cornered by the minimal capacity for expression that was still available to her.

My grandmother, Hortensia, faded away, blurring even further the line between life and death. Since when was she no longer here? Did she arrive completely disintegrated? Her existence has been growing wider and wider, as if goodbye had diluted her in small doses, completely volatilized. I believe in her omnipresence and that of her walking stick, which always ends up catching us all. In the end, she has managed to live within us, the only place where we know we can still look for it, in all its versions, before it was a draft of itself.

Inside me, I find her preparing a plate of soup, of which I will first drink the broth with a straw and then eat the pasta; stirring the logs in the fireplace, enchanted by the flames of the fire; or tucked into the garden up to my ankles, stirring the earth, hoe in hand. Inside my father, I know he is younger, descending Jaume III, with his seven children spread on both hands, like two bunches of balloons; and also much older, gifting him one of his last moments of lucidity, also with intertwined fingers.

I don't know how long these limbos last between losing one's life and being dead. At the funeral home, who are more expert in these matters, they must have calculated between three days and a week, which is how long the procedures after calling the insurer last. This is what I think on car journeys from my house to my father's and from my father's to the funeral home, during the five working days that it seems a person needs to die completely, at least on the physical plane. Figuratively, I calculate that the terms are more lax and extend between a week and a lifetime.

Death, like an impertinent formality

“Yes, today the funeral home, tomorrow cremation, and Friday burial. These days are becoming such a hassle”: in case life seems too short or too long for us, at least we have this inconvenient week that roots us in loss. Because even death, like a Christmas holiday, has to fit well into the calendar. Not even death is exempt from the tyranny of relevance, like an unannounced call, like a surprise visit. “This doesn't suit me at all right now”. We have ended up equating the importance of death with that of a work meeting or a trip. “It’s so lucky it happened now, that you happened to be here, and not in Barcelona, or on vacation,” I’ve found myself saying to myself, to a friend, seeking solace in the possibility of watching over our dead.

Procedures, errands, paperwork. The coldness of bureaucracy forces us to be emotionally available. Who would have thought. A long and tedious process that creates new routines only to never use them again. Schedules, people, and routes placed at times of the week that don't suit them, where normally there's only room for work, school, gym, shopping, laundry. But not now. Life twists into unknown forms, oppressing us against reality, so we have it right in front of us. We get used to it, we stay quiet. And all for what? Death is the most anti-capitalist thing that can happen to us. Everything we can do is unproductive, at first glance: a sunk cost investment. That's why it's also the thing that best measures our humanity, our decency.

In a final acrobatic display of opportunism, my grandmother managed to have the news of her death reach us between half an hour and an hour after the World Cup final ended, as a deference, as if that mattered a lot to all of us. It's curious when life has these things and reminds you that you're always a phone call away from heading towards Son Espases. That we can leave very soon, but dying is something else entirely.