to live and die in a california pizza kitchen
to live and die in a california pizza kitchen
In loving memory of Ambi Thatha, Part 2
The imminent death of a grandparent lacks some of the shock and awe that I’d come to expect from my previous experiences with death, which almost always showed up unexpected.
On June 10th, a week before my 24th birthday, my parents call to tell us that Thatha isn’t doing well. His oxygen levels are erratic and he has developed blue patches on his skin. Multiple tabs of my google search history confirm that we are circling an unfortunate conclusion.
This year has been hard. At the start of the year, I was in love, and I felt like it would never end. In February, it ended. It had shown up unexpected, and left just the same. A storm began to brew as I stewed on heartbreak, the winds picking up with news of my grandfather's decline, with the entertainment industry going on strike, with the increasing expenses charged to my great gamble of life. My friendships are changing. We’re not in college anymore. Lightning strikes. Money seems to matter. Winds howl. My parents are getting older. My tattoos are permanent. LA isn’t sunny. My standards are high, my dreams are big, I wasn’t good enough, I’m not good enough, my grandfather is going to die.
The cloud that had hung over my head for this entire year begins to darken. Thunder rumbles. I had been planning a birthday party for the next week, and I feel the urge to cancel. I am not in a festive mood.
Every day, I check in with my family, and every day, things are, surprisingly, OK. On June 11th, 12th, and 13th, things are OK. June 14th, 15th, and 16th, things are better. June 17th, my birthday, things are GOOD. The sun comes out again, and I spend a great weekend with my friends. 24 is a fresh start. I love the summer. I perform in a play, and my friends come to the beach, my cast members surprise me with a cake. My new house looks incredible in the Los Angeles sunshine, which is finally here to stay. The front yard is so nice; I feel like a kid again. I like who I am. I love my friends. I am cooking new meals. I make amazing art sometimes. I’m fiscally responsible. I exercise regularly. Change is a constant. I’m talented. The love we had looks different, but I can feel it’s still there. 24 is better. June 18th, and 19th, and the 20th, and 21st, things are really really good. Thatha is doing well. This might’ve been a false alarm. On the 22nd, the 23rd, 24th, 25th, things are good. So good, that on the 26th and 27th we are flying, we coast on the top of the world. On June 28th, Thatha suffers an aspiration event, like the one after his surgery in December of 2021.
June 29th, I cannot sleep. I wonder how he is doing. In the middle of the night, I check my phone, and see my father is instructing my sister to book a train to Missouri. At 5am, I find a flight leaving at 8am, pack a light suitcase, and head to the airport, canceling plans that I had for the weekend and asking my roommates to move my car before street sweeping.
My flight is LA to Dallas, Dallas to Missouri. On the way to the airport, the flight to Dallas is delayed by 9 hours. It will miss the connecting flight to Missouri by 4 hours. I need a new flight. I get on standby for two new flights that will get to Dallas before the connecting flight to Missouri. They tell me I’m #4 in line, so the odds seem good. When I go to the gate, I’m number #14. I need a new flight.
Southwest has a direct flight to Missouri at 5am the next morning. I’ve been walking between terminals at LAX with no sleep in my body, and I am so tired. I consider booking that 5am flight, leaving the airport, and going back to sleep. Sleep sounds so good, but it would be a risk. Thatha is alive right now, but he might not be at 5am tomorrow morning. I have no energy, but I’m struck with the images of family members who passed while an ocean away. My father grieved both his parents, and his sister, Vilasini Athai, while in transit. I think about all those who have mourned their loved ones in the busy, sterile hallways of international airports. I will avoid this fate, and somehow do right by all who I have lost, and everyone that anyone has ever lost. I am exhausted and furious, and I will not live through that nightmare. It fuels me.
I exit the airport and walk across the full length of LAX, reenter at Terminal 1, and arrive at the ticketing counter at Southwest. They find an earlier flight for me at 8pm, and a standby flight at noon. I go through security for the second time this morning, get to the gate and check in for standby. I am first in line. I sigh with relief. Finally, it’s confirmed. My legs ache, my eyes burn with the morning light, but I will be in Missouri today. Ambi Thatha is still alive. I am tired, but I have done everything I can to get to my family, who I love and would die for. I’m in a haze. I go to the California Pizza Kitchen by my gate, and order a barbecue chicken pizza for breakfast for some reason; I know that sounds nasty but the menu says it’s what they are known for, and one slice is settled in my stomach when Ambi Thatha takes his last breath.
I hang up the Whatsapp call and cry in the California Pizza Kitchen, joining the legions of those before me who grieved en route. I had hoped some universal power would grant me a miracle, and I would arrive in time to share a fairytale moment. Sometimes being in a predicament gives me a twisted sense of adrenaline. I thrive on the possibility of outrunning fate, but my love for Thatha could not overcome flying out of LA on July 4th weekend. Life is a lot of delayed flights and missing folders and slices of barbecue chicken pizza for breakfast.
I should’ve known. I recall July 4th weekend in 2019, exactly four years prior, when I almost missed my flight from LA to visit my grandparents in Michigan. Saroja Paati, my grandmother, was so stressed that night. But that day, I arrived on time, and was with my grandparents when Rithvic came over to tell us that our friend Atharva had passed away.
I put my sunglasses on inside the airport and cry. I wonder if I look like a movie star.
At 3am the next day, I am in the car with my father, sister, and my 13 year old cousin, who all came to get me from the airport. They have preserved the body so that I could see my grandfather before workers from the funeral home come to take him away tomorrow morning.
I walk into the house, and can practically see my breath. The thermostat is set very low to slow the decomposition process. My grandfather’s body is lying on the floor in the living room, adorned in religious garb, facing North, as per doctrine. I anticipated being shocked and hysterical, which was not the case. It was the most silent room I had ever been in, as if the home had been vacuum sealed. My sister and father lean his body to the side to switch out the several ice packs that are in place to preserve his body for the funeral.
I had never seen a dead body before. He was smaller than I remembered. His jaw was tied shut, his nose plugged with cotton. I anticipated being scared to touch him, but that was not the case. Once I felt his skin: cold, slightly yellowed, I felt a morbid fascination, a small addiction to the sensation. I sat by his head. Ambi Thatha was known for his huge ears and nose. As a child, I had the habit of holding the ears of my loved ones. I resisted the urge to grab onto his ears, but stayed put by his head. I found it impossible to leave his side when it came time to find the sleeping arrangements. Although the scene is morbid: sitting in the coldest room I’d ever known, touching a body preserved with DIY methods seemingly out of the world’s creepiest Pinterest board, I am grateful to be home. That night, my sister and I share the bottom bunk in our nine year old twin cousins’ bedroom.
The next morning, I return to sit by his head. I look for my grandfather in the cold, yellowed flesh he left behind, and I don’t see him. My family gathers in the living room as the morticians come to take his body. We say our goodbyes, and I can’t resist any longer. I hold onto his ears, and measure his nose with my thumb and index finger, and I’m finally sure that he’s gone. They lift his corpse onto a gurney, and my grandmother wails. My aunts cry. Children comfort their parents, who all suddenly appear much younger. I look around the room, and even through the sorrow, I see much more of my grandfather in each face that is present than I could find in the body he left behind. I wish everyone I’d ever met could have known Ambi Thatha, so I could live in a world where his presence trickled through everyone I knew, the way it did in that house.
Later that day, I am sitting in the living room, reading a book. One of the characters looks at the man that would become her future husband and thinks to herself the phrase, “You are so easy to love.” Suddenly, I hear the subtle sound of a sob coming from an upstairs bedroom. I find my aunt weeping, and her sisters and I join her. They express many different emotions, condolences, the instructions and rationalizations that only siblings ever levy so fervently towards one another. Each child presents the advice that, potentially, they themselves need most. My aunt exclaims, about her father, “He was just so easy to love,” and I feel a blunt force in an old wound, recalling when someone I love had used those words about me.
Thus began our twelve days of mourning. After the funeral, which is a collection of memories I will keep woven between myself and my family, we embarked on a prescription of religious rites to be followed over the next fortnight. A routine, pre-imposed cultural structure for grief; or, it could be argued, a practice set in place to, for at least some time, avoid feeling it at all.
End of part 2. I got one more.