A Digital Eulogy and Post-Death in COVID
Revisiting a grad school project ten years later and reflecting on digital mourning.
In 2016, I traveled to Tucson to visit my grandmother. She estranged herself from her daughter, my mom, way back in 1992 or so. It was the second and last time I would meet her. Shortly after I visited her, her physical and mental health condition deteriorated to where she couldn’t live by herself anymore, and dementia took over. My aunt told me that she once had to break the news (as gently as one can, tiptoes on eggshells), a couple years prior, that a nursing home would be best for her as her falls were becoming increasingly bloodied. As they were in the car after her doctor’s visit, she opened the passenger door and promptly threw up in disgust. Fear.
Makes sense. My parents joke about a murder-suicide ritual if nursing homes were their last resort. Same.
In a twisted way, the nursing home gave her a slight reprieve for such a shitty life. Reports back said she even found herself a boyfriend, where she was even in the lap of this 80-something strappling lad. He was in a wheelchair. She was wearing his cowboy hat. He unfortunately passed of a long-term illness shortly after they met.
Terrible mothers who run on spite and spite alone, until their skin shrivels like a molding peach, are experts in Cold War-politicking when it comes to the silent treatment. Pauline won when she died in February 2021 from COVID, death observed through multiple panels of glass like an insect on a microscope slide. Confirmation came from my aunt, who sent photos through Messenger of my uncle looking at her corpse in a hospital atrium. Funeral was through Zoom, with my uncle, the middle son, being the designated solo flyer of the proceedings due to hospital restrictions and his own severe immune-compromised status.
Her husband, my grandpa Ah-Ling, is buried in Tucson. He died a few months after I was born. He can still bring his kids to a slight tear to their eye, laughing and crying about hilarious child abuse. My other uncle, the eldest, bought the plot next to it. Goodwill gift for grandma. Pauline spat in both their faces by updating her will for cremation, zero ceremony, no god, let her rot in piece. I deeply admire her for that.
That website I keep unlisted. It’s all over the place, with exactly 1,000 re-edited republishings of the blasted nightmare it was (grad school, Wordpress, Tucson, hereditary ghosts etc). It ends abruptly, as inconclusive the journey became. Despite it being eight years since I created it, I can’t bring myself to let the domain expire. Digital rent, representing the last of any kind of tangible connection I had to the woman.
Grief and death in the 21st century feel so stupid, trite, and sniveling through a screen and hosted online. After the text updates, I was stuck in the traffic clog at Ashland and Elston when its absurdity struck me upside the head, again, and I cried. My despair was distilled to a few seconds. My grandma was dead, and I was glad she was. My ma flew to Tucson just to check, say hi to the fam, and head back to LA (through Burbank) before evening.
At the very least, grandma was glad she was dead too.
(Image: Keeping Up the Pureness, Fuyuko Matsui.)