My Year With Proust - Day 242

   "My poor child, you have only your Papa and Mamma to rely on now."

   We went into the sickroom.  Bent in a semi-circle on the bed, a creature other than my grandmother, a sort of beast that had put on her hair and crouched among her bedclothes, lay panting, groaning, making the blankets heave with its convulsions.  The eyelids were closed, and it was because they did not shut properly rather than because they opened that they disclosed a chink of eyeball, blurred, rheumy, reflecting the dimness of an organic vision and of a hidden, internal pain.  All this agitation was not addressed to us, whom she neither saw nor knew.  But if it was only a beast that was stirring there, where was my grandmother?  Yes, I could recognise the shape of her nose, which bore no relation now to the rest of her face, but to the corner of which a beauty spot still adhered, and the hand that kept thrusting the blankets aside with a gesture which formerly would have meant that those were oppressing her, but now meant nothing.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 348

   When my lips touched her face, my grandmother's hands quivered, and a long shudder ran through her whole body - a reflex, perhaps, or perhaps it is that certain forms of tenderness have, so to speak, a hyperaesthesia which recognises through the veil of unconsciousness what they scarcely need senses to enable them to love. Suddenly my grandmother half rose, made a violent effort, like someone struggling to resist an attempt on his life.  Francoise could not withstand the sight and curst out sobbing.  Remembering what the doctor had just said I tried to make her leave the room.  At that moment my grandmother opened her eyes.  I thrust myself hurriedly in front of Francoise to hide her tears, while my parents were speaking to the patient. The hiss of the oxygen had ceased; the doctor moved away from the bedside.  My grandmother was dead.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 357

Marcel's mother had finally passed away.  It's a good thing that it is a blindingly beautiful day in Vermont because otherwise this would remind me too much of my mother's recent passing, which would be obviously depressing as well.  That said, in some ways this passage provides hope instead of despair.  Proust writes, "a creature other than my grandmother, a sort of beast that had put on her hair and crouched among her bedclothes, lay panting, groaning, making the blankets heave with its convulsions."  As much as we romanticize a very lovely Hollywood ending where we remain beautiful and seemingly only tired - and have the time and the wit to say what has to be said - in fact we end up as shuddering beasts grinding through our final days.  There is a time when it is clearly time to pass on to the great unknown.  Sadly, technology has bypassed morality, and we keep people alive simply because we can, and not because we should.  Of course, that is only part of the conundrum.  Proust continues, "But if it was only a beast that was stirring there, where was my grandmother?"  Now that is naturally the $64,000 question.  There was a time when I would have accepted that the struggling, sweaty beast was Proust's grandmother (or my mother), but as I've grown older I just don't believe that anymore.  Like most religions try to tell us, it's just a vehicle, breaking down and long past its warranty, which we will eventually leave on the side of the road.