The Body Machine

TW: death, schizophrenia

I didn’t quite know how to approach grieving this week. I felt it taking over my body at times, particularly my brain. I’ve been hopelessly scattered and disorganized, even with my best efforts. I’ve been torn between obligations, and the involuntary shutdown my mind and body cooperatively ctrl+alt+deleted, pausing all functionality over 1gb of data. Not to call myself a machine, but sometimes I do feel like some internal motor keeps me running most of the time.

It reminds me of one of my weirder early memories. My mom always had a soft spot for people with major mental illnesses. For years she had cared for one of her uncles who experienced a major brain trauma which arrested his development at about an elementary school level, and later in her early adulthood she cared for her brother who also suffered from some undiagnosed mental illness. When I was a kid, my mom worked as a secretary at our local Catholic church. It was a thankless job where she was treated with a combination of pity and skepticism. Anyway, while she was there, she befriended an older woman with schizophrenia who frequented the chapel for prayer. My mom’s name is Gloria, and by chance, the schizophrenic woman’s name was also Gloria. She would stand outside the church after mass smoking a cigarette to herself, looking a bit lonely, so my mom, who never liked to see anybody lonely, would strike up a conversation. Gloria lived alone and seldom had visitors. While my mom had a similarly lonely existence, she at least had my sister and me for company. As a gesture of good will, my mom extended a bit of her good fortune, ie me and my sister to keep Gloria company one day. She dropped us off at Gloria’s house and essentially wished us the best as she left us alone with her for the day, to do whatever we might. Gloria’s house was messy. She had a few pictures on her wall that were strange collages of celebrity head cutouts, which she proceeded to explain were people she had been in contact with and of whom she knew secret information. My sister and I didn’t know what exactly to do with this woman, who, while not harmful, was definitely not a responsible adult capable of taking care of us. We requested to play Schoolhouse Rock tapes, and proceeded to sing one of the songs we enjoyed called, “The Body Machine”. Which was apparently very triggering to Gloria. Her eyebrows pursed and her mouth contorted in distress as she said

Gloria: No! You are not a machine! We are not machines!

She clearly didn’t get the metaphor, and I wasn’t capable of explaining that the song wasn’t literal. So we stopped singing, and I will forever think of her whenever I contemplate the ways in which my body at times functions like a machine.

The metaphorical car that I am, I’ve been running on cruise control since that final Zoom call with my tia. The following day I resolved to go on a hike with a friend. I needed time in nature, away from the distraction of my endlessly vibrating phone. I lost my signal as I ascended into the Angelino Forest, and when I returned, I realized I’d missed a call from my cousin. I figured it was the call we had all been dreading. I called him back as soon as I regained a steady signal.

M: We tried to call everybody while we were in the room with mom, but only Tia Regina answered. They moved her to palliative care after we left. She passed about twenty minutes ago. You’re the first person to know besides us.

I felt winded. It was what I expected, and yet it wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do, or how to react to something I was so physically disconnected from. I wanted to be comforting to my cousins, but I also didn’t know what comfort would look like.

Me: How do you feel?

M: I don’t know. It was really weird. She was so swollen that her hands didn’t feel like her hands. And she had the breathing tube in. I don’t know how I feel right now.

I didn’t know what I had to offer them. Condolences are confusing. What are they and do they require a shelf? I couldn’t relate to the degree of loss they were experiencing. I felt very sad losing our grandma, but she wasn’t my mother even if she was more of a mother to me than my own mother. I would never be able to understand the gravity of losing a good mother. I think that if either of my parents died, I would be sad, but it wouldn’t be like I was losing love or protection. For me, that loss would be more of an existential crisis about my own age and mortality. For them, Maxine was everything: mother, guardian, protector, advisor, advocate, and friend.

Death seldom pauses anything, it just sets into motion a whole new series of duties and responsibilities. What happens to property? Cars? Household items? Valuables? And anything else that requires dividing? My cousins now have a house full of everything Maxine left them including her lingering scent. Additionally, they received an annual allowance formerly conferred to Maxine by Papa Wayne, my deceased step grandfather. They will receive ⅓ of the property value of my grandma’s home once it’s sold. It’s a lot of plates to spin for two people in their early 20’s. There was hardly a moment to breathe in the new reality before all of these additional new items raced forward, beckoning their immediate attention.

And then of course, came the funeral. My family wanted me to attend, but I didn’t want to fly. I haven’t flown since covid hit, and I was even more hesitant to fly to Louisiana considering their nonexistent covid strategy. I didn’t want to be around extended family, trapped in an exposure bubble. Instead, I decided to stay home and watch the eulogy via a private Vimeo stream. I never would have imagined technology would become the only means I would have available to experience and assuage grief, but this pandemic has subverted all of my expectations. The stream was shot from a high angle, looking down at the priest and small masked congregation in an almost omniscient sort of way. I could see everyone go through the motions of the Catholic mass, and hear audio from the priest and cantor’s microphones. My tia was a very Catholic woman, and I know she wanted to have a ceremony like this, yet it still felt incredibly impersonal.

She had wanted to be buried in Louisiana, the place she always would consider her primary home, even though she had spent the past decade living in Oklahoma, and her local parish was in Oklahoma. As a result, her mass was said by a priest who didn’t know her at all, and who neatly wrapped up the ceremony by saying that we should give ourselves to Jesus, just like Maxine would want us to. There was even a pro life detour where he spoke about how pro life my aunt was, and yet I can’t remember a single conversation where we spoke about that issue. If anything, she was deeply pragmatic. The kind of mom who would begrudgingly buy you condoms and birth control if she found out you were sexually active. But over the years, she had gotten more conservative. After nearly losing a fight for your life once, it’s easy to cling more tightly to a higher power for help. My cousin informed me that near the end of her life, she’d begun volunteering at a “birth choice” center. I realized how little I knew about her final years.

It wasn’t my party to judge or critique, as much as I was a griever like everybody else. I couldn’t help but think that it seemed so fake. A White man sharing platitudes about a Black woman he never knew, bouncing along to the church hymns with a bit too much excitement for the occasion. I wasn’t angry, I just couldn’t imagine how anybody would want this to be the final commemoration of their life. Something cold and awkward, in a dark church chamber lacking in any semblance of vitality. Maybe it was only cold because I wasn’t there in person. I had to watch from a laptop screen with my tabs still open, waiting to be clicked upon and attended to. During the final hymn, my surviving tia began crying. I watched my family gather around her, reaching out to embrace her. They had chosen the same closing hymn for Maxine as they had for my grandma. There wasn’t anything I could do from my laptop, other than watch, grateful that they were together even if I simultaneously worried that in an attempt to comfort one another, they would endanger each other. Not long after, the video cut out. The cameraman wasn’t following the procession to the mausoleum. Maybe it was an issue of wi-fi, maybe that was all that the gig coordinator had promised. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it was the price I had to pay since I had chosen to stay put instead of physically being there.

I waited in an empty Zoom room for everybody to make their way back to my grandma’s house. I’d offered to host a Zoom call after the funeral, so that we could all talk, even those of us who couldn’t attend in person. I didn’t regret staying home, but I did realize how much I missed everyone. I missed the bustle of a gathering in Louisiana, even with relatives whose names I couldn’t recall. I missed the banality of political disagreements over lunch, in between recollections of old memories.

I’d scheduled a strip show performance for later that night, primarily because I didn’t want to feel alone. I wanted to enjoy the embrace of light-hearted camaraderie. Simultaneously, the show felt like a betrayal of mood. Appropriate grief has no moments of reprieve, especially not ones involving stripping. My tia never liked my job. It was the source of agonizing concern even while I showed no negative symptoms. Years ago she had attempted an intervention, taking me on a walk with my other tia where they attempted to convince me to choose another path. They wanted to know what my damage was and how they had failed me so badly that I would choose the life of a whore. While I danced, I imagined her looking down on me from wherever. I don’t believe in life after death, and even less so in the notion that the dead would want to spend their afterlife micromanaging the lives of the living. But for a moment, I imagined Maxine rolling her eyes and clicking her tongue as she says

Max: Oh, Anna.