Y-O-D-A, Yoda

My friend's live-in grandmother, Yoda, passed away on Wednesday night around 7:30. If you've ever wondered where the Shoebox greeting-card company got that old, cranky lady, you'd have only needed to walk around the corner from my house, and there was Yoda, hunched over in her chair, reading TV Guide with a magnifying glass that could melt ants under an incandescent lamp. Over the past decade or so, Yoda's had her last rites read to her probably a dozen times, and I've gone to see her in the hospital more times than I've been to see my own grandmother in her nursing home. That said, I think that we were all ready for Yoda to go, but we didn't know it was going to happen this week.

The doctor said when she was admitted that Yoda's emphysema was so bad that he'd never seen blood gases as bad as hers were, that it was about a hundred percent carbon-dioxide. Given that, he had no idea how she'd made it this long. They ended up coding her twice before she finally went off to the undiscovered country, probably finally seeing her husband who died some fifteen, twenty years ago.

So why do I keep referring to her as Yoda? As though it wasn't obvious, she was about eight-hundred years old, terribly wise, and would whip the shit out of you with a lightsaber if she was given half a chance. I always like to think that the real Yoda, in his little Dagobah shack, liked to watch a great deal of Lifetime and had a penchant for Technicolor musicals.

It's just strange, now, walking upstairs at the house, seeing Yoda's chair -which, no doubt, gave her that Richard III look- and not see her in it. It's not three days later yet, and the house is getting to the point where it's actually clean, which it hasn't been in several years. This also brings with it various changes, such as my friend Scott and his brother having to cook for themselves from now on (they are also incapable of doing laundry) and Scott will have to go out to get his hair cut, rather than having Yoda's stylist do it. I'm going to miss those long chats with Yoda, where I couldn't hear a damn thing she had to say, but nodded along and occasionally threw out a, "Yeah, totally."

Anyway. That's that. I'm going to go eat Twinkies now, because the couple of pounds of Chinese food I ate earlier just didn't do the job. By the way, I amended the links on the right side to add links for Small Shiny Things and its/their (whatever) singer Kevin's new blog to the Now Reading list, which really needs amending, given that Petrol quit posting a long time ago. Furthermore, notes of condolence can be directed to the nearest wall, given that I like to be reminded of death as seldom as humanly possible.


AIM: therbmcc71