One Last “Eskimo Kiss”

I am named after my grandfathers. Aaron, which is what I go by in day-to-day life, is from my Mom’s father, George Aaron Bronson. Ernest, which I often abbreviate as E. is derived from my father’s father, Ernest Baughman (who would have turned 82 today). He is who this story will be about.

When I was growing up, my parents and I would almost always go visit my father’s family in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. We would go once during the summer around the 4^th of July, and once during the winter during my Christmas-break from school. When I was up there my grandfather would give me what he called “Eskimo kisses”, which would involve us rubbing our noses against each other horizontally.

It was June 24, 2016, the day after Britain voted in favor of beginning procedures to depart from the European Union. I woke up at roughly ten o’clock because I had work from 2pm to 6pm that day. When I woke up, I received an uncharacteristically-timed call from my father around 11am or so, which made me uneasy as I was reaching for the phone, because typically if I were to talk to him during his workday it was by my initiation, not his.

“Hey Aaron, I’ve got some bad news,” as soon as my father said this, I already knew what was coming, “I just got a call that Grandpap is probably going to die before the end of the day. I’m leaving work now to grab a suitcase and start driving to Ohio. If you want to come with me, I need to know soon.”

I managed to get out the words, “I wish I could come with you, but I have work in a few hours or so and you’ve always told me that prior commitments are important.”

My Dad said, “That is an admirable thing you’re doing, son. I understand there’s a conflict here.”

I responded, “Well, I need to get ready for work, love you, bye.”

He hung up, I sobbed.

I told myself that I would “be a man” about the situation and continue with my day of going to work, but once I arrived there my co-workers could tell something was wrong with me before I even clocked in for the day. When they asked what was wrong, I struggled to get the words out of my mouth without stammering, and before I could get the words out, I began to tear up. Before I could even tell them that my grandfather was to die within the day, they told me that if I didn’t feel good enough to work they would figure out how to get through the day without me being there.

Subsequently, I called my dad and said, “I hope you haven’t left for Grandma’s house yet because I feel like I need to be up there. I’m sorry I didn’t figure this out earlier, I guess I just wasn’t sure the best way to respond to this situation.”

He understandingly said, “I was on my way out the door, but I’ll wait for you to get home. I’m proud that you tried going to work given the circumstances.”

So, I got home as quickly as I could and tossed enough clothes for a few days into a duffle bag, threw my electronics in my backpack, and hopped in the car to start our roughly 8-hour voyage up I-77. This is a rather routine route for us, so the ride was rather uneventful.

 I walked into my Grandma’s house and the atmosphere was as if her house was the eye of a hurricane of dread. All words were spoken as if they were said from a muffled mouth not wanting to make too much noise or be of disturbance. I began to make my way through the crowd of my family, who had mostly been there since 5pm since they all live within an hour’s drive, into the room where my Grandfather’s hospital bed was set up. This bed just-so-happened to be positioned exactly where the bed I had slept in as a vacationing child was. The room was dimly lit as there aren’t any ceiling-mounted lights in it, just lamps scattered around the room. Not wanting to rush over to the bed as it was crowded to the point that I couldn’t see my grandfather, I rubbed shoulders with everyone in the room and found my way to a spot on a piano stool next to my always-wise cousin.

 She seemed to have gotten most of her tears out of the way by the time I arrived, but I noticed the redness around the rims of her eyes were still present. She was sipping on a glass of red wine that was eerily similar to the complexion of her emotion-ridden face.

 Everyone continued to murmur amongst themselves until my uncle accidentally sat on some piano keys. This startled everyone except for my semi-conscious grandfather who continued to lie there in his hospital-style bed making the occasional groaning noise as if he was fighting pain. None of us were sure if he was experiencing any pain, so we simply assumed he was. Was that the most reasonable thing to think? Perhaps not, but it seemed like it should be expected. Perhaps we only thought that to increase our empathy towards our family’s patriarch who was wheezing some of his last breaths, if you could even call them that. They were more like shallow gulps of air entering his lungs and staying for a while before they knew they had to leave the body of this dying man.

 Time continued to crawl at a meandering, slow pace as it tends to in these situations. When my grandfather eventually did take his last gasp of air, I discreetly took my phone out. I didn’t take it out to tweet about his death or anything silly like that, I checked to see what time it was because I thought it would be of use to us. It was 12:44 AM, June 25, 2016. His 79 long years on this planet ended just like that, one second there was some firing of neurons in his brain causing noises to come from his body, the next there were not. It was at this moment, I realized that love is watching someone die. I was struck by how fast such a complete change of state can occur, but nevertheless, it did. And now all of us had to deal with the consequences of my grandfather exiting this world and moving onto some other plane of existence.

 Once it finally settled in my dazed mind that this would probably be the last time I ever saw my Grandfather’s body as he was donating his body to the Cleveland Clinic, I walked up to his bedside and gave his lifeless body one last Eskimo kiss. We all stood there waiting for someone to arrive that could pronounce him dead and fill out his death certificate. When that person finally appeared, she said that unless there was a trained medical professional of some sort in the room that she would have to declare her time of arrival as my grandfather’s time of death. However, I wasn’t going to let that be the case because it seemed like an injustice to my grandfather’s legacy, so I nudged my Uncle, who is a trained paramedic, on the shoulder and told him he passed at 12:44 AM. After that, I walked to the living room where my air mattress was set up because I just couldn’t bear to be in that room for another second. I knew my grandfather was dead, I didn’t need to be reminded of it.

 While I was laying on my air mattress, I needed to find something to get my mind off of the events that had unfolded in front of my eyes, so I looked for the most vapid piece of entertainment I could find: a 40-something minute interview with the rapper, Lil Yachty. Had I ever heard of Lil Yachty before? No, I hadn’t, but at that moment I wanted to know everything about Lil Yachty because he was a person not connected to my family that I could listen to talk about meaningless topics and events for almost an hour.

Some time went by and I began to get tired, so I shut my laptop and went to bed with one less family member.