The Seeking Daddy Project Day 31: Death.

I pay for HBO every month largely for just two shows: The Newsroom and Girls. I'm sure I'll be writing about The Newsroom quite a bit more in the summertime when it comes back on, but for now, Girls is on and I'm strangely fascinated by it.

Since I had a largely puritanical, straight-laced twenty-something experience, a lot of the nuances of Girls don't quite resonate with me.  Even so, many of them do - the insecurity, the questioning, the doubt.  The major shifts.  The minor harmonies that haunt the everyday.

On last night's episode of Girls, Hannah's grandmother is sick and near death.  She goes to the hospital where her mother, aunts, and cousin are all gathered, waiting.  They do a montage of scenes through the night where the three aunts and Hannah are sleeping in the hospital hallway...just passing time waiting for the grandmother to either die...or not.

One of my deepest and scariest truths is that I'm afraid there will be no one there for me when I pass.

I'm 31 years old, unmarried, and childless.  I can't even handle thinking about my five-year-old dog growing older, much less myself.  My younger sister will have children, I'm sure, but how much does an aunt really mean to a twenty-something?  Would you spend the night in a hospital for an aunt?  Would you stop by to visit?  Would you care for her the way you would your mother?

Doubtful.

As I watched that scene, I thought about my own grandmother in the hospital in the months before she died: small, scared, and sick.  Withered.  A shadow of her former self. Doctors and surgeries and pills away from the vibrant woman I remember from my childhood who tended her garden and cooked elaborate meals for her grand-kids.  I remember how sad she looked each time I left.  I remember how hard it was to fit a visit in between school and my work schedule and my plans.  My big plans that didn't really matter.

I wish I hadn't left so soon.

I hope that when I get to be an old lady, whoever my family is won't be so quick to leave me alone in the hospital room.

I hope when I get to be an old lady, I will have family who will visit.

I can only hope.