Pa, my grandfather.
He’s one of my favorite people and always has been. I get my sense
of humor from him, and I inherited more than a double-shot of his
orneriness. He loved Looney-Toons and peanut butter and jelly. But
these are paltry details.
He grew up in the
depression, the fifth of 13 kids. He joined the army at the very
tail end of WW2 and served in Panama. He married my grandmother, and
they’re still together largely due to a seemingly infinite well of
patience on her part. Together they raised 4 children who went onto
spawn a further 10 grandchildren(and two great-grandchildren). The
grandchildren are of varying quality, and I place myself near the
bottom of the pack.
The man was a hard
worker and life long physical laborer. Up until a couple of years
ago he was running his own landscaping business. By running it, I
don’t mean that he directed an army of minions to cut lawns and
plant flower beds. It was largely a one-man show, as he labored in
the summer heat. He was 88 when he finally set aside his lawnmower
and finally retired for good.
Sort of. He still
had a tendency to sculpt these concrete mushrooms and give them away.
His lawn is a jungle of the toadstools. He just never stopped.
One summer in
college when I lived with them, Pa took me on a tour around the city
where he and my grandmother raised their kids. He pointed out all the
places that he had worked over the years, sometimes holding 3 or 4
jobs at a time. He wasn’t a man that attained lofty levels of
education, only managing to attain his GED as his kids began to grow
up. But he was skilled and creative.
My grandfather is
dying. Alzheimer's runs in the family and it took several of his
siblings. After 91 years it has all come down to a slow fade. One
that is painful to watch, even from a distance where I only I get to
observe bits and pieced by the effects that his passing has on my
parents and aunts and uncles.
My own father told
my mother “If this ever starts happening to me, I want you to take
me out into the woods and leave me.” To which my mother responded
“If I do that, I’ll probably be the one who gets lost, while you
get home.”
About a month ago he
slipped and fell on the ice while shoveling. He broke his hip. Maybe
it would have been better if he hadn’t survived the surgery, but
he’s physically fit and he made it through. Maybe a cold thought,
but I began mourning him when he stated a couple years ago that he
was getting weary of living. They weren’t his exact works, but
close enough. He was slowing down and his memory was already
beginning to betray him.
Still, he held onto
his sense of humor. And ornery disposition. He remembers my
Grandmother, if nobody else. The core of who he was. When he could
no longer remember who I was. That hurt some. But I had already
caught wind that he was beginning to leave us. I’ve since dreamed
that he remembered me. It was only a dream.
He broke his hip and
went into rehab. And will never come back out. He doesn’t
understand why. And he’s angry. And that hurts. Here you are Pa,
we love you but we can’t do right by you at home. We? No, I’m
just a spectator. My father and aunt have born most of that burden.
Were I a better
grandchild, I could have visited more often. For the better part of
the last decade I’ve only lived a short couple hours away by car.
But there is work and play and weekends are fleeting. Finding a good
balance between what I should do and what I would like to do, well
seems to fall more on the side of the latter. Maybe if I had visited
more often, I would have remained more firmly in his memory.
Fortunately he has
better grandchildren than me. More worthy than me.
The thing about
dying, is that once you’ve completed the process, nothing bothers
you anymore. Well, that’s assuming that there isn’t an
afterlife, an assumption that I make. Unless you and yours are
ardent followers of Epicurus, the lasting pain has to be borne by the
people you leave behind. That is most apparent through the eyes of
my Grandmother. Watching her grieve her husband of 70 years,
watching her cry as she sat beside the shell of her husband. I miss
him already.
I dreamt the other
night that I was able to do something more useful than to just stand
back and watch quietly. My dreams are always bigger and better than
my reality.
I never asked what
he did in Panama. When he brought it up it was to relate a story
about the spiders down there weaving webs that stretched between
telephone poles. That really impressed him. Maybe he thought that
the mundane day to day details of his life wouldn’t have made a
good story.
I found out recently
that I had been a supply clerk and made a weekly trip to resupply the
outposts. When he wasn’t doing that he was hanging out by the pool
or boxing. Yeah, Pa was a boxer. Didn’t know that either. I could
have asked. But I am broken and simple things like asking questions
about people doesn’t really occur to me until much late. His life
deserves a full book, but I can only give it a few paragraphs.
And here’s where I
turn the story of his death into something about me.
Were I living the
life of a character in a novel, I’d suddenly have some sort of
epiphany. The death of a loved one really makes one think about
life. Hah. No it doesn’t. I think about life all the time. What
I want to do and where I want to be, and always come up empty. There
is only where I am. To crib a line from Scroobius Pip, Paralysis
through Analysis has stopped me here. And so I remain.
Maybe I have
rose-tinted glasses, but Pa seems to have lived a good life. If a few
weeks or months too long. Would he be proud of me? If he could peel
back my facade and peer into my soul as in stews in anxiety? And all
of the broken bits that make up what I am? I’ve already proven
that I am not worthy of either of their lineage.
When I was but I
child my family moved to Alaska where I would grow up. At the same
time my grandparents packed up and moved to Massachusetts. For most
of my youth, with the exception of a couple visits. I would only hear
my grandparents voices over the rather expensive long distance calls.
That and the yearly $25.00 birthday check that seemed like a fortune!
For the first month
that Pa lived in Mass, he didn’t unload the truck for fear that it
wouldn’t work out. Maybe he shared some of my anxiety about life.
But he jumped in anyway and seemed to have made another good life
with my grandmother as a couple of empty-nesters in a new state,
starting new lives or rather, keeping on with a new chapter in an old
book. He was afraid, but it worked out.
Where would I be
right now if I had possessed Pa’s fortitude and was able to bare my
soul to the woman I had fallen head-over-heels for in college? Maybe
with her right now?
