Eulogy for my Grandfather

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?