[ note: the person hi-lighted in red below is not actually my grandpa, just a representation/thought/image ]
FATHER
for all intents and purposes, my grandfather will be referred to as my father. he was the father figure in my life, and he always wanted me to call him father. he never really said it, but implied it variously starting around the age of sixteen. when he was able to talk me into working with him in the basement at my mother's house on marshal, he would make comments relating to him being the only male figure in my life i could look up to. this was true, and i would smile and nod my head. sometimes, i would call him father. the very few times i did actually call him father, or dad, i can count them on one hand. but in my childhood of things being handed to me to make me stop crying, whining or otherwise being a pain in the ass, i rarely said anything i knew anyone wanted to hear unless i was getting or had already received something. he was always the one who would say no under any circumstance that was not one hundred percent acceptable. this was realized in hindsight recently while thinking about when i lost my mother (grandmother) a short number of years ago. i was thinking about how she was always the one who would say yes to see that short instant burst of happiness as i once again got my way. in this reminiscing i realized that the few times grandpa said yes was when he absolutely knew it was going to be a good idea. and very few times did it ever conflict with my mother's approval or disapproval. he was a very smart man.
SOLDIER
my father served in world war two. from the moment i recall hearing this fact i would periodically ask him for stories. as i got older, the very small number of stories grew to include stories involving women. as i recall the first few stories were fun he had with buddies. stories added involved how he met grandma, some women he met overseas and so on. never were there any actual combat stories beyond general commentary revolving around the fact that one of the many battles he was involved in one way or another was battle of the bulge. he was an engineer in the army. at first i got the impression he was a bridge builder. through various stories i learned he built and fixed a very wide range of things.
i was watching an hbo mini series called band of brothers. they got to bastogne and i was thinking, holy jesus christ. my respect for him living through that war grew ten fold. then later on in the series they stumble upon a concentration camp. before this i had seen various films on concentration camps and death camps of various types and sizes. the realization that ordinary soldiers discovered these camps fucked me up pretty good for a few days and the very next time i saw my grandpa, which was not more than two days after, i told him about the show where they found their first one, then asked him a question. "did your group ever bump into any of the concentration or death camps or anything like that?" he had a very solemn face but did not say anything for a few moments. he slowly nodded his head yes and you could clearly see memories were flowing. he said "yes, we actually found quite a few." and went silent again. we sat silently for a good chunk of time directly after that question. i broke the silence and told him i would never ask him about that war again. he gave a very partial nod and that was the end of the conversation.
MEMORIES
my father taught me his way of lawn care. some of my first memories with him were riding around on his riding lawn mower on the cloverdale lawn. he would tell me the patterns he used to keep the lawn looking nice. he taught me how to use a weed eater and various things about starting and maintaining flower beds. things he taught me through my life also included wood work and dry walling, but that was pretty much it for building things.
as far as my interaction with my grandfather, as i mentioned, i was a total shit. things i entirely deserved to be reminded of is the fact i didn't show gratitude at all, the majority of the time. when i was young i was seriously spoiled. this was compounded by an evolution of doing whatever i wanted to do which eventually got me locked up in one place or another over the span of a couple years. even though it was obvious he was displeased with me, for very good reasons, he still came to visit and still offered support along with grandma and mom. he even offered incentives to do better, etc. i can not recall what they were, but i generally remember. after i got out i had waves of slight trouble and getting better, but nothing like before. i was still a pretty nice sized pain in the ass, and was pretty lazy over all. problems with my mom blew out and i left the house, and eventually ended up living with grandpa and grandma. i got a job and lost it, and eventually got kicked out. during that time, though, he gave me his truck to help with my job and everything else at that stage of my life. after i got kicked out i went to live with my x and went through a couple jobs then ended up moving back in with grandpa and grandma once more. i got another couple jobs and moved out from there for good.
i was still having problems, but he kept encouraging me in his ways. both of us are stubborn as hell, and we bumped heads a lot. but, after time i started improving vastly and at the same time saw my family less and less. things changed slowly over the years from taking and taking, to taking and giving a little, to not taking at all and giving a little. i wish i would have given a lot and taken nothing before he died.
[EXPANSION ONE]
we were in the grocery store and we were standing in front of some of the automotive things they had to sell. he was repeating a speech he has told me over and over about keeping the oil changed on a regular basis. he always repeated things a million times -- but i think he knew that if he didn't, i would probably not bother with it. especially at that stage of my life, i was far more interested in drinking and partying with my friends than making sure my truck was in great working order. your car needs oil like we need blood, without clean blood we would be sick and die. something like that, i dont recall the speech right now. what i do recall is this person with longer hair went by and grandpa was kind of in the way so he said "oh, excuse me honey i'm sorry let me move for you." the person nodded and kept going. moments later, after grandpa was sure the person was down the aisle and fairly out of earshot, he leaned forward and asked me "that was a man, wasn't it?" i said "yeah, it's ok though." he laughed and said "oh god, i'm gay!" and chucked for a bit. it was pretty damn funny. it's much funnier if you know grandpa.
i'll probably expand this various times through the coming week(s)...
2008.05.08
my sister contacted me about 6:45pm on 2008.05.08. she asked me what my phone number was and we made sure our notes matched. then she asked me if mom could call me, if i still hated her or what. i said it doesn't really matter anymore, why? what's going on? she said it had to do with grandpa and i said yes please, please call. mom called me and in a teary voice told me that grandpa had a really bad day and the hospice had given him morphine and some other medicine to ease the pain. she told me he had a very short time to live. the last time i saw my father was a short time before christmas. before that it had been a number of months since i had seen him or my mom.
i did not like seeing him in his current state. the last time i saw him with any frequency was for about a year and a half after grandma died in january of 2002. so pretty much from roughly mid 2003 onward, i didn't see him anywhere near as much as anyone should. i would continually try and convince him to let me walk with him around the neighborhood. he's the type of guy who is always active. he's always running errands, working in the yard, doing things for the church, remodeling something on the house and so on. i say is, because that is how i know my father. i do not know him to have increasingly sagging skin, ever increasing irritability, loss of muscle and balance. it felt like he was pushing help away, and i didn't want to watch him deteriorate so i slowly faded away from his life. i have always thought about him a lot. i always had hope that the various things that were done to try to help him would get him up and moving again and get life back into his body. just his body, because his mind is always sharp. his vision was wasting away back in the late 80s and only got darker and darker into the start of the new century. from my understanding he could barely see blobs on a large tv in a dark room. it got really, really bad. he could still walk and navigate areas he was familiar with, but keeping tabs on what is actually good and bad in the fridge became a game of trying to secretly throw out molding things he believed to be just fine. between my mom, uncle craig and whenever i was there, we know we didn't stop him from eating things that should have been thrown in the trash and transported away long ago. i couldn't take that, so instead of doing the right thing and spending as much time as possible with him, again, i faded out.
so now, over the last two years, i had seen him enough times to count on two hands. my mother (grandmother) had years of being close to death then somehow coming out of it. so when i received this phone call, i thought this would be round three or four of serious trouble out of a few dozen to come. i honestly wasn't happy about having to see my mother or the conditions he no doubt lives in and i had plans with two friends who i also haven't seen in what might as well be a solid year. i told mom that i would be there around 7 or 8, maybe 7:30. i was supposed to meet my friends at 10:30 to watch Iron Man, so i was planning on leaving at about 10:10 so i could get there on time and not have them wait around. so beth and i killed time around here. i do not believe we even left here 'till closer to 7:45. we planned on eating first, and i needed gas and personal fuel (chocolate monster drinks, so good.) so we ate, went to the gas station and went to mom's. we got to mom's at just after 9:30. we were walking up the sidewalk to the house and as i reached the end of the porch mom came out of the house crying, which startled me a little even though she's like that, and i asked what was going on. i followed her inside as she explained that he wasn't breathing very well and the noises he was making as he tried to breath had stopped shortly before we arrived.
GOODBYE
when i first walked into the room he was laying on his side facing the window. christa was wandering around and eventually was next to the bed with mom and i. i was asking about his condition and mom was telling me about it. i moved to the side facing him and took his hand. i put my other hand on his side/back to try and feel breathing. his body was fairly warm, pretty close to how i remember him always being warm. i swear i saw his chest moving very slowly as if he was breathing ever so faintly. i felt this was a good sign and she told me the hospice was on the way and about his day. like i said, they gave him morphine and some other medicine to ease the pain and they said he could die in the night, or he could die a couple days off but it wasn't going to be much longer at all. mom again stated that he was making noises when he was trying to breathe today and that the noises stopped about fifteen minutes before we arrived. she suggested seeing if he was breathing by feeling for air coming out of his mouth or nose. i did notice that his tongue was sticking out a little like he always did when he was sleeping, but i didn't really notice that his lips were somewhat puckered, blocking most all air flow to and from his nose. i thought when i first walked in that he had an air tube in his nose. shortly after she suggested that i check for air i noticed there was no hose, and i asked what the noise was i thought was oxygen. she said it was the air stabilizer for his bed cushion and i secretly started to panic. i felt for air outside his mouth, then nose. i felt his chest and back and i was informed of how brittle his skin was lately, that it would just rub off. she described to me the broken toe with exposed bone but no bleeding, just minor pussing. i felt for air in front of his mouth and nose again. i felt nothing and i hadn't seen any motion at all in his chest or sides for several moments. i shook my head and started tearing up in the eyes. mom left the room and i felt crying approaching. i cried softly, a little, and checked for breathing again. he still felt warm so i knew if he was dead, he had to have died very, very recently. i asked christa to leave the room so i could say what i wanted to say to my father.
shortly after she left i told him i loved him, and that i have always loved him. i told him that i wish i could have made him more proud of me. i cried. i said i'm sorry for being such a disappointment. i thanked him for being so good to me and told him i did appreciate him, i did appreciate everything he's done for me. i apologized and said i was ashamed for the way i acted when i was younger.
i told him even though i rarely say it, he's always been my father.
[ note: the person hi-lighted in red above is not actually my grandpa, just a representation/thought/image ]