I have spent many hours these last few days in a hospital hospice room holding my grandfather’s hand. After several months of falls, a move to a nursing home, and increasing dementia, he’s now got pneumonia and no fight left. He is nearly 88. He had a good life. This is not a tragedy.
Still.
I sat in a near-dark room last night with my older sister, the ignored television murmuring and flickering in the high reach of a corner, the two of us mostly quiet. In less than a month, she and I will drive across the country to Portland, Oregon. Erin and Roya will meet us there, having flown. My sister is kind to keep me company on the drive.
Roya was born last Memorial Day in a corner room filled with late afternoon sun filtered through maple leaves brushing against the windows. Across a helicopter pad, on the other side of the medical center, I can see that room from my grandfather’s bedside.
Our things have started going into boxes. We start with books. We always start with the books. Liquor boxes work best for paperbacks, something bigger for cloth-bound. Shelves are emptying. We have furniture posted on Craigslist. Our things are becoming less. We have too many things.
We decided to move days after Roya was born. We never gave Rhode Island our all. Five years here was a surprise. I grew up here, and left, and came back a dozen years later already looking past it. I’ll get to know my family as an adult, I thought. They’ll get to know me. We still have things in storage.
After his fever broke and the drugs worked their course, my grandfather grew more responsive than he’d been in months. We brought Roya in, partly because we had no one to babysit, partly because toddlers are expert tension breakers. I held her next to his bed, our backs to the window, and she said hi! It is what she says most of the time these days, to everyone she sees. She blows kisses to strangers in the grocery store. She was on maybe her tenth straight hi! when he rolled over, opened his eyes, and smiled. He said, “Hi. How are you doing?” It was the most he’d spoken in months, to anyone. I looked at my father. He looked away and pulled out his handkerchief.
There are things that tie you to a place, things that push you away. Things you treasure, things you set down on the curb. There are things I haven’t the skill to articulate, things I wish I couldn’t name. Things you’re thankful for, inherited things you can’t see in the mirror.
My sister and I may stop at the Grand Canyon on our drive. It’s a day out of the way, but it’d be a thing to behold. Something to cross off the list. I like the obvious metaphor, the slow theft of dull earth by passing time, all of it turned to a beautiful nothing.
When I was young, my grandfather would take my cousin Brian and I to Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts. We’d tour the battleship, the submarine, the aircraft carrier. We’d marvel and fondle, we’d sit in the gunner’s chair and make the noises little boys make. Then my grandfather would spread a blanket in the grass and hand us sandwiches from a cooler. We’d ask him if he was ever on ships like this when he was a soldier. Quietly, he’d say, “I’m not a soldier. I’m a Marine. Now eat your lunch.” We’d ask him about the wars. He’d tell us again to eat our lunch. We would.
There are things you swallow. Things you keep to yourself. There are things you miss even as they’re right in front of you.
