The Readying
There's nothing new to say about death, is there? Billions of stories that all have the same ending, but that we want to hear and tell each other. Stories we want to remember. So here are a couple.
When I called him to wish him a happy 99th birthday last year, my grandfather told me about taking a trip with his dad to buy a horse. We were talking about living, about the things that change around you, and he starts telling me about this horse, and I shut up and listen for a while. They were headed back to their home, with the new horse hitched to a cart, when my great-grandfather handed over the reins to his son. My grandfather was probably around 10 at the time and a little nervous. Cars had started to show up on the roads lately, and this was an unfamiliar horse, and sometimes cars spooked horses especially older horses, and spooked horses can be hard to manage, especially if you are around 10, but my great-grandfather wanted to roll a cigarette. So my grandfather took over driving and listened for cars, tense. Turns out the horse barely noticed cars, and was calm enough for a ten-ish-year-old to manage, and my great-grandfather had a smoke, and that was a day. One of 30-odd thousand days. Be the horse, basically, is the lesson, if there is one. It's a lesson for 99-year-olds more than 34-year-olds, I guess.
I cannot imagine him as a child. I have seen pictures, but don't really believe they are of him, exactly. Even as a young man, he looks to me like a grandfather-in-waiting because a grandfather is what I am looking for. I see the thinning hair and the glasses, not the motorcycle. At his 100th birthday party he gave a speech that included a revised telling of the story about the horse and the cars, and my aunt told us that he was prepared, at one point, to leave California behind, to move to the Philippines and take a job there. He ended up not going because he met my grandmother at a dance. He stayed in California instead, and got a union job, and had a daughter who met her husband in the Philippines when they worked on a guidebook together and another daughter who became my mother.
Seven or eight years ago I took a short trip out to see him and my grandmother, while my mom was visiting. I had a couple of books with me and spent hours each day sitting in the backyard reading while my grandmother bossed my mom around the kitchen and my grandfather tended to the garden and fruit trees. I looked up from a book at one point to see him balanced on top of a 6-foot ladder, placing a scarecrow in a cherry tree. The scarecrow was dressed in his old clothes and my grandfather was (only!) 93 at the time, and had been functionally blind for a very long time. I was sort of appalled at myself for not noticing what he was doing or offering to help, but he waved me off when I did offer, then came down off the ladder and asked me what I was reading. It happened to be a history book about the 1918 influenza pandemic and he said "Oh, I had that real bad. It almost killed me. A neighbor kid, from a rich family, died, and they were strange with me after." He would have been 4 or 5.
He rarely talks about it, so I won't either, but there was the Pacific Theater of WWII in there as well. Other possible endings.
So yes, I was ready to hear that my grandfather will be transitioning to hospice care, not for one thing in particular, but because maybe 100 years is a good time to decide that you shouldn't have to fight for every minute. I was ready, but of course I wasn't, because even thought I know the ending, I want the story to keep going. Good stories are always hard to end, for so many reasons.
This essay was timely, I guess is what I am saying.
When I called him to wish him a happy 99th birthday last year, my grandfather told me about taking a trip with his dad to buy a horse. We were talking about living, about the things that change around you, and he starts telling me about this horse, and I shut up and listen for a while. They were headed back to their home, with the new horse hitched to a cart, when my great-grandfather handed over the reins to his son. My grandfather was probably around 10 at the time and a little nervous. Cars had started to show up on the roads lately, and this was an unfamiliar horse, and sometimes cars spooked horses especially older horses, and spooked horses can be hard to manage, especially if you are around 10, but my great-grandfather wanted to roll a cigarette. So my grandfather took over driving and listened for cars, tense. Turns out the horse barely noticed cars, and was calm enough for a ten-ish-year-old to manage, and my great-grandfather had a smoke, and that was a day. One of 30-odd thousand days. Be the horse, basically, is the lesson, if there is one. It's a lesson for 99-year-olds more than 34-year-olds, I guess.
I cannot imagine him as a child. I have seen pictures, but don't really believe they are of him, exactly. Even as a young man, he looks to me like a grandfather-in-waiting because a grandfather is what I am looking for. I see the thinning hair and the glasses, not the motorcycle. At his 100th birthday party he gave a speech that included a revised telling of the story about the horse and the cars, and my aunt told us that he was prepared, at one point, to leave California behind, to move to the Philippines and take a job there. He ended up not going because he met my grandmother at a dance. He stayed in California instead, and got a union job, and had a daughter who met her husband in the Philippines when they worked on a guidebook together and another daughter who became my mother.
Seven or eight years ago I took a short trip out to see him and my grandmother, while my mom was visiting. I had a couple of books with me and spent hours each day sitting in the backyard reading while my grandmother bossed my mom around the kitchen and my grandfather tended to the garden and fruit trees. I looked up from a book at one point to see him balanced on top of a 6-foot ladder, placing a scarecrow in a cherry tree. The scarecrow was dressed in his old clothes and my grandfather was (only!) 93 at the time, and had been functionally blind for a very long time. I was sort of appalled at myself for not noticing what he was doing or offering to help, but he waved me off when I did offer, then came down off the ladder and asked me what I was reading. It happened to be a history book about the 1918 influenza pandemic and he said "Oh, I had that real bad. It almost killed me. A neighbor kid, from a rich family, died, and they were strange with me after." He would have been 4 or 5.
He rarely talks about it, so I won't either, but there was the Pacific Theater of WWII in there as well. Other possible endings.
So yes, I was ready to hear that my grandfather will be transitioning to hospice care, not for one thing in particular, but because maybe 100 years is a good time to decide that you shouldn't have to fight for every minute. I was ready, but of course I wasn't, because even thought I know the ending, I want the story to keep going. Good stories are always hard to end, for so many reasons.
This essay was timely, I guess is what I am saying.