(no subject)
the last is my favorite, since i always loved doing puzzles so much
and he looks so happy to be doing it with me.
i was super chipper when i answered my mom's phone call this afternoon, being that i had just said goodbye to kathy and was hyped up on sugar and caffeine from my training at starbucks. my mom was discussing earlier this weekend possibly coming up to visit next week, since i haven't seen her since christmas, but i needed to find out if i was working on sunday, so i thought that would be why she was calling. instead, i had to stop in my tracks and immediately turn around and run back after kathy.
one of the first things my mind did a few hours later was, even though it's sick and morbid, compare my reactions between today and not even two weeks ago, and be surprised at how different they were. the moment i found out alan hankin died, i felt a hole punched through my stomach and almost cried on the spot. after my mom's phone call, i told kathy that my grandpa had died almost non-chalantly, and then went to my 2 afternoon classes and then my night shift at the darkroom. i thought i should let people know, so i text messaged sam and posted on here when i was fiddling around on the computer before my desktop publishing class, but it wasn't even until i finally got on the subway to come home hours later that i really fully thought about it, and considered writing something about it. alan was so shocking, dealing with it punched me in the face and wouldn't let go. as horrible as it will sound, my grandpa wasn't as surprising. he has been unhealthy for years, and he took horrible care of himself. he was around 80 years old. he had lived a full life. it is morbid to say, but for almost years now, i have been waiting for a phone call from my mom. but death is always a shock. it's like i had been waiting so long that i almost forgot about it, like the possibility had become so familiar that i had lost sight that it could actually be real.
or maybe i just felt kind of numb, and didn't want to have to deal or think about anything for at least a little while because these ups and downs are a little too much. [this is the whiney paragraph.] san francisco was one of the most amazing weeks, sandwiched by the first two close deaths i've had to deal with in my life. (my other grandpa died when i was too little to truly remember.) i had just been dealing with the anxiety of starting a brand new job. all of these emotions raging everywhere just make me feel a little worn out. i knew i would have to deal with death eventually, but this is a little much.
or maybe i could put it out of my mind because i'm used to dealing with the guilt that has been hiding in the very very back of my mind ever since i went to college, as a consequence of not thinking about my grandpa and my home life enough in general. the situation of my grandparents is somewhat complex and overall depressing, and it constitutes a large portion of what going home to my family means. everytime i do go home - which is less and less frequently nowadays - i realize the situation my mom deals with everyday, and the meanings of everything, and i feel sad somewhere, and then i go back to my fairytale college life in a big city where i think my biggest problems are paying my few bills on time and ignorant assholes who might criticize who i choose to love.
my grandma was fully diagnosed with alzheimer's when i was in high school, but my grandpa wouldn't admit she needed to be admitted to a nursing home until i was in college - at least i think. the timing of everything in the last five years blurs together for me. as sad as it was (and is) to see my grandma deteorate into a person who long ago stopped being the person who slipped me butterscotch lifesavors at school plays, it was even sadder to watch my grandpa be slowly and somewhat broken by it.
i feel really horrible, talking about these sad things when i should be talking about the happy things he did in order to honor his life. so i'm going to do that for a second. if one thing can be said about my grandpa, it's that he liked to have a good time, and he could make people laugh. he was one of those crazy stubborn old men who bitched about any and everything and who you were scared to share the road with but made you shake your head and laugh about it, every time. my sister called me tonight and said that she was drinking a beer after eating some cake and some chips, because that's what he would have wanted, and i can't say anything truer than that.
my grandpa was a carpenter. he was a man who used his hands. he helped build the house that i lived in for 18 years of my life. his yard always had the prettiest flowers. every sunday of my life up until high school, we would go to his house after church on sundays for "supper." supper always consisted of some kind of meat that i attempted to dab at, mashed potatoes full of pounds of butter and cheese that i stuffed my face with, and during the summer, tomatoes and zucchini from his garden. (horrifyingly to myself now, and surprisingly to anyone who knows me now, i was a somewhat picky eater as a kid and when the main dish was something they knew i wouldn't like, my grandpa and grandma would always make something else small just for me - broccoli or macaroni and cheese.) at the end of the meal, my grandpa would raise his eyebrows and say, "gee, jill, i think there might be something in the freezer downstairs, why don't you go and see." i would obviously rush to the basement and open the freezer to select what kind of ice cream we'd have for dessert. (there were often up to 3 or 4 varieties to choose from.) every single sunday.
(then he would watch golf for hours and i would pass out on the couch.)
my grandpa didn't only build our house, but a lot of other things in our town. our family has roots in our community, and it really is one of my favorite things about my life, and my childhood. on a science field trip in high school when we were on our way to one of our teacher's farms to look at his chickens (i'm telling you, it's a small town) we were driving up some small steep road and my teacher, who was sitting in front of me on the school bus, started telling me some crazy story about how he and my grandpa sled down the hill one winter when they were kids, and somehow broke someone's window, or some kind of hooligans. i remember being kind of embarrased at the time, since the particular teacher is kind of a lunatic, and he was singling me out on a bus full of high schoolers, but now in my wise reflective all knowing age of 21, i'm grateful for it.
but, back to alzheimer's and the nursing home. we all knew this would happen soon, and that it had to, due to the way he treated himself - a common breakfast for him might be an entamenn's coffee cake and a beer - and also because my mom can't live this way forever. for the last five years, maybe even more, my mom has been taking care of either my grandma or my grandpa (most recently, since my grandma's in the nursing home, just my grandpa, who's a handful in himself) in some capacity nearly everyday. for the last god knows how many months, my mom has been going to work at like 6 in the morning or something crazy so she can leave early enough in the afternoon to take my grandpa to the nursing home and back, clean his house, and pick up whatever he needs. she usually gets home around 6 or 7. as superhero as my mom is, the things she deals with consistently are too much after a point even for superheros.
mostly she is who i feel bad for. kathy asked if my mom sounded upset on the phone, and i said that she was using her "in-control sue" voice but i knew she was. i hadn't used that term before it came out of my mouth at that moment, but that is what she is. in-control sue. my mom is the one who, in addition to everything else, has handled all of the legal and financial business of her parents-which is really exceedingly complex-for the last few years. mainly because she knows what she's doing, but it would also probably make my aunt or my uncle too upset to even attempt. (she tried to explain some of it to me once, and i think i blanked out after 30 seconds.) in-control sue needs a break. but at the same time, after all of the problems, these are her parents, and it has all been such a huge chunk of her life for so long, and i don't know how she's going to feel next week when she can go home directly from work; when there is a big hole.
i really don't have an intention to end this on a depressing note though. remember when i said that my grandma's disease made my grandpa depressing, or something similar to it? that's not completely true, at least when i thought about it tonight on the subway it wasn't. my grandpa refused to ever fully accept the consequences of alzhemer's. most of the time, we all began to see it as just really sad, when he would say "we had a conversation today about blah de blah so and so," when we all know that my grandma hasn't spoken any coherent words other than occasional giggling, at what you can never really tell, in years. every single day he would go to the nursing home, unless he physically couldn't for whatever reason, to just sit beside her, even though half of the time one or both of them would just fall asleep. he kept talking to her and always holding her hand, even if she never responded or didn't even look at him half the time. he refused to accept that the lady sitting next to him wasn't still his same wife, because he loved her so much. and maybe this sounds depressing, but my point is, it is good to know that even when your mind crumbles away, even when your body doesn't function anymore, it is your heart that will still fucking hold on.