Autumn evokes emotions.
Instead of a real entry, I decided to be lazy and post an essay I wrote over the weekend for my english class. I think it makes sense to post though, because of this season. (you'll understand when you read it) sorry, it's kinda on the long side...
September: for the past two years, this month that marks the start of autumn has had a distinct, familiar feeling. Ironically, considering the events that would occur, Green Day released their new single “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on June 13, 2005. Little did I know when I first heard the song, that it would become my anthem for that September.
When I was nine, my grandpa, or “Pop- Pop” as I called him, moved into my house after a long, bitter divorce with my grandma. Pop-Pop was what many people know as a “jack-of-all-trades” and a master of many. He knew how to fix everything from the furnace, to removing deeply-lodged splinters, to re-assembling the broken neck of a Barbie doll. Without even being asked to, he took it upon himself to do everyone’s laundry. In his dresser drawers you would find his own laundry, not only folded but also neatly rolled to conserve more space and cause less wrinkles - a trick he learned during his years of serving in the U.S. Navy. Unlike most people, he enjoyed waking up at five in the morning to find useful things to do. He made me oatmeal every morning and on the mornings it rained, had my neighbor and I sit in his car at the bus stop so that we wouldn’t get wet. When my brother decided he wanted to play soccer with the local team, Pop-Pop took the job as “assistant coach” and as I became more serious and involved in ballet, he drove me to a majority of my lessons and rehearsals. During the day while the rest of the family was at school or work, he would indulge in two of his favorite pastimes: golfing and fishing. We bought two double-seater kayaks and Pop-Pop bought a single kayak and we would go kayaking as often as possible on the weekends. Pop-Pop also became the peacemaker of the house. Whenever my brother or I would argue with our parents, Pop-Pop was the mediator who cooled the hotheads on either side of the argument. Despite his gruff, booming voice, he had a cool, collected demeanor.
The same year that Pop-Pop moved in, I decided to become a vegetarian for animal rights reasons. I saw the movie “Babe” and as a result of comprehending that I had been eating dead animals, vowed never to eat meat again. My mother began researching vegetarianism and soon after followed suit, but became more involved in the health aspects of vegetarianism. She also began buying mainly organic food and discarded any alcoholic beverages stowed away in the pantry. My brother, Johnny, and father soon became pescatarians (the only meat they still consumed was fish).
Pop-Pop was the only one in the household who did not change his eating habits. Instead, he often went out with friends to restaurants to eat steaks and would bring home containers of butter-laden pasta with chicken, shrimp scampi, and much to my disgust, cow’s tongue. He also snuck home bottles of wine or scotch, wrapped in brown paper bags, which he hid in his closet. In the garage, he also stored cases of beer, specifically Becks. We no longer had much junk food in the house, so Pop-Pop would bring me to Panera after ballet and buy me a large chocolate chip cookie, unbeknownst to my mother, of course. We always made sure there was no evidence or Panera wrappers and bags left in the car.
In the fall of 2002, Pop-Pop’s body gave its first warning that he needed to change his unhealthy habits. His doctor discovered extremely large polyps in his colon and Pop-Pop had surgery to reconstruct his colon. While in the hospital after the surgery, Pop-Pop also suffered a minor stroke - his body’s second warning. After coming home, with my mother’s help and guidance, he took better care of himself and stopped drinking alcohol and eating fatty foods. Unfortunately, he eventually eased back into his old routine with the thought that his body wouldn’t give in again. He went out with his friends or to my aunt’s house and ate fatty meats and drank alcohol. The only difference was that he would no longer bring the unhealthy food back to the house, and perhaps this made him believe he was still doing better with his diet since the unhealthy foods were no longer always in front of him at home.
It wasn’t until February of 2005 that the real heart-wrenching shocker of news came. A two- syllable word that resonated of almost certain death: cancer. A spot had been found on Pop-Pop’s lung in an x-ray. He had smoked from the time he was a pre-teen until I was about four. As a result of the smoking he had emphysema and every so often went to checkups for his lungs. The doctors said that he had only a few months to live, that it was inoperable cancer, and that he should undergo chemotherapy immediately if he wanted to even live the length they predicted. Knowing that chemotherapy would ruin his quality of life from having seen friends undergo chemo, Pop-Pop decided to discuss possible options with my mother. Instead of taking the advice of his doctors, he decided to try the natural, alternative route and began to change his entire lifestyle.
Pop-Pop’s new routine became filled with acupuncture appointments, vegetable-juice fasting, infrared therapy, Qigong practicing and the switch to a vegetarian diet and abstaining from alcohol among other things. He would have acupuncture done every week by an acupuncturist, Peter, who my mother and I had been seeing for years. He also attended Qigong classes taught by Peter, every other week. Qigong is an ancient Chinese, self-healing art that involves breathing exercises and movements. He practiced Qigong twice a week and went into the city with my mother every week to receive far infrared therapy - a therapy in which infrared waves are used to heat the body from the inside out, cleansing the body of toxins. About three months after he was diagnosed, my mother and Pop-Pop decided to see who could do a longer vegetable juice fast to detoxify their bodies. My mother won with six days. Pop-Pop stopped at five. After the juice fast, he looked better than he had since before I was born. His cheeks were flushed with a rosy tint and his eye color was clearer - no longer a cloudy mix of grey and brown. His complexion glowed, he lost a healthy amount of weight, he had more energy and started playing golf and kayaking more often. For the next three months after the fast, his health seemed to be steadily improving. I began to believe he was going to overcome his battle with cancer. With every day that passed, the more plausible it seemed. Pop-Pop’s sister, my great aunt Rosemarie, came up from Florida to visit. Pop-Pop had a surplus of energy, and took Aunt Rosemarie golfing and kayaking with the whole family.
On a day in mid-August, Pop-Pop somehow managed to hurt his hip. He didn’t feel like dealing with the pain or finding a natural way to alleviate it, and started taking painkillers. It seemed as if his health began declining faster than the speed of a pro baseball pitcher’s throw. He rapidly became weaker and the pain became worse, so at the end of the week he went to a doctor who gave him morphine. The morphine restricted his breathing even more than his emphysema already did, and soon it became difficult for him to even walk down the hall to the kitchen. The end of the last week in August, everything seemed to go downhill. Pop-Pop was bedridden and on so much morphine, that he couldn’t speak correctly while awake and often fell asleep
The morning of September 3rd, I awoke to the sound of hushed voices coming from Pop-Pop’s room. I trudged sleepily down the stairs to find both my parents, Aunt Rosemarie and Camille, my Mom’s boss who is a nurse, standing around Pop-Pop’s bed. Pop-Pop’s lungs had begun filling up with his own bodily fluids. My aunt, uncle and cousin Candice, rushed over to our house and we all stood around Pop-Pop who was in his bed.
The sound of a person essentially drowning in their own bodily fluid is one that is almost impossible to repress in memory. The only sound that may come close in description is that of the gurgling of someone blowing through a straw into a cup of liquid combined with labored Darth Vader-like gasps. What was worse was the sound combined with the look of pure fear in Pop-Pop’s eyes, knowing this was it. Nothing could be done to stop it.
Camille told the family that Pop-Pop would probably be in that state for a few hours. My aunt told Candice and I to go buy bagels and coffee for the family. Candice and I came back to find Johnny on the porch, red-faced and crumpled in heavy sobs. Pop-Pop had died five minutes before we arrived back home.
The tears came, and yet I felt numb, in denial and shock. Inside the house, everyone was bustling, making funeral arrangements. I walked into Pop-Pop’s room. His body was lain out flat on his bed. Now that his muscles were relaxed, the lumps of cancer emerged, making it clear that it had metastasized to his neck, behind his ear, and I was told later, his hip.
At the first wake I slipped my first pair of pointe shoes in the coffin next to Pop-Pop. He played such a significant role in supporting my dancing, I only saw it as fitting. I missed the first day of Junior year to be at his funeral. My mother began blaming herself for not doing enough to help him, and for a while became depressed and anti-social. I dreaded school each day because I just wanted to be home with my Mom. Late at night, or even in the earliest morning hours I lay awake while everyone else in the house was sleeping and would listen to “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on repeat. I just wanted that first month of September to pass.
I’ve occasionally pondered what would’ve been the outcome if Pop-Pop had changed his habits sooner. Or, what if he had opted out of taking the painkillers? His body only started to relapse after he took that type of drug . Seeing how incredibly healthy Pop-Pop had been after his lifestyle changes, and how frightening in contrast his deterioration in his last two weeks of life were, I made a personal decision to strive toward my optimal health. Two months after Pop’s death, I made the transition from vegetarian to vegan because I researched the many health benefits of a vegan diet. And now, 3 years after Pop’s death, I am in the process of converting from vegan to raw foodist vegan. I’ve never tried smoking because of seeing firsthand what it does to the body. In the past I did drink a few times, for what teenager isn’t at some point curious what it feels like to be in a drunken stupor, but came to the realization that I had no desire to drink after discovering its effects. Funny, the first thought that would pop into my head always was, “You’re killing your liver!” - not the average teenager’s worst fear of drinking as far as I know. At least twice a week I practice yoga and meditate. I am more aware of my health and know to care for my body because I don’t want to suffer the same fate as Pop-Pop.
September: for the past two years, this month that marks the start of autumn has had a distinct, familiar feeling. Ironically, considering the events that would occur, Green Day released their new single “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on June 13, 2005. Little did I know when I first heard the song, that it would become my anthem for that September.
When I was nine, my grandpa, or “Pop- Pop” as I called him, moved into my house after a long, bitter divorce with my grandma. Pop-Pop was what many people know as a “jack-of-all-trades” and a master of many. He knew how to fix everything from the furnace, to removing deeply-lodged splinters, to re-assembling the broken neck of a Barbie doll. Without even being asked to, he took it upon himself to do everyone’s laundry. In his dresser drawers you would find his own laundry, not only folded but also neatly rolled to conserve more space and cause less wrinkles - a trick he learned during his years of serving in the U.S. Navy. Unlike most people, he enjoyed waking up at five in the morning to find useful things to do. He made me oatmeal every morning and on the mornings it rained, had my neighbor and I sit in his car at the bus stop so that we wouldn’t get wet. When my brother decided he wanted to play soccer with the local team, Pop-Pop took the job as “assistant coach” and as I became more serious and involved in ballet, he drove me to a majority of my lessons and rehearsals. During the day while the rest of the family was at school or work, he would indulge in two of his favorite pastimes: golfing and fishing. We bought two double-seater kayaks and Pop-Pop bought a single kayak and we would go kayaking as often as possible on the weekends. Pop-Pop also became the peacemaker of the house. Whenever my brother or I would argue with our parents, Pop-Pop was the mediator who cooled the hotheads on either side of the argument. Despite his gruff, booming voice, he had a cool, collected demeanor.
The same year that Pop-Pop moved in, I decided to become a vegetarian for animal rights reasons. I saw the movie “Babe” and as a result of comprehending that I had been eating dead animals, vowed never to eat meat again. My mother began researching vegetarianism and soon after followed suit, but became more involved in the health aspects of vegetarianism. She also began buying mainly organic food and discarded any alcoholic beverages stowed away in the pantry. My brother, Johnny, and father soon became pescatarians (the only meat they still consumed was fish).
Pop-Pop was the only one in the household who did not change his eating habits. Instead, he often went out with friends to restaurants to eat steaks and would bring home containers of butter-laden pasta with chicken, shrimp scampi, and much to my disgust, cow’s tongue. He also snuck home bottles of wine or scotch, wrapped in brown paper bags, which he hid in his closet. In the garage, he also stored cases of beer, specifically Becks. We no longer had much junk food in the house, so Pop-Pop would bring me to Panera after ballet and buy me a large chocolate chip cookie, unbeknownst to my mother, of course. We always made sure there was no evidence or Panera wrappers and bags left in the car.
In the fall of 2002, Pop-Pop’s body gave its first warning that he needed to change his unhealthy habits. His doctor discovered extremely large polyps in his colon and Pop-Pop had surgery to reconstruct his colon. While in the hospital after the surgery, Pop-Pop also suffered a minor stroke - his body’s second warning. After coming home, with my mother’s help and guidance, he took better care of himself and stopped drinking alcohol and eating fatty foods. Unfortunately, he eventually eased back into his old routine with the thought that his body wouldn’t give in again. He went out with his friends or to my aunt’s house and ate fatty meats and drank alcohol. The only difference was that he would no longer bring the unhealthy food back to the house, and perhaps this made him believe he was still doing better with his diet since the unhealthy foods were no longer always in front of him at home.
It wasn’t until February of 2005 that the real heart-wrenching shocker of news came. A two- syllable word that resonated of almost certain death: cancer. A spot had been found on Pop-Pop’s lung in an x-ray. He had smoked from the time he was a pre-teen until I was about four. As a result of the smoking he had emphysema and every so often went to checkups for his lungs. The doctors said that he had only a few months to live, that it was inoperable cancer, and that he should undergo chemotherapy immediately if he wanted to even live the length they predicted. Knowing that chemotherapy would ruin his quality of life from having seen friends undergo chemo, Pop-Pop decided to discuss possible options with my mother. Instead of taking the advice of his doctors, he decided to try the natural, alternative route and began to change his entire lifestyle.
Pop-Pop’s new routine became filled with acupuncture appointments, vegetable-juice fasting, infrared therapy, Qigong practicing and the switch to a vegetarian diet and abstaining from alcohol among other things. He would have acupuncture done every week by an acupuncturist, Peter, who my mother and I had been seeing for years. He also attended Qigong classes taught by Peter, every other week. Qigong is an ancient Chinese, self-healing art that involves breathing exercises and movements. He practiced Qigong twice a week and went into the city with my mother every week to receive far infrared therapy - a therapy in which infrared waves are used to heat the body from the inside out, cleansing the body of toxins. About three months after he was diagnosed, my mother and Pop-Pop decided to see who could do a longer vegetable juice fast to detoxify their bodies. My mother won with six days. Pop-Pop stopped at five. After the juice fast, he looked better than he had since before I was born. His cheeks were flushed with a rosy tint and his eye color was clearer - no longer a cloudy mix of grey and brown. His complexion glowed, he lost a healthy amount of weight, he had more energy and started playing golf and kayaking more often. For the next three months after the fast, his health seemed to be steadily improving. I began to believe he was going to overcome his battle with cancer. With every day that passed, the more plausible it seemed. Pop-Pop’s sister, my great aunt Rosemarie, came up from Florida to visit. Pop-Pop had a surplus of energy, and took Aunt Rosemarie golfing and kayaking with the whole family.
On a day in mid-August, Pop-Pop somehow managed to hurt his hip. He didn’t feel like dealing with the pain or finding a natural way to alleviate it, and started taking painkillers. It seemed as if his health began declining faster than the speed of a pro baseball pitcher’s throw. He rapidly became weaker and the pain became worse, so at the end of the week he went to a doctor who gave him morphine. The morphine restricted his breathing even more than his emphysema already did, and soon it became difficult for him to even walk down the hall to the kitchen. The end of the last week in August, everything seemed to go downhill. Pop-Pop was bedridden and on so much morphine, that he couldn’t speak correctly while awake and often fell asleep
The morning of September 3rd, I awoke to the sound of hushed voices coming from Pop-Pop’s room. I trudged sleepily down the stairs to find both my parents, Aunt Rosemarie and Camille, my Mom’s boss who is a nurse, standing around Pop-Pop’s bed. Pop-Pop’s lungs had begun filling up with his own bodily fluids. My aunt, uncle and cousin Candice, rushed over to our house and we all stood around Pop-Pop who was in his bed.
The sound of a person essentially drowning in their own bodily fluid is one that is almost impossible to repress in memory. The only sound that may come close in description is that of the gurgling of someone blowing through a straw into a cup of liquid combined with labored Darth Vader-like gasps. What was worse was the sound combined with the look of pure fear in Pop-Pop’s eyes, knowing this was it. Nothing could be done to stop it.
Camille told the family that Pop-Pop would probably be in that state for a few hours. My aunt told Candice and I to go buy bagels and coffee for the family. Candice and I came back to find Johnny on the porch, red-faced and crumpled in heavy sobs. Pop-Pop had died five minutes before we arrived back home.
The tears came, and yet I felt numb, in denial and shock. Inside the house, everyone was bustling, making funeral arrangements. I walked into Pop-Pop’s room. His body was lain out flat on his bed. Now that his muscles were relaxed, the lumps of cancer emerged, making it clear that it had metastasized to his neck, behind his ear, and I was told later, his hip.
At the first wake I slipped my first pair of pointe shoes in the coffin next to Pop-Pop. He played such a significant role in supporting my dancing, I only saw it as fitting. I missed the first day of Junior year to be at his funeral. My mother began blaming herself for not doing enough to help him, and for a while became depressed and anti-social. I dreaded school each day because I just wanted to be home with my Mom. Late at night, or even in the earliest morning hours I lay awake while everyone else in the house was sleeping and would listen to “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on repeat. I just wanted that first month of September to pass.
I’ve occasionally pondered what would’ve been the outcome if Pop-Pop had changed his habits sooner. Or, what if he had opted out of taking the painkillers? His body only started to relapse after he took that type of drug . Seeing how incredibly healthy Pop-Pop had been after his lifestyle changes, and how frightening in contrast his deterioration in his last two weeks of life were, I made a personal decision to strive toward my optimal health. Two months after Pop’s death, I made the transition from vegetarian to vegan because I researched the many health benefits of a vegan diet. And now, 3 years after Pop’s death, I am in the process of converting from vegan to raw foodist vegan. I’ve never tried smoking because of seeing firsthand what it does to the body. In the past I did drink a few times, for what teenager isn’t at some point curious what it feels like to be in a drunken stupor, but came to the realization that I had no desire to drink after discovering its effects. Funny, the first thought that would pop into my head always was, “You’re killing your liver!” - not the average teenager’s worst fear of drinking as far as I know. At least twice a week I practice yoga and meditate. I am more aware of my health and know to care for my body because I don’t want to suffer the same fate as Pop-Pop.