My Grandpa

Today I walked by my grandpa's room. He lives with my parents. He was looking out the window, and it seemed to me that he must be having some deep thoughts.

I wonder. What is it like in that 97 year old body? 97 years old!!! Wow. That is a lot of living. And now his time is short, really short. He has dementia. He does not know what day it is or who I am. He doesn't drive anymore. He cannot hear and does not want to wear his hearing aids. He says very little to anyone anymore.

And I painfully wonder why he is still here. Not because I don't love him. I do. However, I wonder what kind of life it is for him. No real connection or contact with the world outside his mind. He lives there, all alone with just his muddled thoughts. Perhaps he sits and remembers all the things that used to be. Maybe he thinks of my grandma, who has been dead for over a decade.

He lived a good life, a productive life. He labored hard well into his seventies before my dad had to keep him from coming to the job. Because he couldn't do the heavy work required of someone in the construction industry. And then he wrote, a lot. My grandpa is a thinker. He wrote letters to the editor. He wrote letters to his children and grandchildren. He wrote journal entries, even up until last year. Although he thought it was Christmas in July.

But even that has now stopped. I see him pick up the paper and leaf through it. He might ask you if there is something on t.v., and then he sits quietly and watches with you. I'm not sure if he follows anything. Because he probably can't hear what is going on, and he has no short term memory, really.

It makes my heart ache inside to watch him.

I want to remember him differently. I want to remember sitting down with him in his office so he could tell me stories about his childhood or how he joined the church and gave up cigarettes. I want to see the stacks of genealogy he would work on, even after my grandma was gone. I even want to see him behind the wheel of his truck, driving to the store to buy fritters and fried chicken...his two favorites.

My grandpa - he was smart and plucky. Mostly he was so generous. Generous to a fault. He didn't care so much about things as he did about people. And he literally would give you the shirt off of his back, even if it was the only one he had. I remember he once scolded me for having too many pairs of shoes. He then told me he had worn the same pair of shoes for nine years! I remember that my grandma said, "Oh Jennings. It's different. She's young! You leave her alone!" Maybe he had a point, though. That things aren't that important...that they are only as important as we make them out to be.

I guess my hope is that one day, when he's gone, that I will remember him as he once was. That I'll remember him showing me the pictures of his 60-plus grandchildren. That I'll remember him telling me how he loved my grandma the first time he saw her. That I'll remember him roasting hot dogs over the fire with us. That mostly I will remember just how much I love him.