“My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.”
-Ernest Hemingway
My family and I all gathered together at St. Vincent’s hospital on October 1st,
2013, to watch my grandfather die. Three weeks before he had been in
excellent health. He was still ambulatory then and was routinely working
in his gardening and reading daily. This is all the more surprising
when you consider that he was ninety years old when he died. A long
lived life to be sure, but somehow it’s never enough is it? It certainly
wasn’t for him; he chose death in the end, but only because it was the
only way to preserve his own autonomy.
In the previous few weeks, he had become less and less able to walk,
requiring visits to the ER and admittance to the hospital. It began one
morning when he was unable to stand up from bed. I was called to assess
the situation and see if an ambulance was warranted. It was. I rode in
the ambulance with him to the hospital where we were told that he had
blood clots in his lungs. The blood clots were restricting his ability
to take in oxygen and thus his ability to walk. It may have not been
that serious if the blood clots were not compounded by his chronic
obstruction pulmonary disease. This disease was a result of all the
years he had spent smoking, far after everyone knew the health risks,
but the smoking itself was caused by his military service during World
War 2.
He served more than two full tours of duty flying bombers during that
war, over ninety missions in total. He volunteered when the war broke
out and continued to sign up for more until the war ended; a fact that
haunted him to the day he died. He had been shot at, seen buddies
killed, had flack tear apart his engines, and made a few emergency
landings. He experienced all of this and signed up to do it again and
again until the war was through.
Still, he never really talked about the war and what happened. I heard
bits and pieces throughout knowing him that allowed me to piece together
a disjointed narrative, but what always struck me was how his
experiences continued to plague him. He flew missions in his sleep until
the day he died. Once when I had returned home from the beach, he
remarked that he hated the beach because of Africa. A remark I knew
alluded to his time spent during the African Campaign. He would always
make allusions like that; simple words that spoke volumes for the
emotion and meaning contained within, often with a haunting quality that
lingered in my mind long after he had gone.
There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of my grandfather,
yet when I was young he terrified me to the point of tears at the mere
thought of a visit from him. I was a precociously rambunctious child and
he was a gruff stern man. I remember one event in particular; we were
visiting his home in Kansas where my father grew up and I was playing
some game that existed only in my mind behind a chair. He yelled at me
to get out from behind the chair, but he did so in such a rough manner
that I cowered in fear; robbed of my childhood volition. He got up and
yanked my arms with manly force I had hitherto been unaware of, adding
strong words of reproach. Needless to say, I ran away crying. As a
child, I could never understand what I had done wrong to elicit such a
reaction. Now, I think I understand him better, but I only came to this
realization after I had studied American History. He had survived a war
by being particular about the way everything should be done. There was
no reason for a child to play mindlessly behind a couch and so it must
stop. He had my best interests in mind. Although he could be fastidious
and taciturn, it was always due to his deep sentimentality for others.
After the war, he worked as a rural letter carrier delivering mail to
his community. He would often go to people’s houses even without mail,
just to check up on them. He would deliver meals from his wife to people
who were sick or work fixing a roof or tractor and stay awhile to chat
and make sure they were all right. This continued on after he retired as
well. On the weekends he would call all across the country to people he
knew and offer emotional support to those who needed it. When I was in
Korea, he sent me a letter every month without fail. They were always
filled with little things that were happening in his life and asking me
how I was getting on with mine. I always wondered what made him send me
those letters, especially because we were not remotely close then. I
think that it was an act of love, perhaps trying to make up for the
event that so wounded me as a child, but I cannot be sure because we
never spoke of it. I wish that we had. Death has a way of making things
clear, even though many of those things are simply what we should have
done.
On the day he died, my family gathered around him in his hospital bed.
We all knew that he was going to die soon. Moments before, the doctor
had come in and asked him if he would like to go back to the ICU and
have a PICC line inserted to prolong his life. He responded no, and when
the doctor asked him if he knew what that meant, he responded yes. He
chose to die because he could not live with being a burden to anyone. He
would live with his autonomy or not at all. We asked if there was
anything he wanted before he died. There was; he wanted a beer. He soon
passed away after having a few sips of that beer. My family and I then
cried, held his hand, and passed the beer around amongst ourselves, each
having a sip. It seemed all together fitting and proper that we should
do this, ritualistic though it was. Afterwards, we were given the
opportunity to pick a death quilt provided by the hospital. An
opportunity that was such a meaningless empty thing, but somehow, in
that moment, it meant everything to my family. Rituals at death have a
strange way of providing solace for those who are left behind. Where
this solace comes from is difficult to determine, but we see rituals at
death in every culture that has ever existed. It is innately human to
mourn the dead in this way.
Even now, I am filled with thoughts of how careless and reckless it was
that I had foregone a relationship with this man until so late in his
life. I regret not asking him a question about World War 2 or his
childhood or his opinion on a subject. There is a myriad of things that I
will never be privy to because I did not take the time to repair the
damage in our relationship sooner. It is so difficult to move past these
thoughts and memories. They stand in my mind with enticing allure, but I
have my own life to live and my own memories to create. If nothing
else, death has taught me to appreciate that I am alive and I should
enjoy it. Otherwise, there is no reason to have lived at all.
Each of my family members dealt with my grandfather’s death
differently. Most of us are atheists and so there was little talk of him
being in heaven or “a better place.” Instead we sit and talk about his
life and our relationship with him or a certain story that we had heard
from a friend or relative. We harbor no illusions that anyone can defy
or escape death and so we continue on with our lives, reminding
ourselves that we will soon die, while remembering those that we have
lost and trying to learn from our regrets. We often fail at this, but
there is virtue in trying.
These
days my family and I get together more frequently, often for dinner or
some other meal. This is perhaps the best gift that death has given us,
the realization that death is ever present and we would do better to
spend time together while we can. It is sad and tragic that it took a
death to teach us something that we should all already know, but such is
human nature it seems.
In the weeks following my grandfather’s death, I thought about how
terrified of him I used to be and how that slowly changed into love and
respect. When he was sick there was no one’s opinion that he valued more
than mine, no one else that he would listen to more. I walked with him
and talked with him in a way that I never could have dreamed of as a
child. He would often refuse to move or get up and exercise for other
people in my family, saying he would wait until I arrived. During that
first hospital visit, he had gripped my hand so tightly that it was
white once he let go. This from the man that had filled me with dread
just fifteen years prior, how did this happen? I still have not found a
good answer to this. I can only say that I grew to love my grandfather
and I now realize that he always loved me, even if he never said it out
loud.
-風来坊
-風来坊