As My Grandfather Lays There Dying
When I was a boy, I would eagerly await your footsteps as you stumbled out of bed in the afternoon. I had been waiting all morning for you to arise — my own Roethke’s Waltz. I would hear the mid-century creeks of the old floorboards of my second home. I would watch you pour a giant bowl of cereal, usually Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which remains my favorite today. Although, by noon, I probably had already enjoyed my fair share of Breyer’s Cherry Garcia with Grandma, eating cereal with Grandpa was a morning institution; it merely had to be done. Cereal remains my favorite food.
As we sat eating our cereal, we pondered the adventures that we could take; although you were inhibited by a stroke that claimed your left side a year before my birth, which left you unable to drive, it still felt as if our opportunities were endless. You taught me how to count using playing cards, and we played imaginary games as you retold war stories. We had arm-wrestling matches, which you would let me win with your bad side and then show your brute strength with your good side. I built moats and forts, and you brought me in the motorhome, after my incessant nagging, as you know how I loved climbing up to the top bunk. I drove my big wheel around the archaic grounds while soft pink and alabaster Magnolias danced down around us. You watched me take laps around the yard with a smile next to Duchess, your majestic German Shepard who guarded us with precision, which made the shady part of town a fortress of sorts.
During our last conversation, you told me with bated breath that these are the moments that you yearned to relive. I was shocked. How could you not want to go back to your time traveling the world as a Marine, or moments shared with your five children, or your brothers, or wife, or before your stroke? No, you said that when you closed your eyes, and you wished to be back in the front yard with me when I was a child. You proudly boasted that I was your “buddy.” I will not forget this.
I took some time reacting to the news that you had it. My mother called me with tears and started immediately saying how she did not want you to suffer and stammered out that you had tested positive. Instantly, I felt transported to the days of watching Mets game with you or eagerly waiting to be dropped off to watch Sunday Night Baseball in the summertime, as I slept over when I was in middle school. I hung on your recollections of watching Willie Mays play and almost hitting a foul ball that “almost took off your head.” I never questioned these stories’ veracity or authenticity, I marveled at them as we watched, and I admired you. You fostered my love of baseball, sports in general, and although I did not become a Met fan too much of your chagrin, you always let me watch the Yankees game (of course, flipping back to the Mets during commercials).
As I sit here writing this, you are in a hospital room all alone with a novel disease tearing away at your lungs. The doctor informs us that your oxygen has dipped in recent days and as someone affixed to news and research this year, this is not positive in the slightest. Although I know that you had overcome so much more in the past, you are a testament to modern medicine and one tough son of a gun. You are a cat with nine lives, which is ironic because you hate cats.
But the one thing I was not going to let happen was for you to become a faceless statistic, for someone to write you off as just another elderly person who succumbed to this virus. That is not fair to you, nor to the literal thousands and thousands that have been prescribed over the past year. Yes, you were in a long-term care facility, yes, you had health ailments, but they did not put you on the precipice of death; Covid-19 did that.
I need to take a moment and address the federal response’s absolute entropy to this pandemic. It is a sad reflection of our society that most people have viewed this as not a big deal or something that only affects the “weak, old, or already sick. Well, for those people, including the callous leaders who are meant to represent us and have caused immense unfettered harm to our republic. Most Americans, 50–129 million, have a pre-existing condition, and 25 million are uninsured. So, for the “my rights crowd,” how about you shut up with the conspiratorial cognitive narrative and understand the reality and gravity we face. Curtail your diet of spoon-fed nonsense from certain entertainment outlets playing cosplay with the news. Direct that anger in doing something productive and join me on a potential quest on working for reform in long-term healthcare facilities that are underemployed, underserviced, and underpaid for grueling work. These facilities are relegated to grown-up day-care facilities where no one ever comes to pick you back up, a place to stow and forget about our past generations. Next time, you think not wearing a mask is not a big deal. Please heed these words; it is essential to remain vigilant. Please understand that we are all connected — your actions due impact others.
Mask-wearing is a simple solution, and I cannot believe we are almost a year into a global pandemic, and this is still a point of contention. Those that wear masks are merely trying to care for their fellow human beings.
I urge you to look inward and reflect that this is serious and should be taken with extreme caution. Because frankly, with a system like Capitalism and the degradation of our planet, this will not be our first rodeo with a pandemic, and the next one will likely be worse. Imagine if we could all be unselfish for one moment? If we could all realize this thing called a society requires mutual assistance, it requires collaboration, not hatred?
I write this not as a premature eulogy, but a reflection of who you were to me, although I simply do not have anything but words, and words feel no good and do nothing to help the hollow-point pains I feel about your light possibly being extinguished.
You had a wit unmatched, and your sarcasm would have those around you in stitches. You once retold a story to my father and me during a Christmas, and we could not stop laughing. You were the life of the party. How happy you were when we had dinners and Sunday sandwiches while watching your beloved Jets lose, and typically my Giants win. You were just excited that we were all together. I will forever be fond of those days.
For years, you told me that I was you and Grandma’s favorite. Although you did not have much money, and I had never seen you drive, you told me that when I was old enough, Grandma’s car was to be mine, and it was, and I am sorry I totaled it, and I remember when I got home from my accident, I collapsed in Grandma’s arms.
You always asked about me, no matter who you were on the phone with or who visited, Grandma, Mom, Uncles, Aunts, you wondered when I was to finish my Master’s, and you were sure once I did, I would finally get that job had long coveted. I remember having to take a semester off, and I was not worried about my trajectory. I was worried if you were going to be alive to see my success. You were, and you were right; the moment I got my Master’s I was hired in the profession that I absolutely love.
I have so much to say, and perhaps in due time, I will. I am not very religious. I know you almost went to seminary school, and to be frank, I thank God you did not because I do enjoy existence despite all its stressors. I hope to play cards again. I hope to see you again. I hope that this is not the end. You will always be my buddy. I love you, Grandpa. And if there is not one more miracle left for you, then I will meet you underneath that Magnolia tree, and we can watch what would surely be a fantastic game with Tom Seaver starting.
Authors Note: Sadly, we lost my Grandfather on January 11th, 2021. He was 86.
