 |
| My grandpa after enlisting post WWII. |
The last time I communicated with my grandfather, I was laying in a hospital bed in Kansas, and he was lying in a hospital bed in Illinois. He was scheduled for surgery that day, and I was stuck in Kansas while a recent surgical wound was tended to by a nurse. My sister was with him, so I sent a text: "Please let grandpa know that I'm thinking of him today even though I can't be there. I'm at the hospital, too!" I attached a picture of me waving a big goofy wave at the camera. Reports are that he chuckled a bit at the picture. Later, just before surgery, I passed on word that I was praying for him.
He died the next morning.
---
Allegedly, the first time I met my grandfather, I was passed from one car to another through a window. I don't remember this. The first memory I do have of him is him playing the organ in the blueblack pre-dawn darkness at the family farm. The organ sat on the front porch, a long, narrow space on the front of the house. The porch was anchored on either side by twin beds where there was usually a grandchild or two trying to get some sleep. While grandma conjured breakfast in the kitchen, grandpa conjured wakefulness with his organ--one lovely, rambling song played on repeat for twenty or thirty minutes. After breakfast there would be garbage to burn and cattle to feed, cows to milk and hay to bale. There would be apples to pick and pigs to tend to. After the real work there would be forts to build far out in the pastures, ropes to swing on in the barn, and creek beds to explore. No one slept in on the farm. Grandpa's organ made sure of that.
---
Grandpa had, unbeknownst to me, been in the hospital for several weeks. I knew he was in shortly after I returned from Christmas break. I learned about his hospitalization just after I had been chauffeured back to Kansas by the collective efforts of five people and three cars--the lingering effects of a surgery prevented me from sitting in a driving position for any sustained period of time. I remember feeling concern and dismay that, at the moment, under my own steam, I couldn't get back to Illinois to see him. But a few days later I received a message that he was doing better and would be sent home. In time this message would prove wrong, but I accepted it gratefully and went on with my life. There would be other days. When I got the call that he was in the hospital again, my concern intensified. "He's -back- in?" "No," my sister said, "he never left." After a recent double dose of surgeries, I had been left with an unhealed wound that needed professional care and a digestive system that was having a painfully difficult time adjusting to life without a gallbladder. "I can't get in the car right now," I thought. "Two weeks ago I had to have a team of people drive me back to Kansas. I can't fold myself up into the car and sit like that for nine hours." I would have to wait and plan.
---
I remember riding on the the tractor with grandpa. It was big old red thing, the kind of tractor before air conditioning, CD changers, and GPS navigation. Grandpa would climb up on it and I would follow up behind him, plopping myself down on his lap. I couldn't have been more than six or seven. On this particular day, we went right out of the barnyard driveway and down around the corner of the tar and gravel road. There was a hay field there, and I think we were moving the bales into a cluster that could be covered in the coming fall. He let me "drive" and together we quietly worked the bales, gathering them into a line. He wasn't a talker, and I sat quietly while he did the complicated maneuvers around the bales and worked the levers to operate the forklift. I was simultaneously thrilled and scared shitless. I was happy to be "helping" grandpa, but grandpa's temper could shift. I never really knew what to say to him, and besides, this was work, and work was important, dammit. Shaped as he was by this important work, grandpa was a powerfully rough man. By the time my conscious mind came along, his back was slightly stooped from years of lifting and pushing and planting and fixing. Where it poked out from under his blue chambray work shirts, his skin was tanned to leather, rough and cracked to the point that only bag balm (udder cream for cows) would repair it. (During the evenings, reclined in his roller chair, he would dip his hands into a mini-crock-pot-sized tub of it and massage it into the cracks while watching the Lawrence Welk Show and Keeping Up Appearances.) As we worked in the field, the skies grew darker and the wind shifted, suddenly chilly and biting--there was a storm coming in. There wasn't a thing around but grass and fence lines, and the darkening sky loomed over us, ready to deliver a gully washer. Without talking, grandpa whipped the last bale into place and then punched the accelerator on the tractor, bumping and jolting us across the field to the gate that led to the road. I don't remember what we did when we got back to the farmhouse, but I do remember speeding along the country road, tires humming on the surface that was worn to a flat strip of black by a combination of use and a hot summer sun. As we went faster and faster, mud from the rear tires shot up and fell back down like little raindrops, pelting our arms. It took me a minute to figure out what was happening as the brown dots smacked down to rest on my hands, but the speed and the paint-splatter mud somehow made me feel very important. Real work, real danger, real storm. We made before it hit. I'm sure grandma had the weather radio on when we arrived.
---
It was a tense couple of days while a steady stream of messages went back and forth regarding his health and happiness. Soon it was decided he needed a surgery--the non-invasive tricks weren't working. On the day of the surgery, after my own hospital visit, I nervously went about my day. At one point I found myself in the office next door asking a co-worker if I was a bad grandchild. It didn't feel right that he--my last living grandparent--was there--and I was here. After the news that the surgery had been successful--"he will even get to go home after a brief stint in a nursing home"--I was relieved. I had been right not to jump into a car. I would visit on President's Day weekend--the next three-day break on the schedule. I would be completely healed and he would be well on his way. I'd get -Keeping up Appearances- on DVD and we'd watch some episodes. I'd get him up for a walk. Maybe we'd play Monopoly. There was still time.
---
I don't remember why or how it started, but one night my sister, grandma, grandpa and I played Monopoly. I don't remember if anyone else was there, but I do remember that, after hours of game play, grandpa was Mr. Moneybags. He owned most of the board, and it was becoming pretty clear to the rest of us that there wasn't much hope in establishing our own hotel empires. We could barely get around the board without bankrupting ourselves on his territory. My grandpa, who was in life a chronically cash-strapped family farmer working his 160 acres in the era or corporate farming, was a millionaire. And, as it turns out, he was the kindest millionaire I'd ever met. With the grin of a comic book lover who'd just discovered Superman, grandpa started doling out "loans" all around the board. He couldn't stop himself from going on and on about the importance of generosity and about how "I mean it, I'm having a damn good time here, and I don't want it to end." It was, perhaps, the one night that everyone in the house stayed up past ten. He brought it up every time I saw him for years. Every time it was "I mean it, I had a damn nice time." I did too.
---
When I got the call yesterday morning, I knew what the news was before I answered the phone. I could hear my sister breathing in a big gasp or air before she started talking. I didn't have much to say except for "that bastard was supposed to wait." Just the night before, my sister and I had talked about how he had "made up his mind to live," how he wanted to "go home, drink tea, and pet my dogs." "Yeah, he's not going anywhere," I had said with a chuckle. The bastard skipped out on us, on me. I just needed two weeks to get my angry gut straightened out, to get my semester of teaching fully under control, to let my surgical wound go forever away. Two weeks for a big enough break in my schedule to make the nine-hour drive seem justified.
Even now, as I tap the words onto my laptop, I flush with anger and tears.
Two weeks.
---
Every time I saw my grandpa, he'd look me up and down and give me a grin. "Spark Malone," he'd say. "The people's choice. Squeaky hair and a yellow voice." When I was very young, it made me squeal with delight and he'd scoop me up and lean me across his lap, tickling the shit out of my stomach until I couldn't breathe. It was with the pure, unadulterated joy of a proud grandparent that he attacked each of his grandchildren in this way. I saw him do it to the younger kids after me, even to the teenager who came into the family through marriage. He had to make up for lost time with her.
There wasn't a single thing I knew about the man that wasn't pure, simplified down to its most basic level. During a visit, my mom and I brought ice cream for dessert. At home, my family was dedicated to the Schwan man. I had the option of ice cream every day. I got my bowl without thinking much about it, but grandpa, he took his bowl to the couch, slouched way down with his legs crossed straight out in front. He balanced his bowl on his belly and gazed at it with an intensity I can't describe. His spoon played with the ice cream, dipped in and then back out, rolling the scoops around. He would carve out a bite, put it in his mouth, and then hold it there, lips puckered as the ice cream slowly melted over his taste buds. It was as if ice cream was still a miracle treat, like we had been transported back to the land of soda counters and ice boxes with actual cubes of ice. He was a kid having a treat. I'll never forget watching him eat those scoops of ice cream, his eyes locked on the bowl.
He was a man who thought about things. He didn't always come up with the right answer or the right thing to say, but whatever he had to say was principled, direct. His life was a simple one. If you go out and treat the soil right, it'll provide a living for you and your family. If you treat people right and teach them to treat the world right, then you'll make good people to have around. I can't tell you how many times I heard him repeat the line "Carolyn and I never were money rich, but if you count family, we're the richest people I know. We're damn blessed to have good people like you around."
---
It would be awfully convenient to blame my anger on his sudden death. The truth is that I hadn't been a very communicative grandson. After the death of my mother and then the death of my grandmother, I sort of kept things at a distance. I was working on being honest and true to myself, and I didn't know how to communicate with people from my past, even close family members. I cultivated a life on my own terms and new friendships with people who knew only the new me. They didn't come with any entanglements.
But, as long as he was alive, there was always the idea of a home out there. The home where grandpa's desk was always covered in something farming related--a Burrus seed catalog, a calendar of John Deere tractors, a list of nearby farmers. Where there was always a bed, ancient and springy though it may be. Where grandpa fiddled on an organ and shelled walnuts until his fingers turned black.
There's something about that death that draws a final line, that solidifies who you were, often in sharp contrast to who you want to be. In so many other circumstances--weddings, anniversary parties, Easter gatherings--there is optimism, a sense that everyone will be seen by everyone in the future, that there is still time, that there will still be time. With death, however, the proverbial chips have fallen where they may before you even know there was a game.
Regardless, there's one less home for me in the world now and I really need to believe that, as my dad said, there's one more angel looking down.
