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Remembering Grandpa
May. 4th, 2018 09:25 pm[cw: death]
My grandfather once turned a washing machine into a centrifuge. He worked at a hospital that needed a centrifuge, and I guess there was an old washing machine lying around, so he futzed with it until it worked. Grandma was pissed that he didn't patent it. She told him that, as the three of us were sitting down for dinner. I was seventeen, living with them for a year before moving across the country for college, and I was hearing this story for the first time.
"You could have made a lot of money," she told him.
"I didn't do it for money, Connie," he said. "I did it to help people."
Grandma was of the opinion that people could be helped and money made concurrently, and told us so at length. Grandpa grunted and nodded and let her run out of steam. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. During the time I lived with them, not many of their conversations were had for the first time.
*
It took three days for Grandpa to die after the doctors said he would be gone in hours. I got a call on my way to hockey practice at 6:45am on a Saturday. I shifted direction to the airport, and my rental car pulled into the nursing home around two in the afternoon. They were already surprised he'd held out that long. Not the doctors--there were no doctors by then, just underpaid, exhausted care workers who had seen a lot of people die.
Grandma had already been gone for years by then. I didn't really know her like I knew Grandpa. She spent almost all her time in her room while I lived with them, though she made a sincere effort to come out for dinner every evening, and once in a while she'd break out an anecdotal gem like the time she punched a nun as a kid or the time she got arrested for sassing McCarthy's goons. I saw a lot of evidence that she had been a hell of a woman, but by the time I was old enough to get to know her, she had given up her crusades.
Grandpa, though. Grandpa and I got each other. It didn't happen right away, and it didn't happen suddenly. He never talked much, and chose his few words carefully. He had a sly sense of humor that he expressed primarily in parentheticals audible only to his intended audience. When I decided to get a motorcycle license, he spent twenty minutes sternly nodding along as Grandma painted wild worried pictures of the roadkill horrors she'd seen as a nurse; then, after she retreated to her room for the night, he told me all about the old Indian he used to ride in the '60s.
*
There is no describing the frantic monotony of waiting for someone to die. Everything is tense, intense, meaningful, and at the same time endlessly tedious. I can't drink apple juice anymore, because it smells like the goop the care workers had me try to feed him to make me feel like I was doing something. I wasn't. No one could.
I have his wedding ring. He gave it to me the last time I saw him lucid, the summer before he died. I visited him after he told me he had cancer, which wasn't what ended up killing him, but it definitely took a toll. He'd lost so much weight that he couldn't wear the ring anymore; he had it on a loop of ribbon, the plastic kind you run scissors along to make it curl up on gifts. He told me he wanted me to have it "just in case." Just in case I ever wanted to make an honest man of my then-boyfriend, I thought at the time, but in retrospect that might not have been what he meant.
*
My earliest memory of Grandpa, outside the gift-dispensing Grandma-and-Grandpa unit of my childhood, is the Pern book he gave me when I was eleven. He had a tremendous collection of sci-fi novels, and he volunteered at the library repairing books as long as he was physically able to. He was Christian to all appearances, but he loved "Good Omens" a little too much for me to be entirely convinced. He was embarrassingly early to absolutely everything, and refused to hear another word about it after the one time I forgot something and we had his thirty minutes of buffer time to go back for it. He habitually overshopped at Costco, resulting in enough canned goods to last us through the apocalypse. I teased him about that, and he took it gracefully, but he never let me or anyone else stop him from taking care of his family his way.
It's eleven PM and I'm sitting on a hill overlooking a lake. Some people at the bottom of the hill just released a little fire-powered hot air balloon. Grandpa would have thought that was pretty neat.
My grandfather once turned a washing machine into a centrifuge. He worked at a hospital that needed a centrifuge, and I guess there was an old washing machine lying around, so he futzed with it until it worked. Grandma was pissed that he didn't patent it. She told him that, as the three of us were sitting down for dinner. I was seventeen, living with them for a year before moving across the country for college, and I was hearing this story for the first time.
"You could have made a lot of money," she told him.
"I didn't do it for money, Connie," he said. "I did it to help people."
Grandma was of the opinion that people could be helped and money made concurrently, and told us so at length. Grandpa grunted and nodded and let her run out of steam. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. During the time I lived with them, not many of their conversations were had for the first time.
*
It took three days for Grandpa to die after the doctors said he would be gone in hours. I got a call on my way to hockey practice at 6:45am on a Saturday. I shifted direction to the airport, and my rental car pulled into the nursing home around two in the afternoon. They were already surprised he'd held out that long. Not the doctors--there were no doctors by then, just underpaid, exhausted care workers who had seen a lot of people die.
Grandma had already been gone for years by then. I didn't really know her like I knew Grandpa. She spent almost all her time in her room while I lived with them, though she made a sincere effort to come out for dinner every evening, and once in a while she'd break out an anecdotal gem like the time she punched a nun as a kid or the time she got arrested for sassing McCarthy's goons. I saw a lot of evidence that she had been a hell of a woman, but by the time I was old enough to get to know her, she had given up her crusades.
Grandpa, though. Grandpa and I got each other. It didn't happen right away, and it didn't happen suddenly. He never talked much, and chose his few words carefully. He had a sly sense of humor that he expressed primarily in parentheticals audible only to his intended audience. When I decided to get a motorcycle license, he spent twenty minutes sternly nodding along as Grandma painted wild worried pictures of the roadkill horrors she'd seen as a nurse; then, after she retreated to her room for the night, he told me all about the old Indian he used to ride in the '60s.
*
There is no describing the frantic monotony of waiting for someone to die. Everything is tense, intense, meaningful, and at the same time endlessly tedious. I can't drink apple juice anymore, because it smells like the goop the care workers had me try to feed him to make me feel like I was doing something. I wasn't. No one could.
I have his wedding ring. He gave it to me the last time I saw him lucid, the summer before he died. I visited him after he told me he had cancer, which wasn't what ended up killing him, but it definitely took a toll. He'd lost so much weight that he couldn't wear the ring anymore; he had it on a loop of ribbon, the plastic kind you run scissors along to make it curl up on gifts. He told me he wanted me to have it "just in case." Just in case I ever wanted to make an honest man of my then-boyfriend, I thought at the time, but in retrospect that might not have been what he meant.
*
My earliest memory of Grandpa, outside the gift-dispensing Grandma-and-Grandpa unit of my childhood, is the Pern book he gave me when I was eleven. He had a tremendous collection of sci-fi novels, and he volunteered at the library repairing books as long as he was physically able to. He was Christian to all appearances, but he loved "Good Omens" a little too much for me to be entirely convinced. He was embarrassingly early to absolutely everything, and refused to hear another word about it after the one time I forgot something and we had his thirty minutes of buffer time to go back for it. He habitually overshopped at Costco, resulting in enough canned goods to last us through the apocalypse. I teased him about that, and he took it gracefully, but he never let me or anyone else stop him from taking care of his family his way.
It's eleven PM and I'm sitting on a hill overlooking a lake. Some people at the bottom of the hill just released a little fire-powered hot air balloon. Grandpa would have thought that was pretty neat.
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