46. For My Grandfather

My grandfather is dying. Writing that out...it's strange. And I think what makes it so strange is that it doesn't hurt like I expected it would. I am sad.  But mostly I'm sad for others. I'm sad for my dad. He was raised by my grandfather. He knew him and loved him and was formed by him. I'm sad for my grandma. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a spouse. She has lived to serve him, to please him, to be his companion. She has a hard time coming. I am sad for my aunts and uncles who will lose their father. 

But I am happy for my grandfather.

For most of my life, Grandpa has been wheelchair-bound. He had a stroke that paralyzed him, destroyed his ability to speak and eat properly, and cut him off from the life he had known. Though he has regained some physical and oral abilities, his body has not been able to perform as it once did. His mind has been whole, but trapped in a broken vessel. How lonely and frustrating that must be for him, shut away from those he loves because his body will not behave properly. 

I don't have very many memories of him from before his stroke, but the ones I do have speak of a man who loved to use his hands. The first memory is of walking through a home that he was renovating. I don't know if it was his own home or one he was renting out. I have a vague idea that he owned a duplex at one point, but I couldn't say if it was the same one. I remember looking at the bare studs. I remember the light being poor. He was talking to my dad, probably explaining what his vision of the room was. I was bored, so I walked around, weaving in and out of the beams. As I swung through a pair of studs, I stopped, one hand on each, and looked up at my Grandfather. He was standing right next to me, his hand right hand on the stud on which my right hand rested, and he was staring at the wood. He was happy. He was admiring the work he had done and was excited about the beautiful room he could see taking shape.

The second isn't so much a memory of him, but of his subtle presence in my life. He wasn't around much when I was a kid. He would send money at Christmas and he would come by and give us videos on occasion. But his presence was always in our home. You see, Grandpa was a painter. And though we moved around a lot as I was growing up, his painting was always there. A landscape with yellow-green fields and grey mountains. There were blue skies and a grey-brown barn. The painting was framed in a rough wooden frame which I imagined as a child may have come from the barn itself. To me the painting was calming. It was peaceful. It meant comfort, home softness. And so those feelings came to represent Grandpa to me. 

A man who loved to build. A man who loved to paint. That's what I remember. And he lost both those when he became paralyzed. Maybe those two things only made up a small part of him; I don't know. But I imagine a man who loved creating things would find it frustrating and sad to be stuck in a chair all day unable to do more than lift a spoon or nod his head. And so I am happy for him. Soon his spirit will be unfettered from the limitations of his broken body. He will be able to stand, to walk, to run to our Lord. He will have movement again. He will be able to say exactly what he thinks. He will be able to create the masterpieces that he has envisioned in his nearly two decades of physical imprisonment. He will be free. 

And I do believe he will be happy to finally be able to take care of Grandma again. He will watch over her, comfort her, protect her. He will be by her side, and though she may not see him any longer, she may feel his presence on occasion. She may feel his warm hand on hers as she sits down to dinner. She may hear him whisper her name as she lies down in bed. She won't be alone.

My grandfather is dying...but it will be okay.