It wasn’t exactly a tender grandfather-granddaughter bonding
moment. In fact, he didn’t offer me ONE SINGLE WORD of wisdom or life lessons.
Instead, I was using most of my body weight to force down
the plunger of a large syringe full of hot water into a frustratingly small
plastic tube that went directly into my Papa’s stomach. The goal was to
dislodge a hard, congealed clump of dried liquid nutrition that was clogging
the tube; we joked that when it finally broke free it would shoot right out the
back of him. And we’d been trying for nearly a half an hour.
We did eventually force that chunk free, and lots of others,
too. We spilled bright red Gatorade on their pristine bedroom carpet in the
middle of the night. We survived a potentially fatal medication error (thank
you, moron pharmacist), and we survived him re-learning how to drive, including
a near-miss with a semi-truck. His slow reflexes pulled our car right in front
of the speeding truck, and when he realized what he’d done, my Papa swore—loudly,
clearly, and intentionally. I didn’t mind; it was good to hear his voice. We covered his swollen, flaky legs in lotion. We made
a few trips to the ER to reinsert the feeding tube into the open hole into his abdomen
until I finally learned how to fix it myself, and we entertained a parade of
therapists and nurses who slowly nursed him back to health after a devastating aneurysm
repair over the course of one impossibly short college summer break.
That summer I spent hours weeding his impossibly congested flower beds,
and he took wobbly steps outside to inspect and critique my work. It is only
now that it occurs to me that perhaps his impulse to be completely in control
of those petunias was more about his own inability to be at all in control of
his own body’s painfully slow recovery. Purple petunias, I guess, can handle
the grumbling.
***
Last Friday night, my Papa died.
And while I have wrapped my head around the idea that he is
gone today, it is somehow impossible to wrap my heart around the idea that he
will still be gone tomorrow—that when that garage door opens to let me in the
next time I visit, he won’t be standing at the top of the stairs, his hunched
shoulders leaving him shorter than his regular six-foot four height.
I have memories of my Papa that are different than many of
my peers’ memories of their grandfathers. When I was young, Papa was strong and
robust. He taught me to ski and built me bedroom furniture. Maybe other people
haven’t seen their grandfathers in swimsuits; I have swum with mine in the pool
behind his house in California more times than I can count, both before and after
he acquired the long purplish scar down the front of his chest. When I think of
my Papa, I think of his tall frame and strong arms, his thick, course, wavy
hair forced into perfect submission with gallons of hairspray and the sheer,
overwhelming force of my Papa’s will.
It was inconceivable that he look the least bit disheveled. Other people look disheveled. Papa looks
perfectly composed, pressed shirt tucked in and slacks perfectly ironed and
belted, and he smells of Drakkar Noir.
***
That summer, after weeks of leaving me solely in charge of
his nutrition, hydration, and transportation, the day finally came when the
speech therapist asked us to bring solid food to the appointment. Weeks of
strapping electrodes to his throat by wrapping his neck and face in CoBand (“I
look like a nun”, he’d point out, wryly) had paid off, and it was time to try to
eat. A turkey sandwich was on the menu.
Though I had single-handedly dosed his medications—blood pressure,
anti-coagulation, supplements, pain medications—without the least bit of
supervision, he hovered anxiously behind me while I pulled the condiments from
the fridge.
“Mayo on that piece, and mustard over here. You can put the
lettuce wherever you want, but the turkey has to go that side and the avocado
over here.” He directed, squinting just slightly in concentration.
I put the knife down and turned to him slowly, one eyebrow
raised to show my mild displeasure at his coaching. He smiled, understanding
the irony of his bossiness without a word, but unrelentingly added, “And don’t
forget the pepper.”
Papa was back.
***
Once, when I was too young to fly by myself, my Papa drove
me from Utah to their home in Northern California. I remember very little about
the trip, other than that we went together, just the two of us, in his old,
brown Honda, and that we stopped on the salt flats to let me stretch my short
legs. I must have made him crazy with my incessant four-year-old chattering.
He bought me fruit snacks.
I never got fruit snacks.
Years later, we made the trip many more times with my
siblings and grandmother. We towed his trailer over long miles on the way to
the redwood forests, playing a silly game where we picked at item on the
horizon and guessed how many miles away it was and then watched the odometer,
cheering at whoever guessed closest, all the while Bandie snoring contentedly
in the passenger seat. Traditionally, on the way from our home in Utah to his,
we stopped at the Peppermill Casino in Wendover for brunch, and Papa put the
change from our check in the slots on the way out. I remember his wide grin
when he made a few quarters, and his refusal to put them back in the machine to
try again.
“Nope,” he said, with finality. “That’s how they get you.”
***
Before that day with the turkey sandwich, Papa was prohibited
from swallowing, including his own saliva. He had a suction machine at home,
but on the long road trips to appointments, he brought a long a small Dixie cup
and every few minutes, he’d quietly spit in to it. It must have been torture
for my proper Papa to find himself spitting into a cup. It must have been
nearly unbearable.
At least that’s what I tell myself when I remember the time
he asked me to pull to the side of the road a mere 6 houses away from home,
apparently unable to wait a moment longer to throw out the offensive cup. He
unrolled his window, and took aim at the open garbage can a neighbor had left
out on the street for pickup.
He missed. Widely. The cup bounced off the can, flinging his
last hour’s worth of spit all over the can and road.
Enormously amused at himself, he laughed out loud, and then
turned to me without hesitation.
“Just leave it. Let’s go home. They’ll never know.”
***
Papa wasn’t a perfect person. He made mistakes. He could be
formal and stubborn and old-fashioned, he cursed, he grew short-tempered when
he didn’t feel well, and as it turns out, he was persnickety about the
construction of his turkey sandwiches.
Who wants a perfect person around, anyway? All I needed was
a perfect Papa.
I miss you, Papa. I love you. Slug bug green.
