Time Passed, Time Lost

Don’t expect too much when you go up there,” my uncle told me. “Grandpa’s changed a lot since the last time you saw him – he’s not the same.”

Uncle Tom made it sound dire, like Grandpa Marve was on his last legs. I mean, I know my grandparents are old, and it comes as no surprise when I get news of the latest health concern. I know that things have been especially difficult since my grandfather’s vision completely failed and my grandmother broke her leg. But this was different, the way Uncle Tom was speaking. He wasn’t very specific about exactly what had changed – I couldn’t tell if he was trying to say that Grandpa wasn’t as coherent, or energetic, or what. I didn’t really understand why my uncle was speaking this way – I mean, I had spoken with Grandpa on the phone about my coming to visit and he sounded coherent enough. I put my hope in the fact that our elders often try to protect us from disappointment or other uncomfortable situations by preparing us for the worst – maybe things weren’t as bad as Uncle Tom said.

I pull up to the apartment complex at Lincoln Village Drive in Racine Wisconsin around 2:30 PM. I call my Grandpa to let him know I’d arrived, and he sounds a little disoriented. But that could just be because I’m asking him for directions to a place he’d moved into long after he became blind – he has no visual memories to describe to me. I find the entrance to my grandparents’ wing of the complex, and open the outside door to step into an atrium. The inner door is locked, so I have to call up to the apartment to be let in. There’s some confusion with how to buzz me in, but an elderly man nearby is able to open the door for me.

“Who are you here to see?” he asks me. When I tell him Marve and Karen Welfel, the names don’t seem to register at first. He asks me to repeat their names several times, staring at me blankly. He finally recognizes the name, saying, “Oh, the blind guy. Yeah he’s upstairs on the second floor.” This is who my grandfather is to people – the blind guy?

I open the door to Apartment 803 and see my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table. I stop short, in shock. Who is this ghost of a man sitting where my father’s father should be sitting? Grandpa looks about a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than when I last saw him. I barely recognize this tiny, frail person who looks like a light breeze could knock him over. Cautiously, I greet him and walk over to hug him gently, fearing that I might hurt him.

“How are you?” I ask.

“OK,” he replies.

“Just OK?”

“Well when you get to my age, OK is about as good as you can do. It’s no secret that I’m near the end, Scott. That’s what happens – life is a cycle, and my cycle is coming to a close.”

His words are matter-of-fact, as if he’s accepted it fully and is prepared for the inevitable. But his tone carries a haunting loneliness, as if he’s saying, “that’s all I do anymore, I just sit here and wait for the end.”

As we talk, he begins to vigorously rub his left eye, which is half closed and crusted over. I ask him if his eye is itching.

“It burns,” he replies. “Itches, burns, hurts like hell. My eyes are shot; I’m completely blind now, can’t see a darned thing. It’s no fun, living without being able to see, but that’s just the way it is these days.”

There’s a pause in the conversation – I’m not sure what to say. “Do you have drops for your eyes?”

“Yeah it makes them worse. The doctor says there’s nothing he can do for them.” Nothing to do but sit here in discomfort, waiting.

“Where’s Grandma,” I ask. He says she didn’t feel well, so she went to lie down. I guess she heard us talking, though, because the bedroom door opened and she slowly limped out. Her gait is hesitant, unbalanced, and my mind flashes back to a home video of me as a toddler, waking up from a nap and awkwardly walking down the stairs and then toward the camera. I greet her, and she suggests we sit in the living room, rather than the kitchen (the living room is attached to the kitchen, but has about ten square feet more space and slightly comfier chairs.) I consent, but I excuse myself to use the restroom first (I’ve been on the road for several hours).

As I look at myself in the mirror, my eyes well up, and I clench them shut to try to stop the tears from coming. But my lip starts trembling, and the tears come. I’m overcome with grief, and remorse, and the weight of the idea of living nearly a century.

I didn’t expect to feel like this. For the past several weeks, when describing to others the remaining destinations along my road trip, I would throw in a lighthearted, matter-of-fact comment about how my Grandma and Grandpa were at the end of their lives and I figured it would be good to see them one last time. I had talked about it void of any emotions, not because I was repressing them, but because at the time I really didn’t feel strongly when thinking about my grandparents’ condition. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt concerned, or scared for their health, or sad at the thought of them passing.

It’s not that I didn’t like them – I have many fond memories of summers spent in Racine, fishing and boating on the lake. I always looked forward to seeing Grandma and Grandpa growing up. But after a certain age, our visits to Wisconsin became less and less frequent, and many years would go by before I would see them again. It was only natural that our relationship grew more distant, and I felt less strongly for them than for my grandparents in New Jersey, right?

And then of course there was my grandmother’s pointed tongue and stubbornness that made many conversations unpleasant. Alcohol would file her tongue even sharper and loosen it to unleash a guilt trip or harsh criticism that brought out her entrenched prejudices. That in addition to her old fashioned sense that with age comes entitlement (“I’ll have some peas” to announce her culinary demand at the kitchen table), and it got to the point where I didn’t miss seeing her and Grandpa more frequently and frankly felt pretty emotionally detached to their situation.

And now it’s like all those years of lost emotional connection are flooding back at once. What have I missed, waiting until now to reach out to my father’s father? I don’t want to sit around and mourn with him about how the quality of his life has deteriorated and how he’s close to the end. I want to get to know him as a person, rather than the simple way in which a child knows a grandfather. I want to hear about his life, share stories, learn from his perspectives on things – perspectives that were forged in an era I have little ability to grasp. I want to laugh, and reflect, and look forward, and celebrate. Here is a man who has created a family, who sits as the solitary link, the linchpin of us all; in the twilight of his days, after retiring from the many years of hard labor that earned this family’s sustenance, he should be able to sit back and watch his beautiful family grow, take joy in that which he has created.

But he can’t watch. Because he can’t see.

But he can hear, and he can talk. And so we’ll sit, and talk. And sit, and talk. And I will savor every minute, coherent or not. Even with all I’ve missed, at least I have this moment with him. At least I won’t miss this.