not ready

Maybe you remember my grandpa. He’s 100 years old. Maybe you remember the post I wrote about him last January, before his birthday. Maybe you remember my post about the hectic nature of our weekly errand days, when I drive him and my girls out to West St. Paul to the grocery store, where, after we shop, we sit at the deli and eat hard rolls and butter and, as Grandpa says, “chicken drumsticks.” During these expeditions, Zoë is up and down in the shopping cart, chicken grease smeared on clothes; both girls are generally whiny; and there is always a harried rush back to the car—me trying to get the girls and the groceries in before my grandpa pushes his cart into my car or the car parked next to us.

Often Grandpa will push his own cart around the store, picking out items himself. Sometimes, he follows me around, so I can put the items in his cart for him. But on Monday, he decided to go straight to the deli and drink coffee while Stella and Zoë and I did his shopping for him. Other than that, he seemed fine.

As we drove him back to his apartment, which is in my mom’s finished basement, I asked him if he remembered the Flu of 1918. He would have been nine years old. He did remember, of course—the man remembers everything—and he described how he and his brothers would sit up on the hill overlooking Granite Falls, Minnesota, where they watched the funeral processions go by, day after day. “No one in my family got sick,” he said. “Funny. Almost every family lost someone.” He proceeded to name the doctors who had succumbed to the flu, and then added, “Your grandma’s mother was very ill, but she survived.” Apparently, my great-grandfather brought out a nurse from this Twin Cities to care for his wife, and she recovered. My grandparents didn’t know each other then—they began dating in high school—but he remembered how scared my grandma had been.

Yesterday afternoon, my mom told me she had taken Grandpa to the doctor. He hadn’t been feeling well the last few days—trouble sleeping, trouble catching his breath when he lay down, fluid in his abdomen. His doctor—a wonderful doctor, the kind of doctor I wish everyone could have—said he had a rapid heartbeat. He prescribed some medicine and said for Grandpa to check back in a week.

But this morning he was up at 5 am, trying to sleep in his chair, unable to. His symptoms point to congestive heart failure, and I know what it means, sort of. I know it could mean the beginning of the end. But this is the thing: I’m not ready for that. I am not ready for him to go. Please don’t tell me how lucky I’ve been to have him around so long. Please don’t tell me how lucky he’s been to be that healthy, to “make it” to 100 years old. I know all of this. I know. Still, I need a little more time.

This last year has been so stressful, and I’m tired; I’m worn down. It’s as if the constant stress has removed a barrier, rubbed away my skin, and now there is nothing left to protect me.

This is an odd post, not the kind I usually write, and my only excuse is that I needed to get these words down. So often I can write my way out of darkness. So often I can write my way into some kind of understanding. This is what I had hoped I could do today.

But writing and blogging are different things, aren’t they? I blog for specific reasons: to promote motherhood literature, to encourage dialogue about motherhood and art, about writing and life, about where all of these things overlap and intersect. But I’ve found that your words, your comments, also ground me, keep me tethered. I actually don’t know what I’m asking for today. That you think of my grandpa Spencer? That you know how much I love him? That if you pray, you’ll pray for a little more time for him, for me to be with him? I don’t know.

It's obvious that I haven’t written myself into any kind of understanding today. Nothing seems clearer to me. But still, here I am at my computer, and somehow I feel a little less alone.