Thursday evening at aproximately 6:45 my grandfather was taken to the hospital. For a few years he has suffered from Alzheimer's and now he is fighting a more understandable, physical condition; Pnuemonia. Not on a respirator but breathing with the help of a machine, his right lung is filled with fluid, his blood is septic. My father is waiting for his father to die. The doctors aren't even checking his vitals anymore. He's almost died twice thus far and the doctor's original deduction is that my grandfather will be dead tonight by 8:00. He could live ten hours or ten days (my father hoped for another ten years, but robbed of mind and health how is that anything but selfish?).
Do I go or do I stay and wait until the end? I've got a bag packed and have my suit ready to go with it, prepared for the worst. Do I go or stay? He can hear but he didn't know me when I was around before so why would he know just my voice? Do I witness him wasted away and feeble or try and remember him when he'd protect me from my father and use his grandfather terms, like "whoa, Dobbin?" What if this isn't the end? What if he does in fact hang in there for ten years? But is sitting here doing nothing, waiting any different than being there and waiting? Here I have distractions, though thin veils they've become. There I would be for moral support, for the family if not my grandfather. And how about all that will be dealt with AFTER his death; the will, property, banks, lawyers, yada, yada, yada? I'll have to be there for all of that.
I love my grandfather, he's the last member that I consider my family. Moreso, he's my hero, the simple man I always looked up to, the early-retired millworker who taught me more about life than my years of school. He was an artist, a craftsman, a friend, gentle, kind with nary a bad word about anyone and who no one, NO ONE, ever had anything bad to say about. A giant among men, a man I wish I could be.
Dammit. I'll probably be leaving soon, with my 5 items I can't live without, the darkness on my back being the suit I wear when I inter the greatest man I've ever known.
Do I go or do I stay and wait until the end? I've got a bag packed and have my suit ready to go with it, prepared for the worst. Do I go or stay? He can hear but he didn't know me when I was around before so why would he know just my voice? Do I witness him wasted away and feeble or try and remember him when he'd protect me from my father and use his grandfather terms, like "whoa, Dobbin?" What if this isn't the end? What if he does in fact hang in there for ten years? But is sitting here doing nothing, waiting any different than being there and waiting? Here I have distractions, though thin veils they've become. There I would be for moral support, for the family if not my grandfather. And how about all that will be dealt with AFTER his death; the will, property, banks, lawyers, yada, yada, yada? I'll have to be there for all of that.
I love my grandfather, he's the last member that I consider my family. Moreso, he's my hero, the simple man I always looked up to, the early-retired millworker who taught me more about life than my years of school. He was an artist, a craftsman, a friend, gentle, kind with nary a bad word about anyone and who no one, NO ONE, ever had anything bad to say about. A giant among men, a man I wish I could be.
Dammit. I'll probably be leaving soon, with my 5 items I can't live without, the darkness on my back being the suit I wear when I inter the greatest man I've ever known.