Dear Pomona,
Grandpa’s memory is in pieces. I set a family album in front of him at the care home for people with dementia. After a recent stroke at 89 years of age and six days of not eating, the man who always had a smile of acknowledgement for his grandkids does not appear to recognize his first; nor my life partner who have come to visit him. Despite this lack of recognition, remaining scraps of memory still tell his story.
My younger sister recently put photos of family together for him to look at. There is one of him and me, two years ago, smiling together, my arm around the Grandpa who was steadfast for our family his whole life. My father passed early and Grandpa did me the honor of walking me down the dirt path when my partner and I got hitched. That, he seemed to remember; when my Mom told him we were coming to visit. He didn’t remember me by name, only “the one who just got married”.
We flip the pages of his life in front of him. Most of the photos in the albums are unlabelled and I have kept personal notes for the day that there will be no one to ask. This is something I used to do with my Grandmother. The person whom he wanders the halls of the care home at night searching for — his wife for sixty years, gone for eight years now. They met on a blind date, just like my parents and this is how I met my lifepartner, as well. Determined to return to a home life that he will never see again, he packs his bags daily at the care home, sometimes in a laundry basket, a box or a plastic shopping bag and daily his things are unpacked by a member of the staff who does this for all of the residents.
While we sit together, he looks at the pictured parts of his life, as if he is seeing them for the first time. His arms seem noticeably more collapsed into his body from the recent stroke, even though he still has use of his hands. Our conversation feels almost pointless and I am aching for some way to connect with the heart of Grandpa who seems lost deep inside. I pull playfully at his strong hands. Curious he resists, but smiles. I think back to when I was a kid and we would play a game, that one where you start by floating your hands above another person’s palms. Then, the person, whose palms are facing skyward, slyly tries to slap the top of the other person’s hands, before they retract them.
I remember how he wouldn’t hold back on the slap, which I took as a sign of respect. I noticed early in life, whenever he would smash his thumb or cut his finger, it was no big deal. If asked, “Need a band aid for that?,” he would scoff and say “Nah.” A trait I still proudly possess, in everyday country living my unladylike hands are regularly nicked, scratched and callused, just like his were; much to the lament of my partner who rates them relative to grades of sandpaper.
Early in my life, Grandpa let me work with him on whatever building or maintenance project he was doing. It didn’t matter to him that I was a girl. Things just needed to get done. Later, he would work with me on my car. His “do-it-yourself” attitude was formative for me. Up to a year ago, whenever he visited me he would help with some project on the homestead. Even after several botched surgeries in which he lost use of his shoulder muscles. He would use one of the floppy arms like a prop to support the one overhead using the drill. At 86, when visiting him I found him ontop of his roof with a skill saw cutting in a skylight. Always restless, Grandpa seemed happiest when engaged in a project.
I try to match his congenial stoicism while visiting him, the pain of seeing his active life end this way hurts way more than a smashed finger. We will be returning in a few months for his 90th birthday. When I hug and kiss him goodbye, I have to consider it might be the last one I give him while he is alive and note, that due to the stroke, we are the ones actually dead to him. The tears come. I hide my face as I head to the door, knowing that he doesn’t need my sadness to be the last page in his scrapbook.
I am back on the homestead now. During caretaker chores, I recall stories of Grandpa’s boyhood mornings of milking cows, feeding the chickens and pigs, before walking miles to school, even during the hard winters of North Dakota. To this day, it is still customary to see him in a short-sleeved shirt on a day that calls for thermal layers. A heated strength I wish I had inherited from him.
Grandpa and Grandma were happy to build their adult lives away from the farms they grew up on, two generations later I returned to that life and recently, so has my sister. Our work is considerably easier with modern conventions, but our daily waking at first light seasonal duties are similar caring for goats, ducks, chickens and large food gardens.
A valley friend once remarked on how our community of agrarian folk are “durable” people. I know this is something that I inherited from my Grandpa. The fraction of his former self that he his now, is still supported by a backbone of humor, laughter in the face of adversity. His caregivers recognize this as they joke with him in their day-to-day interactions and comment to my mother about how they appreciate his no-fuss amiability.
In a moment of lucidity on that most recent visit, he commented to me how his “brain is mush.” I make a note of his mocking self-reflection, that he follows with a smirk and an “Oh, well” shake of the head. I think now, if it had been physically possible for him, he would have ended it with a “That’s Life” shrug of his shoulders.
Letters to Pomona 