Written by Dave M.

I've been thinking. In a stream of consciousness sort of way. Assessing where and why I am, and most importantly, but as you will see, lease importantly; for how much longer? A couple of my friends are currently losing their grandparents. I'm sympathetic, but in a "I don't really feel your pain" way. I care, and I'm sad, but let me put it in perspective. I've lost three grandparents, and my remaining grandmother (my father's mother) waits patiently in a retirement community. Frail watching football and eternally hoping that one of her great grandchildren will run into her room falling over something and seeking comfort in her octogenarian arms. She has lived her life and she is looking for the big things. I was nine years old when my other grandmother died (my mother's mother). It was my first experience with close death that I remember. (I only remember images of the lives and deaths of two uncles, though their deaths have had a profound affect on my psyche.) When my maternal grandmother died she was 83 years old and I was devastated. I sobbed at the funeral as the congregation sang Amazing Grace, her favorite hymn. I hugged my cousin resting my face on her breast, I was inconsolable. My cousin is about 8 years older than me. She was a young woman at the time, but when I think about it she was at that time much older than I would be for another 15 years.

I didn't know pain until my dad died. Grandparent's deaths are hard, they love you, they don't judge you, they give you a crisp dollar bill when you visit, they rarely discipline you and they die. It's hard and you get over it as time goes on. I watched my father gurgle his own phlegm and struggle to breath. I begged my father to let go and I wished him dead. His pain so thorough that simply lifting his diseased arm would bolt him straight out of bed, wresting him from a morphine and cancer induced slumber somewhere between life and death. It was the only action that would bring a semblance of his former self to the surface of his face, but it was nothing you would do more than once. He died and I was relieved and I cried. I've never so fully grieved in all my life. I've never been so happy and angry and broken all at once. To think of it five years later, it still brings tears to my eyes. I miss my grandparents that have passed, but it is rarely a day that goes by when I don't wonder how my dad would resolve a situation in which I have found myself. It's rarely a day goes by that I don't wonder what he would think of my children, or what he would say when I do something stupid like hit a deer with my wife's Cadillac. He was always sarcastically comical when you needed it the most. I still needed him when he left, and I was not ready to let go. My grandmother simply stated that she would give anything to take his place so he could rise and be healthy.

I once pondered why my cousin was not nearly as upset as me when we buried my other grandmother. It dawned on me that three years before my grandma died, my cousin's dad died of Lou Gehrig's disease. She was sad to see our grandmother pass, but she knew the pain found in the absence of her father. She knew the pain my grandparents felt in the loss of their son. She was child when her dad died, orphaned at an age much earlier than I would ever be. My friend's grandfather was recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. Strange for a man in his seventies. Most people die like Lou Gehrig did, in their forties or fifties. I lost two uncles to the disease, both died before their parents. I may be predisposed to developing a hereditary form of the affliction. Sometimes it bothers me. Sometimes when someone I know gets the diagnosis it really bothers me. When I allow my mind to take me to destructive self pity I can look 20 years down the road and imagine losing feeling in my thumbs and slowly succumbing as my muscles no longer respond to my commands. My grandparents all reached their eighties; I've always felt it was my duty and right to outlast them. A centurion is a proud and noble figure, but there is a simple 25% possibility that I have a gene mutation that will permit me to reach only half that age.

My point is not for you to care about me, or feel sorry for me, I surely wouldn’t and don’t. My point is that I watch my babies crawl around on the floor or run through the house screaming "dadda! dadda!" It warms my heart, and I know that they will never be ready for me to pass. But it is not my job to live forever for their comfort; it is my job to prepare them for life beyond my home. I am not the one who will leave them; it is they who will leave me. Off to school, love, and life. They will travel the world, smoke joints, drive a hundred miles per hour down a back country road. When my father died, I reacted to my grandmother's statement and realized she could never express her pain, she could never cry enough to ease her loss and sorrow. I wondered what I would give for my father's health, for his return. Of all the things that I contemplated, my own life was never bargained like she did with hers.

Every night at 9:30 I pick up my daughter and ask her if she is ready for "night, night" and she nods her head with an affirmative. I change her diaper and put on her pajamas, brush her teeth, and we give kisses to her mother and brother. We select a book to read and when it is finished I turn out the light, place her on my chest and rock her to sleep. She snuggles her little head into the space between my jaw and neck, and presses her body as closely as she can to mine. As she lays there sleeping on my chest I cannot help but realize that I don't care if I don't make it home from work tomorrow because I've already experienced more wealth and happiness in that simple nightly ritual than any one man deserves throughout his lifetime. I would die a thousand times to know that she and her brother would live long and happy lives. I would give my father's life a thousand times for their health. I long to dance at her wedding and throw her babies into the air. But I am pleased with what God has provided me to this point, and it has taught me that when your grandparents begin the long decent to death that they are happier to celebrate your life than to lament the loss of their own. Lou Gehrig was a man of talent and grace, I intend to borrow and live with some of that grace throughout my life, no matter how long it should last. With any luck at all my children and grandchildren will be devastated when I die, but not so devastated as at the simple thought of losing a child of their own.

Something else my grandmother said as we both sat in a guest bedroom and watched my father slowly die has remained with me. Blankly watching my father’s wasting body she mutter, “I’m glad your grandfather is not here to see this, he never would have lived through it.”