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Yay, a morning home.
I'm avoiding recording a video message for my grandfather, but i'm finding imagining what i would say a little easier if i imagine it as simply reaching out to another human being, not to my memory of a person.
Part of that is that my memory of him is so sparse. During childhood we visited frequently with my mother's parents. My memories are full of my mother's mother, of the yards around their homes, of finding the Reader's Digest abridged collections of books and devouring them while escaping, of outings and hikes with my father while escaping. I suspect the dynamic between my father and my mother's father was so toxic i've blocked it. The last exchange i had with him was a couple years ago. My mother and his second wife had dominated the conversation. In a final moment when he could get a question out he asked, "Why haven't you and that [spouse] of yours bought a house?" The tone wasn't curious but challenging, and i felt a judgement behind it. I remember being felt judged when he met my spouse for the first time (i can't recall if i found out later or if he tld me himself he didn't think we were physically attracted enough). I have several other memories of awkward conversations that didn't involve Christine but my work or education: those aren't clear.
I have my own judgements, fueled simply by the distress that he and his second wife have caused my mother and father, my aunt and uncle.* I have the story of him i carry, speculations my father and i have shared about how scarring Pacific submarine service in WWII must have been, what rescuing survivors (i thought of the Indianapolis, but i'm not sure now) must have been like. There's the understanding of how classist the Navy was and how difficult it must have been for him, promoted to the officer corps from the enlisted ranks, and how that explained some of the attitude my college educated father and my college bound self received.
I think i can let go of those, though, and just speak to his desire to live. He apparently surprised the doctors by how much he fought to recover over the past week, and he's chosen to have the risky surgery of a stomach port put in so he can get nourishment (he can't swallow enough food on his own). I can frame that desire as wanting to continue to be with his second wife, and can respect that fierce will.
* My uncle is another cipher of a memory, but i distinctly remember him feeding one of my cats crab under a table, while he picked through a remnant of a lobster himself. Seeing him withdrawn from the circle of family chatter, quietly including Grey Beard in his escape, created a bubble of memory that glows for me, a glimpse of a self who is constantly overshadowed by his rather mean wife.
--==∞==--
( Morbid reflections )
I'm avoiding recording a video message for my grandfather, but i'm finding imagining what i would say a little easier if i imagine it as simply reaching out to another human being, not to my memory of a person.
Part of that is that my memory of him is so sparse. During childhood we visited frequently with my mother's parents. My memories are full of my mother's mother, of the yards around their homes, of finding the Reader's Digest abridged collections of books and devouring them while escaping, of outings and hikes with my father while escaping. I suspect the dynamic between my father and my mother's father was so toxic i've blocked it. The last exchange i had with him was a couple years ago. My mother and his second wife had dominated the conversation. In a final moment when he could get a question out he asked, "Why haven't you and that [spouse] of yours bought a house?" The tone wasn't curious but challenging, and i felt a judgement behind it. I remember being felt judged when he met my spouse for the first time (i can't recall if i found out later or if he tld me himself he didn't think we were physically attracted enough). I have several other memories of awkward conversations that didn't involve Christine but my work or education: those aren't clear.
I have my own judgements, fueled simply by the distress that he and his second wife have caused my mother and father, my aunt and uncle.* I have the story of him i carry, speculations my father and i have shared about how scarring Pacific submarine service in WWII must have been, what rescuing survivors (i thought of the Indianapolis, but i'm not sure now) must have been like. There's the understanding of how classist the Navy was and how difficult it must have been for him, promoted to the officer corps from the enlisted ranks, and how that explained some of the attitude my college educated father and my college bound self received.
I think i can let go of those, though, and just speak to his desire to live. He apparently surprised the doctors by how much he fought to recover over the past week, and he's chosen to have the risky surgery of a stomach port put in so he can get nourishment (he can't swallow enough food on his own). I can frame that desire as wanting to continue to be with his second wife, and can respect that fierce will.
* My uncle is another cipher of a memory, but i distinctly remember him feeding one of my cats crab under a table, while he picked through a remnant of a lobster himself. Seeing him withdrawn from the circle of family chatter, quietly including Grey Beard in his escape, created a bubble of memory that glows for me, a glimpse of a self who is constantly overshadowed by his rather mean wife.
--==∞==--
( Morbid reflections )
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