Grandpa CNF Stories | Sydney Savage

Grief Told From Two Different Perspectives

Me:

I was walking on my way back to my dorm on Michigan State campus, blasting my music as loud as it could go; I felt invincible when I ignored my iPhone’s warning to turn it down. Sometimes deliberately disobeying felt good, especially on days like this.

I made a list in my head. I aced my nutrition exam that I had to cram for, I met a new friend in one of my classes today, and my writing piece even got offered publication. I had so much energy that while I was walking, I was bobbing my head back and forth, dancing to the rhythm, for the first time not caring about how much of a fool I probably looked like to the people around me.

Here, people were starers. On a daily basis, I met eyes with someone and it felt like they were looking into my soul, judging me for walking next to them as if the sidewalk was somehow more their turf than mine. It was amazing how much diversity was here though. I saw people in scarfs, people in sweats, guys in shorts in the 20-degree weather, girls in their cute crop tops and sweaters, and teachers lugging their briefcases around like they were smuggling around illegal weapons.

But the thing that was keeping my energy level up and supporting the smile on my face was how beautiful the campus was here. There was actual nature. Gardens and trees and everything in between. Though the trees were bare right now because of the winter, the branches still had this sunlight glimmer radiating through them. The lighting was always nice, made my freckles pop out. Most college students liked to stop and take selfies and post it on their social media, showing how their eyes glowed in the snowy background, but right now I just wanted to enjoy my walk. People always ranted about how photos were memories, but I liked to think that days like these were memories my brain could hold onto without any photographic evidence.

I was speed walking out of habit, and I forced myself to slow down; there was nothing waiting for me back at my dorm anyway.

Or at least that was what I thought.

When I got back, my phone rang, and I immediately saw it was my mom and picked it up. Ever since I came to college, my mom called me every chance she got, so I didn’t think the call was out of the ordinary like I should’ve. I picked up, and before even saying hi, I started rambling to her, “Mom, you’ll never believe what happened today-“

She cut me off in the tiny little pause I took, and I could tell from the hiccup in her voice that she had been crying. Seriousness was a tone I was deaf to when it came to over the phone, but not this time. She sounded like a robot, a new robot who didn’t yet know how to do normal things, like a human having to start over from scratch. It was how I knew something had rocked her world; something had temporarily killed the mom I knew so well.

“Mom, what is it?” I asked her. I asked because if I didn’t ask, I was afraid she’d start crying.

“Grandpa died.” She couldn’t even say the words straight. Her words were slurred as if she had a high BAC count. I immediately started packing my bags to head home.

When she told me, I myself had to look around my dorm room and focus on random things to keep myself from crying. My dorm was a mess, paper bags scattered all over and two unmade beds. Thank god my roommate wasn’t here to see me like this. I was thankful even for the random thoughts like my roommate not being here because every thought was a distraction from the fact I would never see my grandfather again.

And I was fine with that. Maybe I wasn’t ready to start the grieving process. Maybe right now being in denial was the healthy thing to do. I mean, he’d been in my life for 19 years and gone only one, was it really wrong for me to want to pretend I heard him patching up the hole I put in the wall in third grade? I could hear his nail gun. See, he was still here.

Right? You’re still here, Grandpa.

Cue the loud drilling noises.

Grandma:

The doctors said he would be fine, but they lied to me. They lied. The second his heart stopped, mine slowed down. Everything slowed down. Fifty years of marriage and it ended like that?

I was lying in bed, in what used to be our bed, and I couldn’t get myself to get up. My mind started with memories. I thought about how we met ice skating and how bad his manners used to be. I thought about all the car shows he dragged me to, and the large abundance of Welch’s fruit snacks he bought; there were still four bags I had to give away now.

I couldn’t escape him. He was this house. He was always sitting in his living room, fixing the car, and adding to his collection; he had a million tools all disorderly spread out in the garage. I felt like I discovered a new one I didn’t even know he had every single day.

My mind was going back and forth between memories and between things that needed to be done. Where was I gonna put his truck now? Where would all his tools go? How was I going to tell all our coffee friends and not have to endure the looks on their faces when they asked if I was joking? At least we already got rid of our place in Florida, that was taken care of. But what about all the accounts under his name? How many people would I have to tell?

I spent my days cleaning up after him. I didn’t have a job. How was I supposed to keep busy? He mowed the lawns, he fixed every broken household thing, he was the one to start fights. And even baking, the one thing I did, I was used to hollering over at him in the living room and him asking me to repeat myself fifty times because he’d outlived his hearing aids.

I didn’t get how he could be here one day and gone the next. I was aware of our age, I was, but I guess you could never be prepared for it.

I needed my mind to shut off, but everywhere I went in the house was somewhere he walked, somewhere where he said something funny or offensive. It was like he was still here, but I couldn’t touch him. Was this what hell would be like?

My friends who lost their husbands, it was sad, but I never thought it would be me. We never broke up once, but even if we had, this was so much worse. No one could have him now.

I pulled my bed sheets over my head, and even doing that, I thought about the mask he had to wear in his sleep because he couldn’t breathe; it used to keep me up all night, it was so loud, like an indoor thunderstorm.

A thunderstorm was better than this quietness.

Me:

I spoke at the funeral, and when I came back home, I watched a movie with my family. We all had each other. We’d all lived here alone together before, so we could do it again. We could get up and move on with school and work and take on every other distraction we could find.

My grandma couldn’t say the same.

My Grandpa Didn't Die of COVID

My grandpa didn’t die of COVID but he died in a hospital room next to people who did. He died from a harmless infection, but what meant the difference between life and death was time.

Time. They say Time is supposed to heal. Why couldn’t they have been honest with me and told me Time is a cold-blooded killer no one will ever catch?; Time doesn’t have arms to handcuff. There are serial killers who are really good at pretending to care, and I think that’s who Time is.

I never got around to seeing my grandpa in the hospital, partly because he died unexpectedly, hours after checking in. Don’t we all know that story of the one guy who checked in with a headache and never walked out?

I might as well have been there though because my family filled me up with so much detail that sometimes I forget I wasn’t there. I suppose it’s a good thing. That way I can pretend like I got to say goodbye. It’s at times like these that I’m grateful for an imagination because picturing yourself hugging the man who went on every field trip and attended every soccer game with you as a kid is better than no hug at all.

The first scene I see is the one where my grandma told me he tried to break out. Given it was Thanksgiving time, I can’t blame him. I see a man seventy years young, noisily rolling his wheelchair through the silent waiting rooms, unafraid to knock over a nurse if that’s what he had to do to escape. I don’t see him covering up his bald spots with his usual baseball hat. The baseball hat is only worn on happy occasions, like his 50th wedding anniversary. The hat is the equivalent of a tux to him; it usually has a golf logo on it, having grown up with a patience gene that I don’t have.

My grandpa had no problem impatiently shouting across the room at a waitress serving her other table and telling her to come back to us like we’re an Ace and the other fifty people in the restaurant are Jacks. That’s why I see him not backing down without a fight. Even if he knows the trained medical staff are going to catch him, I see him trying anyway, swerving around on the wheelchair like it’s an electric scooter. I see him doing a whole lot more than he probably actually did, and that’s why I say imagination reins over reality. Maybe it’s a blessing I wasn’t there; maybe I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Actually, my own family told me it’s good I wasn’t there. Apparently, in his last hours, he got confused. He looked straight at my mom and told her, “I have a daughter that looks just like you.” If he couldn’t even recognize his own daughter, would he recognize me?

Probably not.

And when looking at the ceiling, my mom said he was pointing at it like someone or something was there, curling his fists at it and shooing it away. I don’t know what that something or someone was, neither did the rest of my family, so in my mind, I make something up, so I can pretend I was there.

This is what I see:

I’m standing next to my parents. Only three people can visit at once. I’ve never been in a hospital room except for when I was four and my twin siblings were born, so I picture that room. I picture myself going up the elevator that my preschool-educated self called an “alligator” and then going into the room with a stripped white bed and a tiny TV on the wall playing Winnie the Pooh.

There’s an open window and a curtain dividing the room into two. There’s a bunch of beeping noises coming from various places, but I can’t tell from where; and I hear babies crying down the hall. My eyes trace all the different buttons and wires that there are next to the bed until they get bored of it.

I’m there, and my grandpa is in the bed with his little tray of hospital food that he won’t eat because he’s trying to feed it to my sixteen-year-old brother. My brother won’t try macaroni and lives off of McDonalds chicken nuggets, so my grandpa teases him about it. He makes yet another comment about his skinny figure. And just like my brother bragged to me and my sister, he brags to my grandpa and tells him all about how his doctor told him he has a “perfect physique” despite his diet. My grandpa definitely laughs when he brings that up. He laughs at least three times; he could never do anything once. He did everything in sequences. At an ice cream shop once, I counted six sneezes in a row.

When my grandpa points at the ceiling, his eyes get all big like black holes. There are some memories that, after Time murders the sad out of them, are easier to laugh about. This is not one of them. I don’t see a comedic cartoon character. I see a grown man scared to die. He sees his deceased daughter and parents up in that ceiling, telling him it’s time to go. And he’s yelling back at them that he doesn’t want to.

After my grandpa calms down, he talks to me about my writing. He was always so proud of me. It probably wouldn’t have happened just because of the state he was in, but it’s my imagination, so why not?

I don’t change this last memory with my imagination; I’m still a little wobbly in the knees from the ceiling one. This time, I simply add my body into the room when it happened. Apparently my grandpa looked at my brother with a straight face and told him he looked like an Arab. So random. Now, it’s worth noting my grandpa fits the old privileged white man, Trumpee stereotype to a “T.” Cowboy movies starring guns and damsel-in-distresses in black and white were his go-to. Maybe he said it because my brother inherited the tan skin from my dad’s side. Or maybe it was racist. I don’t know.

In our family history, there were many political arguments, five-on-one arguments; hint: my grandpa was the minority. But as I replay this last memory, I don’t think about my grandpa’s addiction to Fox news or that he sometimes said the wrong thing, or that he couldn’t just agree to disagree. I think about how we loved him despite our differences. I think about all the irreplaceable messages and voicemails he sent my mom; he was either calling to say happy birthday, calling to ask if he could watch my siblings play soccer, or calling to ask what part of our house we broke this time. If he had more similar views to us, his death wouldn’t hurt any less.

When I would write a eulogy and read it out loud at his funeral a week later, I didn’t think about those parts of him. I wouldn’t have cried any less if he was me in man form. I cried because of all the good things he’s done in my life. I cried because he held me when I was a baby and he would aggravate me endlessly in the coffee shop downtown. I cried because my grandma was crying and I knew, while I had a full house to go to, she had an empty one. I cried because I couldn’t stop thinking about all the hilarious, old sayings my grandpa used to say, and I couldn’t remember a single one except for “soup’s on.”

My grandpa was always there, and now he’s not; and no one close to me has ever died until now. And I so badly want to blame COVID. At night, when I’m tossing and turning in my sleeping bag made of sweat, all I can think about is maybe if the hospitals weren’t so full, maybe he could’ve lived. Maybe it was someone dying of COVID that took the attention off of him for too long. Maybe it was the doctors and nurses that didn’t make him a priority. I think about that, and then I hate myself for thinking about such things, knowing other people lost family members too. Doctors died. Nurses died. Kids died. Tons of people died. So who am I to be like my grandpa was toward the waitresses and be the one to say he deserved to live above anyone else?

I’ll tell you why. I’m allowed to be selfish, and I’m allowed to be sad. I’m allowed to wish he had COVID instead because maybe then he would’ve gotten the right services and still be here. I’m allowed to think that and still feel bad for all the other lives lost. I can have it both ways.

Just like I’m allowed to convince myself I was the last person he layed eyes on in the hospital room before he went up into that ceiling.

I was there.

Fishing for Grapes

I’m not guilty because I don’t miss my grandpa, because I do. I’m guilty because he asked me over and over again if I wanted to visit him up north through my teenage years, and I never went. I’m guilty because his funeral was yesterday and I didn’t cry once.

I had a few secondhand tears form while watching family who were nice enough to visit him on his boat speak, but that was about it. I saw a family photo that was supposed to be of the whole family, and my freckles weren’t there, my shadow wasn’t there, none of me was there. My sister and my brother and my parents were, but family time wasn’t like a class; I couldn’t simply ask them what I missed and “catch myself up.”

I know little me would be sad. I had so many childhood memories with him. They’ve faded over the years, but still, I suppose it’s better than nothing, right? Little decade-old snippets aren’t the end of the world. That’s what I try to tell myself, until I picture my grandpa’s living room that I did visit in his last days and I see the cold cup of “hot cocoa” that he used to make me every morning.

He left a hot cup there for me all this time, but I never went to grab it. I drank store-bought hot cocoa from all kinds of different stores, but I didn’t drink his. I think all hot cocoa died with him because he was the only one who knew how to make it the right way. And I can’t drink cocoa that isn’t his to somehow connect with him in spirit, because the whole point of Grandpa’s hot cocoa is that you’re sitting there drinking it with him. I can’t even remember the last time I drank it with him.

My grandma told me he loved me, but how does she know that? In romantic relationships, you can’t love a person unless you spend time with them and get to know them. I could be unfair and ask the question: Did Grandpa know me? But it’s unfair. The right question to ask is: Did I know my grandpa? And I didn’t. Maybe he wanted to get to know me, and maybe I didn’t give him the chance. He lost his wife when my dad was fifteen, and he also lost me when I was fifteen. How sad is that?

I can’t even call him Grape like all the other grandchildren. Nicknames mean you’re close with someone, and all I knew was he loved to play golf and he loved to pull on people’s fingers. I never talked with him about the wife he lost and how he managed to find love again. Hearing my aunt talk about it at the funeral made me tear up; I could’ve asked him about it. Maybe then I’d be qualified to call him Grape and to speak.

At the same time, I’m glad I didn’t speak. I spoke at my other grandpa’s funeral. He died almost a year ago, and I cried the second my mom told me the news. Maybe that’s why I feel so guilty this time around. The funeral for my grandpa that just died was in the same exact place that my other grandpa’s was, and any sadness I felt, I think was just PTSD from the last one. When I looked up at the podium, I saw myself speaking. I was thinking about my grandpa on my mom’s side when I should’ve been thinking about the one on my dad’s side. My mom’s mom was at the funeral for my dad’s dad too, and I know she was thinking the same as me. She was picturing it all over again. She’s in the process of selling her house, of finally getting rid of an empty home. That’s all I thought about the entire ceremony. My grandpa on my dad’s side, his photos were in the same spot that my other grandpa’s were, and all I saw was his photos, not Grape’s. I saw it all over again.

In class, I’ve learned there are four different ways to react to stress. Flight, fight, freeze, and fawn. Fight is fighting and getting a temper, flight is running away and escaping, freezing is dissociating and feeling numb, and fawn is appeasing to what’s causing the stress and giving up. When I gave my speech almost a year ago, I froze. I could hardly speak. At this funeral though, the one for Grape, I didn’t do any of the four things because I wasn’t under stress.

I try to close my eyes and picture moments I had with Grape, but I can’t. So instead, I picture the boat. At least I know that. His boat was his second wife. It’s something I know about him. I can see him on his chair all day fishing. I can’t remember who did it to who, but I remember someone getting a fish hook stuck on someone else’s pants and everyone laughing. I remember Grandpa letting me steer the boat. I remember arguing with my cousins over who-knows-what. I remember waking up super early and venturing out into the quiet house and seeing my grandpa wide awake, hot cocoa in hand as he offers me some. I do remember that. I remember his square glasses and curly gray hair. I wish I remembered more, but at least if I can remember something, I remember fishing; and I know that’s what he loved the most.

My grandpa was a fish himself in his last days. He wasn’t a free fish though; he was a fish who had been hooked and then released back into the water all bloody and injured. He had been suffering for quite a while, but now that his suffering has ended, his fish spirit is swimming all over the ocean. Of that, I’m certain.

Maybe I’m not sad he’s gone because I’m so happy that he’s finally where he’s meant to be.

They say someone dies twice: once when they stop breathing, and again when their name is mentioned for the last time.

I say the word “grape” all the time, so he’s got nothing to worry about; his second life isn’t going anywhere. I mean, think of all the fish who know him. He has a whole ocean saying his name.

At the end of the funeral, the priest mentioned what Grandpa would want for his grandkids, and he said for them to work hard. And I am. I know he’s proud of me. I’ve been sitting out on the dock waiting for a literary agent to bite, waiting for my writing dream to come true, and Grapes, I’m still waiting. I haven’t left the dock. I won’t leave until I get a bite. In a way, I guess I learned that from you.