2005-12-03 - 9:07 p.m.

Gramp

My grandfather died today of a heart attack. I got the phone call from my dad at around 5:30PM and I've been staring blankly at the computer screen since. I got an email from my grandmother yesterday that said Gramp had been having a hard time and was up until 5AM with what was diagnosed after an EKG as acid reflux. He was put on medication to treat that, and today he's dead.

The doctor they went to has been treating my family for over twenty years. I hope this doesn't boil over into a lawsuit, and at the same time I don't know how you can miss a heart attack in a nearly-eighty year old man. I was under the impression you could do a simple blood test for it.

I saw him on Thanksgiving, and like he had several times in the past he encouraged me to come trap-shooting with him. He routinely won every prize available at the meet, and had for years. Another day, another baseball cap with a garish logo on the front that would most likely be donated to someone who needed a hat enough to wear it.

Gramp operated heavy machinery for over fifty years, and his skin was a permanent leathery beet-red from the untold sunrise-to-sunset days on the site. Polio twisted his leg, but never slowed him down. Grandma recently showed us the oldest pictures we have of him, taken when they had just married and he was around twenty-five. He looked like a Polynesian body-builder.

I've never cried this much before for anyone who deserved it.

I don't know how my dad is going to deal with this. He missed Thanksgiving, sick and tired, and stayed home to watch the Bond marathon. I don't know if he got to see his father again after that. When he called, he made it about five seconds before his voice turned into the high-pitched adolescent breaks of a man trying to talk while in tears. If I were talking instead of typing, I'd have them myself.

I've never met a kinder man than my grandfather. Animals loved him on sight, despite his avid hunting. My grandmother's neverending procession of stray dogs turned guard dogs never quite trusted him with her, but allowed him into their house none the less.

Darla finally talked me into reuniting with at least my father's side of the family in mid-July. It's the only reason I got to see my grandfather alive. Now I at least have a picture of him and my grandmother, laughing, above my computer. I can't look at it right now, but at least it's there for later.

I can't imagine that my grandmother will live much longer alone. He was her entire life, and her only company. My aunt and uncle recently started constructing a house less than a block away from my grandmother, so hopefully she will have as much company as she needs in the future. I know my dad and I can't provide it regularly, living a hundred and twenty miles away.

I think the nuclear family is bunk. The whole concept is based on the idea that living with your parents or grandparents is a negative thing -- and it can be, no doubt about it. I'd rather cram a handfull of paperclips into my sinuses than live with my mother again, but it's not because she's my mother. It's because she's immature, shrewish, and arrogant. I think a lot of it also comes from it having been made a rite of passage to move out and leave home.

I don't live with my parents or any member of my extended family, and I doubt I will anytime in the near future. I can't picture having sex on a squeaky bed with my grandparents nearby, or having a heart-to-heart with family members wandering in and out of the room. I like near-solitude.

I'm not going to wind this up with a big conclusion. My grandfather, who I loved very much, is dead.

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