Weary

My brain is so wasted after this day that when Uncle Orca called to check on how my grandfather was doing, I could not for the life of me figure out how he knew Granddad was sick in the first place.  Duh.  I didn't remember posting this morning.

For those lacking the patience to read the entire saga that was my day, my grandfather is back at his cottage.  He has pneumonia, and has been given a handful of drugs to take to help him get better and to keep him comfortable.  My uncle is staying with him tonight, and my family will be in and out throughout the weekend.  We are blessed that my extended family consisting of my uncle and aunt, their three daughters and their associated significant others and children, my sister, and myself all live within 30 miles or so.  The long weekend gives us time to figure out a longer-term solution.  My grandfather is very pale, and to say he is confused is putting it mildly.  When I arrived at his cottage today he tried to get me to go bring in his mail and to do that he told me to "Go out to the garage, and in there you'll find a blue Crown Victoria.  On the seat there are a couple of cords.  The phone needs charging."  My uncle quickly told me that the mail had been brought in and the cell phone was being charged on the table behind me.  The hardest part is that Granddad doesn't know he's confused.  When the medics came this morning to take him to the hospital and did the standard cognitive tests on him, when asked what day it was he said "That's easy - the day after yesterday."  It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

This morning it took BigDaddyFish, Trout, Little Man, and my FIL four hours to dig out my van so I could go to my grandfather.  He was home from the hospital before I could even get out.  I have several pictures of the two-inch thick bricks of ice that BDF carved out of the ice on the roof of my car for the kids to transport across the iced-in yard.  My inlaws came to watch the kids so BDF could work - I think he got all of an hour of work done for work.  My inlaws are....special people.  In the odd sense.  My MIL has Parkinsons and between the condition itself and the meds she takes and the emotional issues of confronting her own frailty and her natural naivete she has become daffier than the famous Duck himself.  My FIL could never be accused of being the brightest bulb on the tree himself, in such odd ways, bad enough that today sometime during the shovel/ice pick fest BDF accused his father of being an idiot savant.  They are earnest and they try hard and they mean well, but damn they drive me bat shit crazy.  Lots of stories for another day. 

As I was loading up the van to leave, I found Trout's missing money envelope for her Girl Scout Cookies frozen into a block of ice behind my neighbor's left rear tire.  It didn't have any money in it, but I had been driving myself nuts trying to find the damn thing in the house.  I managed a wry smile, causing BDF to come running out to find out if I'd finally cracked completely.

I set out for granddad's and once I got on the highway I noticed a tremendous vibration, bad enough that I couldn't drive faster than 45 mph, and if you know a thing at all about DC roads you'll know that is dangerous as all hell.  I got off the highway and got out and looked at the tires, thinking I had one going down, but none was flat and I couldn't figure out what was causing the problem.  I turned around and came back home, and BDF drove around a while, determining that ice in the wheel was causing the problem.  He kicked it off, we put air in the tires, and I dropped him off at home, and Nemo and I went to my granddads, two hours later than I had set out.  He lives 25 minutes away.

I was there 20 minutes when BDF calls - the girls have diarrhea.  The good part of this?  Sunny has been potty training herself, and she didn't have a single accident, despite the diarrhea.  Time to go to Toys R Us for her to pick out a dollhouse. 

He calls again maybe an hour later because my Peapod delivery from yesterday finally showed up and what was the procedure?  Sigh.  Sign for the delivery, tip the guy, check the groceries in, and put them away.  Is that really so tough?

In the next few days my uncle and I will have to decide what's best for granddad and then convince the stubborn old goat that he came up with the idea.  He really needs to have someone keeping an eye on him and helping him remember what medicine to take and when, when to go to which doctor, and making sure he gets help if he falls and doesn't start a fire if he falls asleep while cooking (both of which have happened in the last couple of weeks - I mean he didn't start a fire, but the exploding can of soup made a mess my kids would be proud of).

My granddad is a strong, vibrant man, and seeing him like this is wrenching.  I am used to the man who worked out lifting weights and running and riding bikes until just a few months ago, a fit man who could run circles around kids a quarter his age.  The man who ran up a mountain in Australia in the rain because some hot shot kid called him an old man - the kid only made it half way.  The man who broke his foot when he was 75 - playing softball, when he ran out a double he had hit after the brake occured, and he didn't get it looked at til the next day when my grandmother made him.  The great-grandfather who layed down on the floor to give airplane and helicopter rides to my babies, just as he did me when I was a baby.  The man who used to hold me up to a mirror when I was crying for what he deemed a silly reason to show me how silly I looked and to say "If you stick that lip out like that, I'll step on it."  That sounds mean now but really, it used to make us sick with laughter when he did it.  The man who always loved a good joke and especially puns, the bigger the groaner the better.  One of the first things littles in our family learned to say was "Ohhhhh, Granddaddy!" when he told a particularly bad pun.

That man is now too confused to enjoy the puns that used to give him such delight.  He's too frail to walk across the street without help, much less climb onto a bike or lift a baby over his head for an elevator ride.  He's racked with constant pain from the bone breaks caused by the cancer that is slowly eating him up (multiple myeloma).  He naps five or six times a day - I think he spends more time sleeping than awake anymore.  Watching him suffer like this I sometimes think is as agonizing for us to watch as it is for him to experience it.

He's ready to go.  He's made his peace with God.  He misses my grandmother, who died a little over a year ago from breast cancer.  He misses my mom.  He's sure in his faith and he knows where he's going.  And as he says "I've lived a full life.  I've gotten to do things in my life that most people don't.  The only thing I never did that I wanted to was to be famous." But he is famous in the world of synchronized swimming, where he spent a second career as a national judge - to be more specific than this would be to give up my anonymity and his, and I don't want to do that.  He went to a one-room school house in the midwest in a dinky little farm town.  He is a WWII vet.  He didn't have indoor plumbing and electricity in his town until well into the 60's, and now he has computers, tvs, and cell phones.  He has seen and done so much in his life.  He is the most balanced, well-rounded person I've met, and I've always striven (strived?) to be more like him.  I have the strongest bond with him than anyone else in my whole family - indeed, he is the most tangible link to my mother I have left.  To know and love him and to have him in my life is to still have part of my mother.  I'm not ready to give that up, but I don't want him to suffer anymore.

I hope I can face death with the courage and peace and grace that he has shown - both his death, and my own.