A Letter to My Grandfather (One I'll Never Send)

Somewhere on the turnpike, while I was leaving Ohio, I stopped and got a postcard for my grandpa. When he was younger, he liked to travel and took pictures wherever he went; he doesn't have that opportunity any more. I haven't sent the postcard yet because it can't possibly hold all the things I want to say to him before he dies. How could it?

The postcard is sitting in its little plastic bag on my desk, and I'm ashamed every time I think of it. When I think of the unanswered letters that he's sent me, with the jagged, careful little letters. Each letter probably takes him as long to write out as it takes me to type this sentence, and my shame is that I don't spare that same time for him.

It's tough to think about him, though. To think about that shrunken, wrinkled man who in no way resembles the slyly smiling man I remember. His voice a little slurred--blurry, like the pictures he took when his eyes started to fail.

He was always taking pictures. When I last saw him in the old house, after I'd taken him out to lunch, I sat and went through dozens of photo albums with him. There were pictures of his parents, of him as a boy, of my father and my family. There were pictures of Kansas and Colorado and Illinois and every other place that he'd visited. The picture that stayed most in my mind was one of him as a boy.

It's a Norman Rockwell version of a child with no shoes, no shirt, and wearing loose denim overalls. The grin on that kid's face tells the story of all the men in my family; it's a lopsided thing that lets everyone in the vicinity know that something bad is about to happen. And if you don't smile back, well, you just weren't smart enough to get the joke.

That little smile isn't the only thing to pass down, either. Mine isn't a family with money--those pictures of him as a boy were taken on a little family farm. He was a Kansas boy from a Baptist family that never had money or much in the way of education, but always had strength of will. Dirt poor but driven.

I spent most of my adult life pushing as far away from all that as I could. I've never felt tethered to family or home, and that's not something I regret. Not that much, anyway. Family just always seemed too hard, too dramatic, and too painful--a reality that I just didn't want to have to deal with. I spent so much time getting away from them, though, that it's hard as hell to find a way to say hello anymore.

But, for all that I'm happy I'm the person that I am, and for all it took me running away to become that person, I'd still like him to know that I appreciate some of those things that passed down to me. I'd like him to know that I'm glad that I'm a little bit like him.

I like that little grin, that little glint in the eye, and that willingness to court danger. I like the stubbornness and the curiosity. I like base in God and faith that helps guide me daily. I like that little something that keeps me working hard for the things I want. There isn't much quit in this family.

He'd like knowing how much of him I appreciate.

But when I sit to write a letter to him, the words don't come. Like I said, it's hard as hell to find a way to say hello anymore.

His body fails slowly, his wife has chosen to live with my aunt, and he's been uprooted from the home he knew for all of his adult life. He sits in his quiet little apartment waiting for visitors and waiting to die, and the loneliness must be hell. What tears does he cry when he goes to sleep at night, or do you just become numb at some point?

The g-phrase and I were driving to see a movie this weekend and I played William Shiner’s song, "That's Me Trying" (written, I believe, by the brilliant Nick Hornby). She hated it for all the reasons I liked it. The song is about a father trying to reconnect with his child, although, by his own admission, he doesn't want to talk about the difficult things, he doesn't want to know if she has kids, he doesn't want to know much about her life, and it's hard to see what he's offering her in return. It's surprisingly touching, sad, and pretty--none of what you'd expect from anything to do with William Shatter.

She hated it because she couldn't get past the mad she felt; I liked it because I think it's real. I don't believe in second chances. As soon as you give yourself to trusting someone a second time through, you find that all of the things that drove you apart are still lurking there, waiting to break your heart one more time.

I do believe, though, that you can give yourself a second chance, and that you don't have to accept that who you are now is who you always have to be. I believe that, at least partially, because of my grandpa.

To hear my dad talk about my grandpa, you'd expect a man of boundless cruelty, with no heart and no conscience. When we sat there with his photo albums, he started talking to me about a dog that they'd had when I was a boy.

The dog was a mean little bastard. He was kept in a high-fenced area out behind the building that used to house chickens, and, at the site of nearly anyone, he would growl a warning deep in his throat. Anyone but my grandpa stupid enough to step into that fenced area was attacked by a vicious, dark little dog that had no use for most people.

Anyway, my grandpa started talking about the dog and how he never treated the dog well. "Oh, he was such a mean thing, and it was my fault. I just didn't know any better."

In a lot of ways, throughout his life, I don't think he knew any better. He didn't know how to be a better father, he didn't know how to be a better husband, and he didn't know how to be a better man. He kept trying, though, and he kept getting better over time.

Whether it was coming closer to his religious beliefs or just growing in experience, I couldn't say. The man I knew, though, was far from the man who made his boy sleep out in that building with the chickens--a cold little room in a building that we later called the museum. My grandpa was a collector, and all the detritus of his life collected in the museum, somewhat organized and somewhat interesting. Old records rubbed up against stacks of magazines and a few old bicycles. Minerals and stones, bullets and ancient bottles, all found space through the building.

Most of the cruelty that my dad faced was just because my grandpa didn't know better. He didn't know how to be close, didn't know how to be intimate; and, frankly, that's another trait that handed down father to son. Whatever second chances he gave himself, though, worked. Now he's a warm, caring man who has lived the best life he knows how.

And now that he's coming to the end, I want him to know that all his effort wasn't for nothing. That it didn't just turn out to be memorabilia and a bank account for the grandkids who were happy to take advantage of him; that the value of his life is something that lives on through me.

I guess I want him to know that he's loved more deeply than familial obligation could explain--that he's loved for the person he became more than the person he could have been content to be.

For now, though, postcard is still sitting on the desk and I don't know how to write all the things I want to say. I couldn't just send him this jumble of thoughts--how could I?

The longer I wait, though, the harder it is to find a way to say hello.

Posted by zombyboy at February 16, 2005 09:35 AM