Tonight Ellie found (and ran off with) a very small picture of Poppy, my grandfather, which he gave me the day I was born. Behind the picture is a $1 bill from 1974, and a second picture. The second photo is my father's senior picture from June 1967, which he gave to my mother who is three years younger.
We used to call Poppy "Pappa Turtle" when I was little. I'm not sure why that was his nickname. Now he's "Poppy" because the great-grandkids call their grandfathers "Pappaw".
Poppy has always called me "Fooley" because he swore I'd be born on April Fool's Day - Mom won that battle and managed to hold out until the next day. Mom had promised him that he'd be a grandfather before he was 40 or she was going to stop trying (she and Dad had been married five years when I was born). She pushed it down to the wire! Poppy's birthday is 26 days after mine.
Poppy wrote on the back of his picture:
"To Fooley, my first grand-child. April 2 1974 the good lord smiled on this family. 39 years 339 days earlier he laughed out loud at your world. Remember me for the good things. Pappa Turtle"
Poppy has been declining for the past two years, maybe more. It's hard to say when it began, or when it will end. I really thought he would pass a year ago. He was so weak he couldn't roll over by himself. He was at a point where his doctor discontinued medication. Grammy rallied him somehow. He recovered enough to need his medication again and is up walking around daily.
Part of me wishes he hadn't recovered. Poppy's body is here, frail and thin, so changed that it doesn't even seem to be HIS body, but MY grandfather has been gone for a long time. Alzheimer's. Dementia. They're scary words, but just some vague future threat - until someone you love is stricken.
When he first started to get confused, and knew he was, I made him promise. It was at least four years ago now. We were sitting at the table together. I took both of his hands in both of mine and we made very direct eye contact. I said, "Pappa, promise me, PROMISE me, that you will never forget me or my kids." He squeezed my hands as tight as he could in his, stiff and knobby with arthritis, and he said with his whole heart in his voice, "Fooley, I promise you. I could never forget you, honey, or my Marty and Ellie. I promise I will never forget you. Don't you even worry about that."
And he has never forgotten me or my kids. No one believes me, but I'm sure it's because of The Promise. I think that moment forged some powerful link in his brain, a bridge that will hold strong so that he can always cross it. He always knows me and my kids when we visit, even though the kids are growing and changing. He and Grammy have 20 great-grandkids, and sometimes a name or a face slips away from him - but not mine. He always knows me and mine.
I worry, but only a little, because last week he forgot my real name. He knew Fooley and kids had come for a visit, but he couldn't remember my real name until someone else said it. It's not really surprising because I'm 38 years old and I have never in my life heard him say, "Laura" - only "Fooley". He hasn't forgotten his Fooley - The Promise is intact.
It's very hard to visit Poppy because he isn't really Poppy anymore. Gone are his big, deep voice, the strength of his large hands that could somehow turn out the finest and most delicate creations, his barrel chest, his sense of adventure, his knowledge, his sharp mind, so much that made him Pappa. He was always larger than life, the center of attention, he seemed so much bigger than he really was - ten feet tall and bulletproof!
Nothing could beat Pappa. Nothing could challenge him. He always won, always conquered, he could do anything, anything at all. And did. He could make anything from wood or metal. Art, tools, furniture, you name it and he could, and did, make it. He lived such a wild and full life that I could start to write the Great American Novel about his experiences and end up with a trilogy.
And now he spends 95% of his time laying in a hospital bed. He thinks he's in the hospital and just does not recognize that he is in his own home, despite being told repeatedly. He forgets again within minutes of being told. He asks for the doctor or a nurse over and over throughout his waking moments. He sleeps most of the time. When awake he rambles, or decides he's going to leave the hospital and insists on help getting up, or maybe thinks he needs to go to work at the factory he retired from almost 20 years ago. He managed to get outside once and they had a very difficult time getting him back home.
There is no nurse, no respite care, no one but my 78 year old Grammy and her 72 year old sister who lives next door. Aunt Rosie still has her work, and other pursuits, but Grammy's life revolves around Poppy. I worry every day that caring for him might run her and Aunt Rosie into the ground. It scares me to death!
Poppy was not always a nice man. If he still had his wits about him he would still be an alcoholic. Now he doesn't even realize that he hasn't had a drink in over a year. He thinks he still drinks. He was a mean drunk.
"Remember me for the good things," he wrote to me on the day I was born. Prophetic now. Weak, helpless as he is, it's harder to remember the bad things, how that sharp wit and the strength of his body could mean trouble.
I remember how he took me up in his plane when I was a toddler. I remember climbing into his lap beside a campfire and both of us falling asleep. I remember him taking me fishing on a boat when I was four, and I caught a fish almost as big as I was. I remember him making horns out of the stem of a plant (I think it was a zucchini plant), smelting lead bullets and teaching me, taking me deer hunting in the snow, taking me to rendezvous and sleeping in the covered wagon (actually, he and I slept under it and the younger cousins slept in it), playing the banjo and guitar. He bought me my first guitar for my 13th birthday. He made my first tomahawk himself and taught me to use it - and I was pretty dang good at throwing that thing. I out-threw grown men when I was in single digits. He taught me to shoot, both modern firearms and black powder muzzle-loaders.
I remember so many "good things." I am so grateful that my children were born soon enough to know him. I wish they had had more time with the real him, though. I wish he could have enriched their lives the way he did mine, giving them the knowledge and wildly varied experiences he did me. That all goes with him, all that skill and knowledge, lost.
I wish he could have been ten feet tall and bulletproof for my kids. I wish they didn't have to see him this way, frail and failing. I don't want them to remember him like this. I want them to remember MY Pappa Turtle! Marty told me he couldn't remember Poppy's "big voice." I had to hide and cry.
Better that there had been an accident, or a sudden illness, than this laborious descent into dementia. If Poppy knew, actually had a moment of clarity and realized his situation, I have no doubt that he would kill himself. Before he lost himself, if he had known, he would have ended his own life rather than end up in this state.
Some might say that I should be grateful he is still here, that at least I can see him, touch him, hear his voice, and love him. I would be grateful if it were still him. His shrunken body is still here, but big, strong Poppy is gone. He is so frail that touching him causes him pain, and he bruises very easily. He speaks, but it is painful to hear him ramble nonsensically in his hoarse whisper - all that is left of his deep, booming voice. I will love him forever, here or across the threshold.
Seeing him hurts my heart so badly. I feel like I should see him as much as I can, cherish these last times and his ramblings. But, on the other side, it's not HIM, he won't even remember that I was there once I'm out of sight, and it hurts so very badly. I want to see him, but then again I don't want to see him because it hurts. It's a situation rife with guilt and sorrow.
"Remember me for the good things."
I will, Poppy. I promise.
