Don’t make me drive up there…

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According to Google Maps i’m about 400 miles from “home”.  You know that place you grew up and your family still remains.

I, or well, we lost my grandfather this morning.   I debated all week about driving up but, well..   life.  I’ve been on the road the last 3 weeks and have a mountain the size of McKinley of laundry, the vacuum needs run and then there’s that appointment with my endo Tuesday, and the list goes on and on.  No, i’m not confessing a guilty conscious here.  I’m just talking.

Until the past decade, when his health started to decline more and more, my Pap and i would solve the world’s problems over the phone.  I remember taking walks with him at home when they would come visit when i was young.  We’d walk the golf course if no one was playing and look for lost golf balls.  He’d take them and use them when he went out with his friends.  Every New Year’s Day we spent with my Pap and Nana (who passed in 1993) watching football.  (My dad taught my Nana the game a long time ago)

As i got older and went off to college it was hard to spend time with them.  I do recall sometime in my sophomore year spending the weekend with them.  I just caught a Trailways bus from Clarion to Monroeville, brought my books and came for a visit.  I remember sleeping on the couch and having early coffee with him.  We didn’t do much, i did homework and he watched golf or something on TV.  He would play the piano a bit and I would sing what i knew of the old standards.  It was a nice weekend away from the grind.

I can remember talking to them on the phone at least once every week.  Just checking in on them.  He and his band actually played for our wedding.  He never read music, but his buddies did and learned “Your Song” by Elton John for our first Dance.  He learned it by listening to a recording and his friends playing it.

Every year on my birthday he’d call and play Happy Birthday on the piano to me.  Up until the past 5 or 6 years when his mind started failing.

After i graduated from nursing school in 1992, I would check in with him and my Nana and make sure they had meds and were taking them.

Until January of 1993.  I planned to go visit on my day off, and i was “mandated” to come in to work that day.  That night, my Nana had a cardiac event and passed away.  It took me a long time to get over that as I blamed myself for not being there that day and had a lot of pent up anger for the way we were forced to work or face the disciplinary process..  But that’s an entirely different blog.

I made sure i got up there to check on him and call him afterwards to make sure he was getting his meds, seeing his doctor and eating.  Eating for him was never a problem.  I always said, “When Pap stops eating, we know there’s a serious problem”.  He always called me after every visit or test to read me his results.  We’d talk about them.

We’d talk about world hunger, healthcare, golf, current events, even politics.  I don’t think he was anywhere near as progressively liberal as I am, but through conversation I know that he agreed with many of the hot topics of the day.  He watched Fox news, but many times he’d even say that what they had to say was just garbage.

He lived through the depression, was in the Army during WWII and was discharged before Normandy because my mother was born early and my Nana almost died.

I loved hearing the wonderful stories about his childhood and piano lessons.  Stories about my great grandmother (his mom) and her excursion to Mexico and how much she loved the Mexican culture..  and the tequila.

When our son was born, he came to the hospital..  he was excited to have a great grandson.  I can almost hear him asking me how Ulrich is doing in Florida……

Any time there was a problem, with his health or anything else i always would tease him and say, “Don’t make me drive up there……”  i’m getting older and it is rough on us now.  He’d laugh.

Then there were the phone calls (hands free of course) where i’d talk to him on my way home from work.  Let him know what Ulrich was up to, what we were doing and when we’d see him again..

So last week was hard.  When my Uncle called and said he wasn’t doing well and they had started morphine, i knew that the end was near.  400 plus miles is a lot, and not having vacation time makes it harder.

Life isn’t perfect.  We never know when or where we’ll lose a family member.  And every family has a little “Jerry Springer” in it..  but that doesn’t mean you don’t go through the stages of grief.  So today, I’ve sat here doing laundry, looking at old photos and playing the videos i have of him playing the piano.  The last couple of years haven’t been the greatest for anyone.  There were issues to deal with..  but that doesn’t take away the memories of the past.

so, no, i didn’t drive up there..  but the times that i did, i’ll always remember.

And this November 5th, when he would have turned 100, I’ll be on the Carnival Breeze with Ulrich celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary

– and we are going to go to the piano bar and ask that they play ‘Your Song’ – for us, for our first dance and in memory of Pap.

Play that piano with the angels, Pap…

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