GRANDMA'S HUSBAND

Grandma.

She died from Parkinson's in 1992. Really she died from pneumonia but she caught it while battling Parkinson's. They said that was our biggest worry because there would be no fighting it and it would end her. That’s just what they said. They were right. It ended her.

During her life I never told grandma that I love her. I was never mad at her, but I never thought of saying it to her. She died on a Saturday morning in her nursing home room, and it was our shift to watch over her the previous night. Dad,Uncle Ron and I slept over, but we didn’t sleep. She was in bad shape. I thought dad had to go do this alone and that scared me. How would you like to be assigned death-watch duty for your own mother? All the other aunts and uncles had to take a shift each night, but tonight was dad’s night and you didn't go with him. I was 18 and the second in line to Man-of-the-House so I felt it was my duty to do this with dad. So I did.

I spent the entire night standing behind dad too scared to approach Grandma’s bed. I tried, I did. I just couldn’t take that final step to the bed. I could baby step as close to that bed as possible but I always hit a snag just before I could get within arms reach. Tears fell and I would retract.

All the signs were there.

Death had her in tow. The Dr’s said that her feet and ankles were turning purple. Her breathing was a lot more shallow than they were comfortable with and so they advised us to call a priest. That’s when my breathing went shallow. I settled into a really nice distant corner of the room and prayed to God she wouldn’t die while we were there. Well, I settled into a really nice distant corner of the room and prayed to God she wouldn’t die while I was there. I prayed that prayer over and over and over again. 

Slowly other relatives showed up and we prayed together, hand-in-hand, around grandma periodically through the night. I tried to say goodnight, er, goodbye to her but I just couldn’t do it. I’d cry.

Morning came and she was barely hanging on. I was still praying for her to stay alive until I left and when I did, she was alive. By the time I arrived home and pulled my foot up under the blankets to sleep, you called to tell me that grandma died. Prayer answered.

I never told grandma that I loved her. I didn’t say it when she was alive and I didn’t say it while she was on her death bed.

Grandpa.

I’ve been mad at grandpa for most of my life. He didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt me. I just felt snubbed. I felt like he didn’t think much of me. Honestly, Mom, I look like you. We're darker skinned, we have super dark brown hair and so do 3 other people in our family, but none of the cousins on dad’s side are dark anything!? They don’t even have dark hair. So by the time I was old enough to notice grandpa going to all the other cousins sporting events and none of mine or my brother’s or my sister’s, I thought it was because we were darker skinned and he didn’t want to be around us. And if it wasn’t for that reason, then he just simply didn’t care enough to show up. Either way, my beef was with grandpa.

He took care of our Parkinson's riddled grandma for thirteen years. But he was no hero to me. He chauffeured her everywhere he went. I saw nothing noble in that. He showered her, bathed her and wiped her clean every time she went to the bathroom. I thought it was his duty to wipe that booty. He fed her. He clothed her. He kissed her, and he loved her until her very last breath. And I thought that was very nice.  He cried many times after her death when he spontaneously missed grandma. I didn’t feel sorry for him. He was an alcoholic for 60-some years. I didn’t feel bad for him because he passed that gene on to me. Thanks for that, by the way.

He took cousins to dinner, took them up to the cabin, went to hockey games, went to their baseball games, and went to their volleyball tournaments. He visited them at their homes and went to their churches. But, did he show up to my stuff ever? Not one time. OH. Yes. One time he did. I correct myself. He came to one of my hockey games when we scrimmaged my cousin’s team.

Or so I thought.

These last two weeks while grandpa was in the hospital. We were scared. Dad didn’t think he was going to make it. He thought grandpa was going to have to move from the Assisted Living apartment into a nursing home where, as we already know, it’s a place to slowly die.

While this was happening, I was going with dad to the hospital to visit grandpa and try for some sort of connection. I saw him kiss dad for the first time ever. I saw him hug dad for the first time ever. I grew up kissing my dad and I still kiss the man today. Other than my brother, he’s the only man I’ve ever loved. So growing up knowing that dad and his dad had never kissed each other is really heartbreaking.

But I also saw grandpa fight for his own independence like I’ve never seen a man fight for his own independence before. Grandpa knew that if he couldn’t get himself dressed and couldn't get himself to the bathroom like he had done for the first 94 years, he was going directly to the nursing home without passing go or collecting 200. He knew this was the path he’d have to take. But he just wanted to go home.

Grandpa fought with all the courage and strength he had left in his old bones not to fail. I couldn’t stop crying as I watched. His breathing became labored, his hands were shaking, he was so out of breath that he could barely talk and he couldn’t button his own shirt. But he never gave up. He wouldn’t let anyone help him. He kept repeating, “I’m fine. I’m fine. Watch me. I can do this.” The man wouldn’t give up. His manhood was at stake. His life work as an independent man was on the line and being tested. He didn’t falter. The old man barely did everything he needed to do. I was humbled to watch the cycle of life at work and exhausted watching it creep up on my dad's dad. I was so proud of him. I was so scared for him. One small screw up, mishap, trip, fall, soil his trousers, anything and he was going to the nursing home.

Two days after being released from the hospital to his apartment. He fell. Story has it he was trying to get up to get into the bathroom and he tripped and landed face first into the carpet floor. The resident nurse found him laying in his own stool and urine. He went right back in the hospital, to fight once again. And again I was there as he passed another test of manhood.

Hockey talk.

Very shortly after this, dad and I were at the High School Hockey section championships. I asked him if he had any regrets about his relationship with grandpa. I asked him if he was prepared to see his dad pass on. He said he was good to go. He was prepared. He had dealt with my grandpa being a functioning alcoholic and the things he saw long ago. I asked him if there was anything he needed to say to grandpa. He had said everything he ever wanted to and more. I told him I was mad at grandpa for reasons that you guys already knew. He told me that he noticed the disconnect between gramps and I and it hurt. And he told me that grandpa didn’t go to as many other events as I thought, so ease up on him. He had to take care of grandma which was no easy task. He then told me that even grandpa has noticed that none of us grand kids visit him at his apartment home and that he was lonely.

Visiting hours.

I took my wife and step-son to go see grandpa today at his Assisted Living apartment. I said I love you. I was looking directly into his eyes and I said “grandpa, I love you.” He lived thru 34,675 days before hearing those words from me. That would be 95 years but today it happened. I said it and he said it back to me. I’m happy he said that. I wish I would have said it sooner.

As we left, he said -- come on back Dennis, and next time stay longer.

I’ll see you next weekend Grandpa.

HOW DO I END IT?

My eyes were shut with labored breathing.

I didn't want to be alive anymore.

For almost two hours I forced my eyes to stay shut dreading what’s going to happen in the next few minutes when I step out of this backseat, walk into the dorm and open the door to that dorm room. I can already smell the smell of the hallway that leads to our room and I want to puke.

Questions have stock-piled so fast in my head that it feels like my mind is giving itself a severe spaghetti-western-style gang beating: Will he be there waiting for me? Will he even be there? Will I be alone? Will he want to talk? Will he want to fight? He’ll probably want to fight. I don’t want to fight him. Where would I punch him, in the face? In the throat? Can’t you break your wrist that way? Will he have other guys there to help him? Will he want to talk? Will he completely ignore me? How did I get myself into this?

This is the second to last place I wanted to be. I wasn’t going to kill myself, but I didn’t want to live either and in that moment I wished some act of God would finish me.

It was then, for the first time ever, I didn’t care if the driver went to reach for a piece of gum that he dropped to the floor and accidentally veered off the road, down the embankment, head-first into the streetlight, or a tree, or a freakishly oversized deer.

Being in my dorm room is the last place I wanted to be. But as much as I dreaded it, I went back. It was Sunday night and when you attend an out of town college and go home on the weekends, Sunday night is when you gotta go back.

 

A friend close to the sitch let me ride in his backseat and he hadn’t said a word to me the entire hour and a half we were in the car. Probably for good reason - maybe he didn’t like me anymore, maybe the air felt so awkward that he didn’t know what to say, maybe he felt sorry for me, but probably, he didn’t like me anymore and felt obligated to keep giving me a ride. It was there, in the silence of his backseat, with my eyes forced shut, that for the second time ever I didn’t care if the driver fell asleep at the wheel and the car plunged into Lake Pepin. I wouldn’t swim.

The night of that party, if that would have turned out to be my last day of college, yippee, bring it on, that sounds great. Getting a job in telemarketing, or landscaping, or asking for my old job back at Arby’s, seemed like a dream.

 

I didn’t want to be going back.

 

I didn’t want to be home either.

 

The first weekend that I went home after the “best friend’s girlfriend, fiasco,” I spent in my bedroom, reading. In my bedroom is my dresser. On my dresser was an envelope. The writing on that envelope was instantly recognizable and the instant I recognized it I completely broke down. I cried because I didn’t have to read it, I knew who wrote it and I knew what was written. Didn’t matter. I read it over and over again. Before going to bed, before getting out of bed. While in the bathroom. Constantly rereading, as if punishing myself. It would be almost a full year before my girlfriend (yep, I know, jerk) would take my phone call to talk about her letter, and us. He called her and told her everything, and everything included a lot more nights like that one.

What other phone calls had he made? What seemed like overnight, my friends from home stopped calling me.

What was literally overnight was that all the friends we made that freshman year at college were now just friends with him. Most of them wouldn’t even look at me.

Party’s stopped. We didn’t go to any and we didn’t have any. My best friend became a roommate and this roommate became a stranger to me. All of his time was spent anywhere that I wasn’t.

The nights that us guys on the same floor would stay up and play card games of Rummy 500 and hearts until early morning, continued, in secret, without me. Maybe they weren’t in secret, but I was never invited again.

All the group trips to lunch ended.

 

The day after all the finding out was found out, life was over.

 

It felt like the end of the world.

 

In all seriousness, I’m not under any grand illusions about this. I messed with the wrong girl and violated a million different codes of ethics, including my own. I’m now 40 years old and realize that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me.

But please, understand, I didn’t know that. When we’re 18, we’re so simple. We’re so naive.

The reason this one event means so much to me is because it was the first time I had truly gotten myself into trouble and the only time I wanted to be dead. It took 18 years to move past this, but it’s still just beneath the surface.

See, this one event marked the first fight of the biggest battle I’ve been apart of.

 

Addiction.

 

It was a big red flag for what was coming every time my lips touched the bottle.

 

Nothing I was about to bring to my doorstep wouldn’t stop me from drinking for the next 12 years.

TOP FIVE WORST YEARS [PART TWO]

I was drunk, but I was flattered and I was pretty zeroed in on catching as many of her glimpses as I could. I didn't have any ulterior motives - I was just fixated on finding out if they actually were intended for me, or if they were consecutive coincidences.

They had to be coincidences. They had to be. He was right there. In-the-room. Watching her. Eyeing me. Watching her. They had to be coincidences. Please.

I still don't know how she and I ended up whispering words into each others ears in the small corner of the dorm room, but I'll take the blame because…well, just because.

With each whisper, she used her hand to touch my leg, then my arm, then my chest, then my elbow. That’s a lot of touching, right? Each touch was equal to someone sounding a blow horn in the room to grab his attention.

All she wanted to do was kiss and don't confuse that with her wanting an innocent peck-on-the-lip, and then we smile at each other, blushing. I mean all she literally wanted to do was- no talking face on face forget about breathing or any decency- kissing. And this girl was committed to her craft. She was ready to go down with the ship for one silly kiss. She was strong. I couldn't shake her.

So what did I do? I'll tell ya, I let her have her way with me right there in the hallway, where all the action happens, but with all my might, I watched that door knob looking for the slightest movement so I could throw her off of me. I could easily shove her away from me, I just didn’t, until I had to, when that doorknob finally did jiggle and he appeared in the doorframe, breathing like he just ran a marathon in full sprint. We looked at each other for a minute. Neither of us said anything and I quietly walked passed him whispering, “you two should talk,” disappearing back into the party.

The door flies open and he walks back into our room looking for me. His anger-filled sober eyes vs. my blood-shot drunk eyes.

Oh boy, she told him. He knows.

He continued to walk towards me and by the look on his face, I'm now the asshole.

“You're an asshole," I anticipated.

"You’re the only one she’ll talk to,” were the words that came out of his mouth.

"Not me." I said.

"Yes, you, Come on dude. She said she'll only talk to you."

Unbelievable.

Instead of bar hopping, I was drunk-running down the hall to catch up with her and talk her off the ledge of a college party gone pear shaped.

Did I want to sprint to her and play counselor? Hell No. My alcohol triggers were at full sail. Did I? Hell Yes.

I didn't think to say no. She clearly didn't tell him that we kissed in the hall because if she did I’d be in the fetus position with a bloody nose. So he doesn't know, and I don’t want to rock the boat, so, fine, I’ll go. I’ll go talk to her while they all head downtown and I guess we’ll catch up soon.

For him, soon never came. For us, soon came too soon.

I followed my best friend’s girlfriend into her dorm room and closed the door behind me.

I can’t tell you that I was suddenly strong enough to stop anything that happened behind that door, and it’s my opinion that if not for him pounding on the door a few quick minutes after I had closed it, we would have gone further.

-           -              -

We simply registered to be college roommates, and as college roommates, it turned out we had a talent for dorm room parties. That last dorm room party ended up being the last dorm room party we threw, ever. Again.

Our friendship has never been the same since the minute he had to pound his fist on that door.

We didn’t speak for years and somewhere in that time he got his deserved revenge. I was arrested, three times. I went to jail + I went to treatment + I’ve been divorced + I lost a pregnancy. Somewhere in there is deserved revenge whether he wished it on me or not.

The road to repair has been a long one. An inconsistent one. An emotional one.

In hindsight, it doesn’t matter who kissed who, that’s just child's play but

I learned a lot of lessons freshman year, and this, the worst lesson of all. I didn’t know I had so much to lose. Mike R, Andy P, Scott W, Neil W, Chad A, Eric R, Sue K, most important, Tom. All sorts of people from our home town found out and all of them had an opinion of me. The relationship with all these guys had been destroyed. I don’t know if I’ve regained any credibility with them even today. I guarantee you none of these friendships have ever been the same again and they probably never will.

But I made this bed. And I also sleep in it. Alone.

It was booze. Not just booze, it was also me, but it was because of booze.

It was in that same year I would first hear the words “I don’t like it when you drink. It’s like you turn into someone that I don’t even know, like you’re out of control.” Let me be the first to tell you - that pierces your heart and the moment never leaves you. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d ever hear those very words repeated. But this first time they came from the mouth of my very best friend. Another sting.

My reaction was a single raised eyebrow. Really?

What was I supposed to say? I don’t think I said anything; I just swept it under the rug.

I’m glad he was enough of a friend to tell me.

I wasn’t mad when he said it, but I’m disappointed that I proved him right, over and over again.

Let’s agree that at some point in life, in our own life, a do-over would be fantastic.

For me, 1992. Not the entire year. Just college freshman year.

Looking back, and after an on-again-off-again 22-year love/hate relationship with sobriety, I can admit, finally, there might be a problem.

The buzz, man, I want the buzz, ASAP.

When I’m drunk, I can’t stop, or don’t want to stop, and I’m not sure if it makes a difference where the difference is between the two.

But also, when I’m drunk, everything boils down to one common denominator, every, every, every time: Me.