After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone
This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go
-Emily Dickinson-
My Hour of Lead
It has been two weeks since my grandfather’s passing, and every day I wonder when my “Hour of Lead” will pass.
I go to school. I talk to my friends. I laugh. I smile.
After the first week, when I realized the world wasn’t going to stop to mourn for my loss, I continued to live. But inside, I still carry an empty hole where I know my grandfather will always be.
Most people think of their grandpa as that old smelly guy who sits in a recliner and sends them a check every birthday or Christmas. He eats dinner at 4:00 p.m., goes to bed at seven, and gets up at three to spy on the neighbors who just moved in. OK, so my grandpa did all those things, but to me, he was so much more.
I was born to a woman who I can only describe as maternally inept. She ran away when she was 17 to join a carnival. She came back two years later and eight months pregnant. My grandparents took her in, and my mother insisted, “I’m giving this baby up for adoption. I just need a place to stay until I have it.” My grandparents were devastated by her decision, but did not want her to leave again, so they said nothing.
A month later, I was born. My grandpa told me that he took one look at me and knew that he could never let me go. He cornered my mother later that day and simply said, “We are taking her home.”
For a couple of months, my mother and I lived with my grandparents as one happy family. But before I was even three months old, my mother decided partying was more important than being a mother, so she took off with her derelict friends and did not return for two years.
In those first two tears of my life, I relied on my grandparents for love, comfort and safety. Especially my grandfather. He was my rock. He was my whole world. Even after my mother moved back to town, I remained in the custody of my grandparents. It was my grandfather who taught me to fish, swim, and throw a ball.
My grandfather was an Army sergeant in World War II, and was not the type of man who would coddle me as I went about the business of learning life’s lessons. Whenever I came crying to him, he would tell me to “suck it up.” He was incredibly loving, but it was important to him that I grow to be a strong independent person.
The first time he took me fishing, he must have warned me a billion times to not get too close to the water. I, of course, fell right in. There I was, screaming, flailing and certain that I would drown, when I heard his voice, “For Pete’s sake, Elise, stand up!” I did so, to find that the water was only two feet deep. He made sure that I relived that embarrassing moment by retelling the story every time we were near a body of water.
One summer day when I was four, my grandfather decided it was time to teach me to ride a bike. We lived on a street which was at the top of a small hill, so he figured, “Hey surely gravity will be on her side!” He put me on the bike, yelled “Hold on!” and gave the bike a huge push. I screamed my head off, as I went flying down this hill with him whooping in the background. I was almost at the bottom, completely scared, but exhilarated thinking I was really going to make it, when the inevitable happened. I lost control, went flying off my bike and tumbled down the rest of the way. I cried my head off, as my grandpa came running down the hill. As soon as he knew I was alright, he started howling with laughter. He kept telling me he never saw anyone flip like that in the air before. “You should have seen the look on your face!” He snorted out in between a fit of giggles. His laughter was contagious, and before I knew it I was laughing right along with him. That day’s lesson was finished, but he took me out every day until I could do it.
My world turned upside down when my mother and stepfather were found fit to have custody of me again. This meant that I had to move eight hours away from my grandparents, with the promise that I could come back to stay with them for three months during the summer. Adjusting to the situation was hard, but became even harder when my mother and new dad reverted back to their old ways of substance abuse and neglect.
The court did not want to take my sister and me out of our school so that we could live with my grandparents. Instead, we were placed in foster homes, friends’ homes, and basically with anyone else who would take us. In the midst of this turmoil, stability came in the form of phone calls and letters from my grandpa who promised me things would get better. This wouldn’t last forever. I was going to be OK. I would cry and tell him I wanted to come home. I wanted to come to him. Knowing this could not be, he would say that life doesn’t always let us have what we want.
In my teen-aged years, I was back at my parents’ house, while they were at the peak of their recklessness. Frustrated with the system and tired of dealing with my fucked up life, I ran away with my drug dealer ex-boyfriend, because it was a way out. I was gone for two weeks when I broke down and called my grandpa. I was so scared that he was going to freak out, yell, scream. Something. But he didn’t. He said so calmly, “I know it’s bad, but you have to go back. When you graduate, you can come here, but until then you need to suck it up. You are better than this, go home.” My grandma later told me that he cried for an hour after I got off the phone. Three months later, while still in high school and just shy of 18, I got my own place and never went back to my parents’ house again.
When I got married, it was my grandpa who walked me down the aisle. When I had my babies, it was my grandpa who got the first call. He bragged that I made him a grandpa, and then I made him a great grandpa.
Three weeks ago, my grandma called me to tell me that my grandpa was in the hospital. He was suffering from end-stage emphysema and the doctors were not sure if he would make it this time. He was unable to get out of bed and the family had to contemplate putting him in a nursing home, so that he could stay near my grandmother. I drove two and a half hours to the hospital to see him.
When I walked into his room, I was devastated to see my once strong grandfather, weak and bruised from the IV's and dialysis ports. We talked alone for an hour when he finally looked at me and said, “I am not ever going home.” My heart sank into my stomach as his words washed over me. I knew at that moment that he had given up. I joked and told him he could come with me and sleep with the two-year-old, if he didn’t mind his bed being jumped on. He smiled at that and then he said he needed to sleep, so we said our good-byes and I went back home.
He died three days later.
I wish I knew then that it would be the last time I would see him. I would have hugged him one more time. I would have held his hand longer. I would have said I love you a million times, because you can never hear it or say it enough. Everyone says that he knew I loved him. They always say that, but I wanted it etched so deeply in his mind that if everything else in this world were taken from him, that my words would always stay.
So now that the world hasn’t stopped, I wake up every day and take care of the kids. I go to school, and then I come home. I put one foot in front of the other and tell myself to smile, because that is what you are supposed to do. But at night, when all is quiet, I see his face and think how unfair it is that he was taken from me. Haven’t I suffered enough? What did I do to deserve this?
And then I hear his voice, laughing, “Come on kid, suck it up!”
Maybe someday.
