Poppop

I found out two weeks ago that my Poppop is dying. It wasn't much of a surprise. Since January he's been unwell. He's been in a lot of pain. We thought maybe it was his shoulder from a fall that he had, because he wasn't able to describe very well where it was, except by rubbing his shoulder. So there were a lot of doctor's appointments, which didn't do much. In the midst of this, I remembered the grandmother of a friend of mine who had been in the hospital for her hip for quite a while, but was complaining of stomach pain. They discovered only a week before she died quite a lot of cancer in her abdominal cavity. I kept thinking of this with my grandfather--he seemed to be uncomfortable in a way that didn't just point to his shoulder.

He's had a bit of (increasing) dementia. It's been hard to tell how much he has, since he's pretty quiet normally. I noticed it first last year when we arrived at the beach. On the first day he wandered the house confusedly. I've never seen him so disoriented and unsure of what was happening. Traveling and being out of their normal routine is incredibly unsettling to people with dementia.

To go back even further, I should explain that the beach is an important family tradition--my grandfather has been taking his children and grandchildren to the beach since 1988. We always go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Poppop organizes everything, shopping for good deals on food throughout the year and freezing it to take down in a trailer. This year he was the first year that he couldn't come. And it was on the first day that we arrived at the beach that we received the news from the doctor that there was a rapidly growing tumor on his lung, and that, given his age (87--he turns 88 this month), there would only be treatments for the pain. It felt really wrong to be enjoying a family vacation at the beach without Poppop, particularly given that the beach was his thing and that we now knew that he was dying.

The diagnosis is such a good thing--it enabled the doctor to prescribe things for the pain that have made him really comfortable in a way that he hasn't been for months.

But boy, death is hard. You can know that God holds all of time; you can know that we will rise again with Christ in the last day; you can know that from God's perspective, it is good, it is all good, and that's why He let's it happen. But it's still hard. Someone so dear to you is going through such a hard struggle--death, like birth, is a process that is and ought to be outside of our control. And it's a trial. And I pray for him as he goes through it.

My Poppop has lived a good life, and he said last week that he doesn't have regrets. He's facing death with as much joy and humor and good nature as he always shows. I know people who become cranky from dementia, and my Poppop is not one of those. He barely complains, and always struggles to rise to greet me, happy, as always, that his granddaughter has returned. Because the main thing that he cares for, by a long stretch, is his family.

Which is why he enjoys the beach so much--he isn't particularly attached to the sand or sun or water: he likes having his family all together. He likes seeing them enjoy one another. And he is unrelentingly proud of them, even when he doesn't quite understand what they're up to, like Stearns and me. (She once said to me, "What would Poppop and Grandma do if we worked at Walmart?" And I replied, "Be just as proud of us and understand more clearly what we do.") He thanks God constantly for how his family turned out--big and close and Christian.

At the beach, we always gather for a prayer time on Sunday morning. Even thought we don't know many of the same worship songs as our Methodist grandparents, Poppop and Grandma are always touched by the worship and sharing. And we always sing together one song that my grandparents know--"Majesty":

"Majesty, worship His Majesty.
Unto Jesus, be all glory,
Power and praise"

It is at church that I cry about Poppop. At church, death and the afterlife always come up. It's where the timeless breaks into time and in light of my Poppop's illness, when the timeless breaks into time I break down. It reminds me that very soon, we're going to be separated for a while--that what's in time now won't be in time anymore. And that separation is quite painful. He's old and he's ill and it's quite apparent that it's his time, but none of that makes it easy. He's still someone I love very much, and I prefer to be able to stop by his house and have a chat on my way into town. I prefer family gatherings with him present, as he was at the Father's Day celebration at his house earlier this week.


One tangential point: my mother is caring for my grandfather. I watched my mother's mother care for my ailing great-grandmothers some fifteen years ago, and now I'm seeing my mother follow in her mother's footsteps. My mother is incredibly selfless and committed, and I hope I can be as selfless and committed to others someday.