He sleeps a lot now, and every so often he wriggles and mumbles something nonsensical and a moment later is speaking with complete clarity, sharing specific dates and experiences from his farm when he was a boy.
I tell him thank you, for entrusting me with the stories.
I’m acutely aware that my parent’s choices to live close to their parents as my brother and I grew up afforded us the opportunity to know our grandparents deeply. Like how my paternal grandfather dunked his donuts into his glass of water to wash off just enough of the rolled sugar, as to satisfy his understanding of a diabetic diet. The way my paternal grandmother’s hands moved with grace unlike any other I’ve seen, or how my maternal grandmother giggled at a particular measure of a song played on the player piano. But today, I sit with my last remaining grandparent, and in between wakefulness and sleep, I try to gather up the last tiny tidbits of his incredible stories.
He’s always had the best ones, and with such precise detail that my husband would say, “You know, he could be making all this up and none of us would know otherwise,” and if I didn’t know him so well, the fact that he’s such a pragmatic rule follower, I may have considered it. But instead, I’m certain his memory is incredible. It wasn’t until he was 95 that I found out someone not of kin named their baby after him, or 96 when I learned wild tortoises roamed his farm in the South. And when I’d respond in shock, “Grandpa! How come you’ve never told me this?!” he’d chuckle and respond, “Well you never asked.” What else haven’t I thought to ask?
Growing up, we had an old green-glassed citrus juicer. I’d push and twist and squeeze an upturned lemon half over the ridged cone in the center, and when I measured the juice and saw I was a bit short, I’d go back to the same lemon and squeeze the last bit of juice, crossing my fingers there was enough left to collect just the right amount.
What a weird time to think about a juicer, at my grandfather’s deathbed.
It’s almost a frantic feeling, this need I have to squeeze out his last stories. I used to drink his stories from a firehose. Hours of one story seamlessly transitioning into another, until my eyes glazed over. Now they come as only a trickle, and I collect incomplete sentences, whispers of a story, and feel a heavy responsibility to protect each one.
And yet, I have to pause, because nothing about this moment is frantic. It’s peaceful, quiet, still, with the sunbeams pouring through the window and his blue eyes softly closing. Because, really, I’ve had a lifetime of collecting from him: His one-liners, his humorously blunt responses, his respectability, and integrity, and twinkle of trickery.
So I sit, breathe in the sacredness of the moment. Grateful that knowing my grandfather is not a hurried thing to squeeze in here and now, but a gift that’s been savored over a lifetime and throughout the mundane: the weeknight dinners, the midday chats, the tabletop games, and the drives to piano lessons. He’s shared, I’ve collected, and the memories gathered slowly, over time will be treasured for the rest of my forever.
