My 84-year-old grandfather--the wisest and best person I know--is slipping from my world. Although there is no doctor saying, "He has ________months," I can feel his frailty as surely as I can feel my own vitality and I can hear his time in his words. Both figuratively and literally my fingers are entwined with his in an effort to prolong the grasp I have on his life.
Three nights ago I had an incredibly vivid dream. The kind of dream that leaves the dreamer either devastated or relieved that it was, in fact, only a dream. Instead of the silver-white hair of today, Grandpa had the steel-grey hair of my youth. Instead of a parched, pale face dominated by crevices and age spots, his face was the ruddy tan of a working farmer. Instead of a weak, stooped gait, he was running down the hill with me on the cart between two feed buckets.
That man, that version of the man I love so much, is gone. I don't know when he left; none of us saw it happen. There was no warning and the change wasn't documented. Perhaps in his medical chart, there is a discernible change from one visit to the next. Certainly pictures show the change. Somehow, though, we didn't see it coming. He went from old but strong to simply old.
I am the oldest grandchild. Although I am entirely willing and able to share the burden with my parents and aunts and uncles, I have been spared much of the responsibility. In this family, I am still a child. And as a child, helpless and unlearned, I am watching my grandfather leave.
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