Remembering Grandma, This Year

Today would have been Grandma's 96th birthday. Instead, she died at quantized age 95 on June 29, 2024. She had her loved ones around her when she exhaled her final breath.

I felt lucky to see Grandma sharp and funny until well into her 90s. On her 90th birthday celebration in an American Legion building in the great north, Grandma spent more time on the dance floor than her own children and grandchildren, never breaking a sweat. On one of my final visits to her home in assisted living, she told my partner with full conviction and clarity, "If he's ever a shit to you, you tell him to, 'Hit the road, Jack!'" In many ways, she reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Brenda Ueland, and vice versa. In the foreword for the Gray Wolf Press release of Ueland's book If You Want to Write, author Andrei Codrescu wrote the following of Ueland:

Simply by living to a very old age with vividness, courage, and no loss of either wits of chutzpah, Brenda Ueland is no mere mortal.

I like to think the same of Grandma.

I was too timid to say anything at Grandpa's funeral(s) in 2014 and 2015, though I did play trumpet with heavy vibrato (involuntary from sadness) at one service. I was too distraught to say anything at my own father's funeral. Well, just like Brenda Ueland taught me how to (really) write, Grandma taught me how to (really) read, and to honor that gift of the written word, I was not going to be a coward again for her funeral service. I wrote and spoke the following words at her funeral service in early July of this year. In this transcription, I performed minor edits to line breaks and to my name (it's Arthur to you, reader). These words are very specific to my life with her, but I hope they remind you of a delightful and/or boisterous family member or mentor who made a big impression on you. Or, as Brenda Ueland would say, I hope you find them microscopically truthful.

My grandma taught me how to adventure.

Around age 4 she pulled me away
    from some idle play
    with action figures to say,
    "Arthur. You are going to learn to read!"

She sat me down with a book
    and pulled word after word
    out of my developing brain and stumbling        voice.

Able to read, I ventured from town to town,
    country to country, planet to planet!
    all from the comfort of an armchair.

Able to read, I pursued the poems
    she shared with me
    to help map out the wilds of my inner self.

"Never let anyone mess with your swing!"
    read a baseball-themed poem from the            book
    101 Poems that Could Save Your Life.

I do wonder how much she worried about me when she gave me that book!

Poems she wrote and collected
    rang clearly like a bell
    at every syllable.

With every book I pulled from her shelf
    I felt a little braver being myself.

And that's what I think my grandma really was:
    a teacher of courage.

Anyone who knew her fiery spirit
    felt warmer and more like themselves           around her.

Around age 12 she pulled me away
    from some idle play
    with video games to say,
    "Arthur. You are going on a hike with me!"

And suddenly, the forests I explored
    were no longer green pixels,
    but living, shaking, breathing things
    to touch and smell.

Her tenacity pulled her way ahead of me
    but I soon learned to walk briskly and daily
    like she did
    for as long as she possibly could.

And so my definition of a "long walk"
    increased from down the street
    to a mile
    to five miles
    to fifteen miles!

Walking with Grandma convinced me that
    no journey was ever too long,
    it was just another step forward.

And so I will carry my grandma with me
    in every word I speak and every step I walk.
I invite you all to carry her with you as well.

Remembering Grandpa, A Decade Later

In the very early morning of October 1, 2014, 10 years ago today, Grandpa died. He had his loved ones around him when he exhaled his final breath.

It wasn't unexpected. He had been in hospice care since early September of that year. A handful of years before that, he had been diagnosed with and suffered from "run of the mill" dementia as well as dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). DLB is not very desirable. Symptoms include fluctuating cognition and alertness, loss of sleep paralysis during REM sleep (physically acting out your dreams), Parkinsonism, and visual hallucinations. The cause of the disease is precisely unknown, but it seems to involve abnormal collections of proteins in the brain that make up Lewy bodies or Lewy neurites, which cause neurons to function less optimally and die, which causes profound dopamine dysfunction. If you have a friend or loved one who is getting older and experiencing dementia-like symptoms, consider helping them get evaluated for possible DLB.

While Grandpa was alive in his twilight, the most outwardly obvious DLB symptoms were Parkinsonism and visual hallucinations. He shook quite a bit, couldn't hold on to hardly anything. And yet, he managed to be a klepto to items that were important to other members of the family, like glasses. When he hallucinated, he tried to describe the beings that only he saw and heard, but he hardly found the words to do it. At one point in this experience, he managed enough sensible words to my cousin to suggest he knew he was seeing things and would rather not be alive. And yet I also remember a pleasant visit with him shortly before he moved into hospice care. We stood before a wide living room window overlooking the green, plush front yard. I didn't say anything and neither did he, equals on the debate stage. We looked at clouds sailing on a pastel blue sky and branches lightly swinging in the wind. It must have lasted no more than 10 minutes, but it felt like one of the moments of "existential time", lasting forever in meaning if not on a chronometer.

When he had his wits about him, when I was still a lad, Grandpa taught me the power of puzzles. Some puzzles were minor investigations into the origins of certain sounds or smells, or perhaps the etymology of some words. Some puzzles were newspaper cutouts from the "games" section. Some were math problems, and I liked that he took me seriously with problems tougher than those assigned in school. When I was young, I had no idea what my grandpa's title "civil engineer" meant, but as I learned from my own engineering practice it's a heck of a lot of math. By far my favorite kind of puzzles to work on with him were puzzle scavenger hunts we created for the family (Mom's side). He created the original puzzle scavenger hunts when I was too young to help, and he recruited my help when I was about 10. We hiked the great northern pine woods near his cabin, charting out viable paths for the family to follow along with interesting wonders and discoverable trinkets along the way. Some example wonders were "ADDE Rock", "Grand Woodchuck Canyon", and "Old Witch #4". We wrote rhyming riddles that led from wonder to wonder, clues often hidden in plain sight. The hunts usually led straight back to the cabin, where gifts for everyone (birthday near or far) lay waiting in a treasure chest that could only be "unlocked" by trinkets and artifacts discovered on the hike. Picture something like the key item system in Ocarina of Time, except the key items were cut out of construction paper, as was the map of the woods. If I have my wits about me in a couple years, I want to create puzzle scavenger hunts like these for the kids of the next generation.

I'm reminded of the daily haiku challenge I created for myself right after he died. I wanted to challenge my brain with word arts to honor his brain (before he had no words). I wrote a haiku for most of the days of the year of the challenge (301/365 = 82.5%, B-). One of the original entries in this challenge was based on the French poem The Cemetery by the Sea (English title obviously), by way of its mention in the 2013 Miyazaki film The Wind Rises. (Incidentally, the main character of The Wind Rises is a brilliant engineer like Grandpa.) The line of the poem that still snares my attention is quoted below.

The wind is rising... We must try to live!

We must. What else is there to do?

When I pass by fields in my mornings walks or runs, I see dewy spider webs on plants in the morning sun and think of Grandpa. He taught me how to pay attention to little details like the dew while we slowly walked in the woods together. In one directly quoted haiku from the daily haiku challenge, I hope you find the courage to seek beauty in every place you look.

"Is all common, base?"/
"Have you seen the morning dew?/
There's no rarer gem"