Sometimes, Mother Nature can be contradictory in her performance to one's mood. Rain on your wedding day. Fresh three-foot drifts of snow when you have plans to bar hop for your birthday. Scorching sun when your soul needs the comfort of cool, cloudy skies.
But right in the middle of September, Mother Nature met us exactly where our emotions registered on the spectrum of grief. She sent us a hurricane's worth of rain the day my grandfather passed away. Almost everyone called him Jack, but he was Papa Jack to his grands and great-grands.
Papa Jack was born 2 months after the stock market crash of 1929 and raised on a farm in Murrayville with 3 brothers and a sister. They never realized how poor they were during their childhood because they always had food on the table, grown or raised by their own hands. As an adult, Papa was with the Air Force and served abroad. When he quit flying planes, he took on one of the world's most mentally-challenging jobs at the world's busiest airport: he was an air traffic controller at Hartsfield International. He was a man who was so bored with retirement, he decided to work 9-1-1 dispatch for the police department.
The old adage about someone's mind being as sharp as a tack? Didn't even begin to describe Papa.
He was an avid collector of stamps and coins. Because of him, I had a fun variety of vintage stamps to put on my wedding invitations. If there was a special occasion to celebrate, he gifted you a coin minted the year of celebration. He could fish, bush hog the pasture outside his home, and scramble eggs in bacon grease in his cast iron skillet. His favorite subscriptions were to National Geographic and Reader's Digest. From his recliner, I'd explore the world and build my vocabulary from his magazines.
And oh, how he loved listening to Johnny Mathis on his old record player. It's what I have playing while I write this. Of course, it's through today's digital availability on platforms not even dreamed of during the days of vinyl. (If you have 5 minutes, do yourself a favor and listen to Mathis's version of "Over the Rainbow"--I cannot listen to it without crying.)
Growing up, Papa Jack was one who carved out all kinds of memories for my brother and me without having to go above and beyond. Whenever we visited my grandparents' house, we would watch the Braves game with him in the den. His basement freezer was stockpiled with Mr. T's personal pepperoni pizzas that were the perfect size for the '70s era dinner plates they kept in their cupboards. Papa would cut the pizzas into perfect quarters for our consumption. Dessert was always Breyers mint chocolate chip ice cream in bowls shaped and fired by hand from a local potter. If we happened to be in the same room as him when he watched the news, he would remain focused and silent until something political came on the screen. Then he would mutter something about those "damn Democrats" under his breath and wait for the weather forecast.
Then there were the camping trips he took us on in his homely pop-up camper to the north Georgia mountains. He would set up our site along a shallow brook, the perfect spot for scaling and gutting our day's catch of rainbow trout from his favorite fishing spots along a rushing mountain river. Sometimes, the mornings were too cold for my brother and me to be as gung-ho for angling, so we would wait in the warmth of his truck while he would drop his line alongside our mother for a catch before breakfast. The sun would later warm the river rocks to our comfort, and then we'd drop in our own lines. Bait was either canned corn or salmon eggs, my favorite being the latter for their bright colors and strange rubbery texture. Those days usually ended with us around a campfire with hot dogs on a stick and a competition to see who could suck on an Atomic Fireball the longest before having to spit it back out into the wrapper.
Papa didn't have to do more than say he was proud of us when it came to high school graduation, picking up college degrees, choosing our careers, or raising his well-rounded great-grandchildren. The only time I ever felt like he was ashamed of me was when he found out that I had my belly button pierced during my freshman year of college. He got over it pretty quickly, finally realizing that a piercing on the body somewhere other than an ear did not equate to poor character. Although, he never let on if he knew that I lean left in my politics. We always spoke in peace and with love.
So you can see how the downpour sent to us when he took in his last breath helped us begin the stages of our profound grief.
His passing, though, did not come as a sudden surprise. At the end of August, Papa was taken to the ER by ambulance when he struggled to breathe. During his week-long stay where covid kept him from having family present, we got calls from the doctors monitoring him: he had pneumonia, his lymphoma had progressed to leukemia, and his aortic valve was functioning at 20%. Surgery and chemo were given as options. But there was his age...
Pape chose to go home under the care of hospice. There would be no surgery.
The family banded together to take turns in caring for him when the hospice nurse could not be there. My brother (who happens to live next door) looked after him almost daily, physically lifting him in and out of bed and getting him to eat. My mom and uncle tag-teamed when they could for assisting Papa with overnight care since he was prone to falls. My grandmother simply did not have the energy to care for her husband because of her age-related health issues.
On Labor Day, my child got what would be her final visit with him. Seeing us wearing our masks, Papa demanded, "Take those off!" Who were we to deny a dying man's wish to see his great-granddaughter's face? Since the only way anyone could communicate with him was to talk directly into his left ear, verbal communication was sparse. His pride kept him from wearing his much-needed hearing aids. Realizing they were limited to sympathetic smiles and gentle pats on each other's hands, my daughter would tell me later, "I want the old Papa back."
Two weeks after his hospital stay, the hospice nurse gave us a prognosis of 3 months. We hoped we might have him for Christmas, or at least Thanksgiving. Then Papa woke the next morning having had a mini stroke in his sleep. We would not be getting another holiday with him.
No more coins as gifts for major milestones. No more stories about flying planes, hearing him complain about politics, or having to yell across the holiday dinner table to see if he wanted second helpings of ham.
We all started working on a round-the-clock schedule of care. I planned on doing overnights on the weekends when I wasn't working. The only night I was able to stay, Papa was up 3 times during the night. I only woke because I heard my mom and grandmother trying to help him back to his bed from him taking yet another tumble. I immediately tried to help my mom get him back onto his mattress. But between the heat of an unconditioned house and seeing the blood smearing his sheets from his busted elbow, my vision tunneled and I nearly blacked out. I didn't know how I was going to be effective in helping my family with situations as tough as this one in caring for Papa.
So I just did what I could. I brought him food. I helped with laundry. My brother showed me how to give Papa his breathing treatments and clean the equipment. I graded papers on the couch near Papa's recliner, ready to jump up every time he asked for his oxygen tubes to be put in or removed.
A couple of days after my stay, my mom and uncle were forced into much heavier decisions. Nursing home? Papa refused. Again, being in our current world of covid restrictions, Papa going to a nursing home meant we wouldn't see him again until his funeral. He said he wanted to die in his own bed.
The prognosis changed from 3 months to mere days, and then it was down to hours. And just when Hurricane Sally began her onslaught of Georgia that Wednesday afternoon:
"He's gone."
I wept on the floor of my classroom holding my crying child in my lap.
The drive to his house was only interrupted by the call from my brother stating that the funeral home was at the house to take Papa away. "I can't drive any faster!" I sobbed. He held the funeral directors until I could get there, me cussing at every driver to get out of my way. But no one's grief would be matched by my grandmother's, her tears heavier than the downpour as they took him to the funeral car in the driveway.
Grief dug in her heels in the next morning as the rains of the hurricane flooded my grandparents' basement. We called in the 70-year old neighbor and a distant cousin I had never met to help the effort of shop vacuuming water away from antique furniture and electric appliances. Nothing like physical labor to distract you from the grief until you have to stop to cry over the things you move to keep dry because they remind you of him.
The hurricane finally relented and took the first pangs of grief. Clouds remained, and the cooler temperatures came. Arrangements were made for a simple graveside service. My grandmother was taken to the funeral home where she was able to see her husband of nearly 67 years one last time. And at the funeral, she would not leave until every bit of red clay and gravel was shoveled and patted neatly over his casket.
The days of rain and overcast skies that we have had since Papa passed have been a strange kind of therapy that remind me that it's OK to feel the the weight of our loss, the grief. There is an unsettling sense of relief in knowing we no longer have to care for him. It's hard to admit that. But Papa never wanted to be a burden or to lose the quality of his life. He left this world as one of the best humans I've ever known, and I got to be his granddaughter. From collections in cigar boxes to trout fishing to untimely flooded basements, I have nearly 40 years of memories he left for me.
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