Now that I've successfully lost my dozens of readers by not posting for a year and a half, I can be comfortable writing some personal stuff. I apologize for the pretentious title. I just couldn't think of any other name. When C.S. Lewis wrote that book, he had just lost his 45-year old wife of only a few years, whom he deeply loved, to cancer. I just lost my nearly 99-year old grandpa with severe dementia to a hip replacement surgery. He had been declining for several years, but much more rapidly in the last six months, and it was a constant problem my parents had to deal with over that time. I'm not sure why it hit me so hard. I didn't feel this way when my Grandma died of Alzheimer's a long time ago. I think she lasted six years after her diagnosis. Maybe it was because I was closer to Grandpa than Grandma. Maybe it was because he lived with my parents and I got to see him almost weekly for several years. Maybe it was because his condition was much worse than Grandma's. Alzheimer's was almost a blessing for her. She wasn't grumpy or angry anymore. She suddenly turned into a nice, sweet old lady. Grandpa's decline was almost the exact opposite.
Maybe two years ago he had told me nonchalantly that he was "ready to go" and then joked that there was some money in it for me. I was genuinely horrified and told him he'd live to be 110. I really thought he would too. He was always so active and healthy. He used to ski for free in Colorado because they gave free lift tickets to anyone over 70. He shot his age in golf; I think in his 80s, on a regulation course. He was a simple man, not very self-reflective like me. I remember one time he said, out of the blue, "I don't understand people who say they don't know who they are. How do you not know who you are?" He was genuinely confused by the question, lol. He cared about people, and he was so good at it that I didn't figure out his game for a long time. Human beings are pretty prideful, and Grandpa, the career used-car salesman, had learned that if he wanted to help someone, it's much easier if they didn't know he was doing it. I only started to see that near the end. 98, 99 years old and Grandpa was still cracking jokes to break up an argument and playing the fool about it, like he had no idea what he was doing.
Like anybody, he had his tragic side, but he kept it to himself most of the time. He told me several times he loved to run in high school and was really good at it. He actually did run to school and back every day. His cross country coach wanted him for the team, but Grandpa told him he needed to talk to his dad, because it wasn't Grandpa's decision. His dad said no. Grandpa regretted not being able to do that, even eighty years later. His dad made Grandpa work in his car shop for free. I was never certain of the exact timeline, but this must have continued after Grandpa came home from three years in the Pacific theater in WWII. When Grandpa finally left his dad and started his own shop, his dad essentially disowned him. He even took Grandpa out his will, a part of that story I only heard a few days ago. But I had known a long time he'd had a troubled relationship with his own father. But he never moped about it. One time I asked him directly about whether he hated his dad for making him work in a car shop for free, and Grandpa straightened his shoulders and exclaimed, indignantly, "He taught me a skill!" If you want to know what the problem is with the generations that came after the Silent Generation, it's wealthy parents. When you raise kids for emotional reasons instead of economic reasons, those kids are going to be fucked up, guaranteed.
Grandpa sometimes lamented that he never got to go to college. He blamed the Army for that. He said when he got back from the war it was time to make his own way. He didn't have time for college. He got married and started his own successful small business and retired in relative comfort. I never understood the working, business side of Grandpa. I don't think I ever saw it. I saw the chores around the house kind of work. I heard him say he hoped there was work in heaven, whereupon I decided he was totally insane. He used to take power naps, basically actually sleeping for 45 minutes. Not a minute more, he used to say, or you'll be useless the rest of the day.
Grandpa hated the Army. I'm sorry but it's true. We are all remembering his military service now, but the simple fact is I really don't think Grandpa would've wanted to be remembered as a soldier. I don't think he believed he was a good one, and I don't think he wanted to be. He had no choice. He did his time. He got out alive. He achieved his goal. The one story I heard the most about his time in the war was about how he was the only one who knew what he was doing in the motor pool but they refused to promote him, so he transferred to be a corpsman. I know exactly what it's like to be too good at your job to get promoted. He liked being a corpsman because he had his own jeep. He didn't talk much about the time he watched a friend of his die on a beach somewhere. I don't even remember if I heard that from him or someone else. Like most of those guys, Grandpa didn't like to talk about the war part of war.
I'm not sure why I never even considered the military. I loved military history growing up. I have this whole soapbox about the old kind of military history, written by generals trying to figure out how to win wars, and the new kind written by historians trying to sell books. The former has casualty figures, logistics information, maps, troop movements and all sorts of stuff. The latter tells stories about the tragic tales of real front-line soldiers' personal experiences. Vietnam changed more than just the map of Southeast Asia.
I remember one of my favorite things to do when I was younger was to have my mom drop me off at the downtown public library for a whole Saturday. I could bike to the one near my house anytime, but they didn't have the huge nonfiction section the downtown one did. I could spend hours up there without seeing a single person. I'd end up with ten books checked out, reading one when my mom came to pick me up. I would finish maybe five before the late fees got too much to ignore. But that library had shelves full of the old kind of books. Books by people who cared about getting it right. People who cared about the truth. People who had no agenda, or at least were naive enough to believe they didn't. Whatever happened to that kind of person?
These last few years watching Grandpa decline, I've wondered if there will be any difference in the world when the last World War II veteran dies. Whatever difference that is, I'm sure it's already happened prematurely. Grandpa's was the last American generation that knew what actual poverty is like. Today we invent fairy tales of suffering in a land flowing with milk and honey. Grandpa never had to do that, and he never understood it. Neo was right when he told Agent Smith he was always right.
"Human beings as a species define their reality through misery and suffering."
Pain is a gift. It tells you what's real and true. If you don't have it, you don't know where the boundaries are. I wonder if there will soon be another American generation who won't understand why anyone would invent grievances or not know who they were. Rest in peace, Grandpa. You earned it. We didn't.
Now that's whack.
