I scapegoat my loneliness as an inability to find people of similar disposition, but in actuality it is solely the product of a hindrance in communication on my part, an inability to find a satisfactory or effective means of self-expression, which has no relevance to the existence or non-existence of others.
My thoughts drift today to my grandfather's life. A month or so before I was born he suffered a severe stroke, which completely paralyzed half his body and reduced his effective vocabulary to less than a hundred words (many of them curses). It took him nearly a year to relearn how to walk just enough to move from the TV den to the bathroom, a process which took most people just ten seconds but for him could take up to ten minutes. Any retelling of my birth is always associated with the story of how my father took me to his father, who was still in the hospital, hoping that the sight of a new grandchild would bring him joy, only to have my grandfather burst into tears refusing to pick me up for fear of dropping me. Once, as teenagers, my sister asked if it bothered me that my age was always associated with our grandfather's stroke. Prior to that I had never really noticed that every birthday I celebrated with my father's family was always accompanied by a sigh as someone would inevitably mention aloud that he/she couldn't believe that it had been X amount of years since Grampie got sick, and everyone would fall into a hush, drifting away into his/her own thoughts.
My grandfather spent the entirety of his waking hours in front of the television, usually cursing at the Cubs game after game. The few times they reached the playoffs I would always silently root for them, indifferent to my distaste for baseball, because I knew it would bring a moment of happiness for my grandfather's otherwise frustrated life. (And of course, never once did they win.) In fact my grandfather spent much of his post-stroke life in a hostile state, bored, immobilized, and unable to communicate. There were few things he needed, and he could generally point or mutter a single syllable to my grandmother and she would dutifully drop whatever she was doing to fetch him another beer, a new ice cube for his cranberry juice, or the TV guide. Whenever she or anyone else could not interpret what he was asking for, he would get frustrated, unable to remember the appropriate word, and start cursing as the person listed off thing after thing, guessing at what he was trying to say. Sometimes the person would get it right and he'd smile, but much of the time he'd give up, turning his gaze back to the television.
My interaction with him as a child was minimal but never awkward. The only memory I have of him laughing whole-heartedly was when we were watching Tom & Jerry cartoons together. My grandmother would host Christmas Eve every year, always making my grandfather come out and sit with the family as we opened presents before dinner. Unable to follow the various conflicting conversations, he would look across the room towards me and my sister playing, and with his good hand make the gesture of a gun and shoot us both as we'd drop to the floor, staging our melodramatic death scenes; however, we would always recover quickly, gang up on him, pressing our imaginary triggers, and he would slump his head slightly over with eyes closed, limply sticking out his tongue as we both giggled away.
For sixteen years my grandmother acted more as nurse than wife to him, washing him, dressing him, and cutting up his food for him, until she too suffered the same stroke, on the same side of the body. I can't imagine how that was for my grandfather, to see her suddenly paralyzed, unable to help her, unable to call 9-1-1. He screamed and stomped until the downstairs neighbors used the spare key to see what the commotion was over. My grandmother died a week later in the hospital.
For almost two years the family tried to divvy up the task of care-taking. My father and his sister, both divorced and overworked, lived in distant suburbs, making it an arduous ordeal to come visit or help out, though not for lack of trying. My sister helped out as best she could but was also attending college in the city and dealing with her toughest year in nursing school. I, only recently having obtained my driver's license and still considered the baby of the family, was willing to do more but was generally dismissed as too young and told that focusing on school was more important. Somewhat luckily, my lone cousin, unemployed and directionless, moved into the apartment, playing Xbox at all hours to my grandfather's playful annoyance, but otherwise providing the unfeigned needed support.
Usually my sister and I would go together to spend time with him and help out, but generally after a few hours he'd look at us and say, "go". We'd intermittently battle with him with pouts, smiles, and shrugs as our weapons but he would keep trying to shoo us away. I'm the only person in the family who never knew my grandfather prior to his stroke. Like his three brothers, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a Chicago policeman. He worked as an undercover narc during the '60s and '70s, and my father remembers him as a very quiet, proud, and dauntingly serious man. Being incapacitated and having his granddaughters spend their Saturday night watching over him was often too much of a humiliation for him to bear. I remember one time, when my sister was too busy studying for a major test, I went over there by myself to make him dinner and watch the ballgame, excited to be helping out on my own. I walked in with a smile and he looked at me confused. When I told him my plans to stay he got upset, shaking his head and telling me to leave. I battled with him until he finally made a gun gesture with his hand and pointed it to his temple, saying "shoot me". I immediately turned around to walked out of the room and went into the kitchen, crying silently. I made dinner for us, went back in and stayed with him for as long he would let me.
My grandfather lived another eight years, being moved into a number of assisted living homes closer in distance to his two children all the while maintaining a horrible temper, which erupted into many staff phone calls to his children, nearly getting him kicked out a few times. Slowly his health deteriorated into further unthinkable states. He died two weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday.
I didn't mean to drag this out into forlorn details, which probably was unnecessary and I'll most likely lament my doing so later (as I've never held any of this open for conversation), but with everything going on with my family right now, I can't help but drift away in such reflections. I have a lot of apprehensions about marriage, family, growing old gracefully, etc. that consistently get me labeled as a pessimistic, commitment-phobe. If a conversation about having children ever came up with a serious boyfriend, I would always say no, with the excuse that I knew I couldn't handle taking care of a child by myself (as my mother for the most part did). Whenever the possibility of marriage comes up (however whimsically), I immediately think to myself, would I be willing to care for this suitor for sixteen years if he were to take ill? Threats of such extreme sacrifice linger in my head whenever considering potential long-term decisions involving others that I do not take them light-heartedly. I have so many ambitions that I want to accomplish as an individual, and my own self-doubts already occupy so much of my struggle, that I do my best not to take on further responsibilities without feeling willing to commit myself to them completely. This isn't fear, my friends, this is knowing what I want.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::random eavesdrop:
DANSE RUSSE
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
- William Carlos Williams
