Seward

So, yeah I suppose I will write a little something.
I had quite a revelation yesterday.
Maybe a wake up-call.

My grandparents inhabit the town of Norman, Oklahoma, and yesterday we packed up the trusty blue minivan to go see them.
My grandfather has been bedridden for somthing like 400 days now.
My grandmother is a strict Republican with an adversion to the Germans, ACORN, and doctors (one almost ended her life).

So I walk into my grandfather's little room transformed-hospital chamber to see him asleep, curled up in blankets, his thighs, wide as my arm, peeking out from beneath the covers. The stench of feces fills the room.

Sixty years of chain smoking has taken its toll, and what it hasn't robbed from him enphazema, diabetes, macular digeneration, age, and some kind of rare infection are dividing the remaining spoils.

I have gone through this before, it isn't new. My other grandfather perished quite the same way about a year and a half ago.

A little nugging and some soft coos
Wake him

And he struggles to speak.

He asks what I want for Christmas and I tell him: a laptop, some favorite books.
I return the question.
Sans teeth, or even dentures, he gives a valient effort to say, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth"
I give a half hearted attempt to laugh.

We make idle chat for a while, or at least I do,

Some 'I love you's', because I do.

He hands me a DVD from his bedside table.

D-Day Code Name: 'OVERLORD'
A WWII real footage DVD describing the invasion of Normandy.

He tells me I have to watch it, for I am taking the language French and anything French apparently I crave.

A war video, not exactly what I am dying to see. Wasn't the soldier's grave at the cemetary bad enough?

Images and audio then speed through my mind about all I have to do tonight and just all the stress I have and how, no way do I have time for that movie.

Then I look back down at his face and I can't even describe it, the emotions, both pleasant and sad that sift through my head.

And I realize that it is better to have something to do than nothing at all.

He has nothing to do at all.

But maybe wait for death to steal him away.

And the clock is ticking.

I wonder if he still has some unfinished business?

Something left to achieve.

Surely he isn't wasting away there in pain for nothing, right?

Is that the reason he is still here, trapped in his body like a man held firm a gurney?

Where will he go?

If heaven is real will he go there?

Or is he like me, never really sure what to believe, surrounded by firm believers?

Putting off these thoughts until the end?

Well, Gramps, it's time.

And all my problems seen so petty.