My grandfather kept his favorite photo of my grandmother on display for everyone to see. It’s an average photo – she’s middle-aged, large tortoise shell glasses perched on her nose, her dark hair cropped short but still voluminous, as was the style in the 1970s, but it’s her smile – brilliant and shining- that makes it understandable why he keeps it out. Her eyes still showed the spitfire, stubbornness, and conviction that quickly faded as the Alzheimer’s eventually destroyed her mind.
“She was a good girl,” he said, smiling sadly. “I miss her every day.”
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August 25, 2017 – 11:10 pm – India time
I logged on to Skype with a sinking feeling in my stomach. My dad said it was an emergency, and I already knew, down in the depths of my heart, what he was going to say.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to come out and say it,” my dad said, his Skype image choppy and blurred, “Gramp is probably dead.”
My throat grew thick and my blood ran cold. “What do you mean probably?”
“There’s been an accident on Red Rock Mountain. Jack called Deb and told her that Troy heard that the person who died was a Serafini, and Gramp isn’t home right now. His car isn’t there. He told Bobbi Jo he was going to get a hoagie from the shop at the bottom of the mountain.”
My vision went dark. I had just said goodbye to him a little less than two weeks earlier. I had just- I had just-
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“Well, I guess I should get going,” I told Gramp as I herded my daughter towards the back door. “We’re going to Deb’s for a while too.”
“Oh, okay,” Gramp looked mildly disappointed, and it tugged at my heart. “You take care of yourself over there, okay? Tell Zac I said ‘hello.'”
“Sure thing. Love you.” I hugged him tightly and started for the door. He had never followed me before when I left. This time, he did.
“Love you too. Be careful, okay?” I paused at the kitchen door and turned to him one last time. The look on his face, it was almost mournful. “I’ll see ya when you come in May.”
My chest ached for a moment. I studied his face, feeling like it was the last time I would see him. I shook off the feeling – I’m too sentimental any way. “Of course. I love you.” And I walked out the door.
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“Brittany, he’s gone,” my brother told me as he leaned down to the computer screen. His voice sounded like it had gone an octave higher – full of suppressed emotion. He crumpled in front of me, sobbing, and I fell apart too – thousands of miles away.
Grief that I didn’t even fully understand enveloped me, soaked into every muscle and nerve. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and wailed. And I grew angry. So angry. “He didn’t deserve that. He was alone!” I cried, as my husband rubbed my back, trying to comfort me. Had he been afraid? Had he been in pain long? We had no answers and would not have any for a while.
After getting off the phone with the coroner, my dad finally sat down in front of the computer again, and I watched, so far away and so unable to do anything, as he cried for his father.
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“I gotta tell you this story about Gramp – it’s my dad’s favorite. He can’t stop laughing every time he tells it,” I said to my husband, as we sat in my parents’ living room. “So, Gramp calls Dad and says he can’t find his sledgehammer, right? He uses it to smash soda cans and whatnot. And this goes on for weeks, maybe months. My dad goes up to the house and goes down to the cellar to get a soda, and there sits the sledgehammer. He goes back upstairs and asks Gramp if has found his sledgehammer yet, and Gramp says, ‘Jeez, no I haven’t. I don’t know where da hell I put that thing. Maybe someone took it.’ My dad says, ‘Well, what are you smashing your soda cans with then?’ Gramp goes, ‘JEEZ-UZ.'”
And we both burst into laughter.
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“Daddy! Daddy! Turn on the light, so I can go up the stairs,” our daughter, Evelyn, had already run to Gramp’s chair lift and was pulling herself onto the seat. “Watch me do dis by myself!”
“Evelyn, shhhhh, Gigi’s sleeping. We have to be a little quieter,” Zac chided, gently.
I smiled and handed off to Zac the sleepover bags I had been bringing every night to Gramp’s house. He was letting us stay in Gram’s old room. It was a little haunting at first, seeing how all of her pictures on the wall had not been moved in decades. The walls were still stained yellow from nicotine.
“I’ll get us some water and then I’ll be up,” I told Zac. I went to the kitchen and switched on the light, noticing a pie container on the counter. Gramp had left a note, written on a napkin, on the container. His spiky handwriting read: “There’s rhubarb pie here and ice cream in the fridge. Help yourselves to whatever you want.”
I popped open the lid of the plastic container, and sure enough, one of Gramp’s delicious rhubarb pies was inside. I cut a piece, a small sliver because I was still mindful of the carbs and sugar. I relished each bite of the flaky and sweet crust and tartness of the rhubarb. When I finished, I looked down at the note again. “Help yourselves to whatever you want.” And wasn’t that just like Gramp? He’d give anything – anything at all for his family. A lump formed in my throat with some unnamed emotion – sadness, happiness, it was a combination of many. I grabbed the pen he had left next to the napkin and wrote: “The pie was delicious. I loved it!” Such a small gesture that I knew would bring him satisfaction – someone else had enjoyed his food. Tears blurred my vision as I washed my pie plate, and then I let them flow freely as I filled up two glasses with water. I briefly wondered how many more pies he would make in his lifetime. And then I cried some more.
I breathed in and out a few times to calm myself, wiped my eyes. I didn’t want to explain to either Zac or Evelyn why I had been sobbing in the kitchen because I didn’t know how to put it into words. Gramp meant so much to me, and I felt like I was noticing it a little too late. I looked at his note one last time, drew in a shaky breath, and switched off the kitchen light.
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“Yeah, Cameron and Daniel are both taking a gun of Gramp’s. Noah too, I think. Daniel wants some of Gramp’s garden tools too. Things to show eventually to John what Gramp was all about,” my dad looked at me expectantly. “Is there anything you want?”
“I- I don’t know. Let me think.” I pictured walking through his house in my mind. What did I want that would mean something to me forever? Curtains? Bedsheets? Photos? My mind took me into his kitchen, across the breakfast island scattered with photos of his great-grandchildren and his magazine and newspapers. I turned to the counter by the sink and there was the pie container.
“Does he have recipes? I want his recipes!” I blurted out.
“You mean handwritten? Or cookbooks?”
“Both. All of them. Any of them. I’ll even take copies if someone else wants the originals.” I saw him in my memory pulling into my parents’ driveway, getting out with a huge jar of pickles or a casserole dish of Swiss chard or an apple pie or a loaf of Cressia bread. Tears stung my eyes again. “I just- I want his recipes.”
“Anything else? You want some of his garden tools too?”
“Yeah. And I guess, if there’s any of his guns left, can Zac have one of his guns?”
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“I shook his hand and told him I’d see him again,” Zac spoke quietly, seriously. “I really thought I’d see him again.”
I paused the spoonful of biryani that was on its way to my mouth. I stared at Zac, across from me at the dinner table, his shoulders slumped slightly and his gaze was off to the side, maybe at a spot on the wall, maybe somewhere else. I didn’t say anything at first.
“How tragic that your family has lost two people like this.” I swallowed and nodded. It was true. How tragic – for a father and daughter to die in a vehicle accident, 30 years apart.
Zac blinked and shook his head, trying to shake himself out of his trance. “He was extraordinary, you know. Your grandfather. There’s not many people like him left.”
I could feel my face scrunching up and hot tears spilling down my cheeks. Again. I had never heard Zac calling anyone extraordinary, ever. “He was,” my voice was raspy. “He was a man ahead of his time.”
“You don’t have to cry.” Zac looked troubled. “And what do you mean he was ahead of his time?”
“It’s like Deb wrote in his obituary. He had the soft heart of an Italian mother. He cooked, he cleaned, he baked, he sewed, he babysat, he gardened. Not even many men today would do those things. And he did it all while still doing masculine things too.”
“Yes.” Zac agreed firmly. “Yes, that’s true.”
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Slowly, the facts about the accident started trickling in. He hit the back of a water tank truck. He was either already dead or unconscious when he hit it. His body was fairly in tact, except for a broken nose and bruised eyes. The fire department had to cut him out the car. He hit the truck so hard he moved it down the road 450 feet. My family’s and my fears, about him being afraid and alone in his last moments, were disproven. He was not alone – the two witnesses in the cars behind my grandfather stayed with him, stayed with his body. The one witness, a veteran himself, saluted my grandfather, an Army vet, as his body was loaded into the coroner’s vehicle.
What did not happen slowly was the outpouring of love and kindness from the community. Flags were lowered to half-staff in his honor. Phone calls, messages, emails, and food descended upon my family so quickly that they didn’t know how to handle it, except to feel grateful. Memories were shared with us – neighbors reminiscing about my grandparents’ home feeling like it their home. Men and women alike describing my grandfather in words I’d never heard before – “charming,” “so kind,” “happiest, friendliest, most uplifting guy I’ve ever known.”
As I read one post from an ambulance association, I was gobsmacked.
“I had no idea Gramp was an ambulance driver,” I said to Zac. “I feel so awful and guilty. I should have told him how great he was, how I couldn’t have had a better grandfather.”
“People like him don’t need to know those things. They’re content just doing things for people regardless,” Zac smiled a little. It eased my guilt some.
“Still, though, I wish he could have known…”
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“Would the bride and her grandfather please come to the dance floor?” The DJ’s voice echoed all around St. Basil’s reception hall.
My gown swished across the dance floor as I took Gramp’s hand. “Heya, doll. You look beautiful,” he smiled and started moving to Luciano Pavarotti’s “Let It Rain.” His moves belied his age. He swung me around the dance floor like neither my husband nor father did.
The song ended far too soon, and I embraced him once more, whispering, “Love you, Gramp.”
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It’s been three weeks since my grandfather died in a car accident, and still, many times when I close my eyes, his last moments flash behind my eyelids, even though I wasn’t there to witness them. I hide my grief better now than the first week he was gone – I don’t openly cry much anymore, but the tears threaten to overflow multiple times a day. I feel like there’s a gaping wound in my chest, but I can’t stanch it, no matter how hard I try – no matter how many Bible verses I read or how much I pray. It hurts.
Yesterday, after dinner, I aimlessly scrolled through my newsfeed, my brain grateful for the break. I jumped in shock when Deb’s profile photo (of Gramp) popped on my screen. She was video calling me.
I answered and, without speaking a word to me, she had her camera turned to my grandparents’ living room and dining room – empty. She turned the camera to her face finally and said, “Well, what do you think of that?”
“Show me again,” I replied. She got up and scanned the camera across the living room, where the kerosene heater always was; into the dining room where, I felt if I blinked fast enough, I could still see him relaxed in his recliner, watching a baseball game. She took me in the kitchen – the breakfast island no long scattered with photos, newspapers, and magazines; no pie containers, coffee pot or cutting board on the counter; the refrigerator, opened up and cleaned out. Up the stairs, she carried the phone, showing me the bathroom – the medicine cabinet that was always left half open, showing off his shaving cream and razor, emptied and shut tight. My grandmother’s room – the nicotine-stained walls repainted a brilliant white. And finally, the room he slept in last – empty and cleared out.
“Sad, isn’t it? My whole life has been here,” Deb finally said when she got back downstairs. “But what can you do?”
“It’s okay to feel sad about it,” I replied. “I heard you have to put the house on sale soon.” My grandparents’ house had a reverse mortgage on it.
“Yeah, we have 90 days to get it on the market. And then we can apply for an extension for another 90 days, so we have about a year to sell it. But everything of Gramp’s is gone already pretty much. All that’s left is this-” she showed me a wooden chest next to the sofa she was sitting on- “and this-” she showed me a box underneath the chest. “The bedsheets he slept in last are in that box. We haven’t washed them.”
“Do they still smell like him?” God, I felt a little morbid asking that.
“I don’t know, but I have his sweat rag that he slept with, and that doesn’t smell like anything now.” I felt a little less morbid after hearing that.
She wasn’t done though. “When I opened the door today and walked in the house, it still smelled like him in here. The house still smells like him.”
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I sat in the white wicker chair in my grandparents’ bedroom, shifting uncomfortably. It smelled old, stale, and sickness permeated the air. A part of me didn’t want to be there. A part of me hated seeing my grandmother so withered. She sat on the bed, her legs looking atrophied beyond recognition. Her eyes would glaze over at times, but mostly she smiled and laughed at Gramp, delighting in his jokes, delighting in him. Most of our conversation that day, I don’t remember, but I remember seeing the adoration between those two – like teenagers finding a first love.
“Arno, I want some ice cream,” Gram ordered, a little tinge of her tenacity peeking through the haze of Alzheimer’s.
“Sure, Di. You want it like a sundae?”
“Yeah….yeah.”
He got up and went downstairs immediately.
“How’s college?” Gram asked me.
I looked at her. It was September 2013, I had been married for 1.5 years, lived in India and was five months pregnant…..and I had graduated in 2008.
“College is fine,” I forced a smile, trying to ignore my heartbreak.
“And Cameron’s doing okay in school?”
My brother had graduated high school in 2012. “Yeah, he’s doing great.”
None too soon, Gramp returned with her ice cream, and he spoon-fed her each bite. They laughed together when she got whipped cream on her chin. It was so clear that Gramp loved doting on Gram. He loved taking care of her. He loved her. I smiled again, only this time, it wasn’t forced.
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April 8, 2014 – around 5 pm India time
I noticed a missed Skype call from Bobbi Jo. “Why is she calling me now?” I thought. “Isn’t it super early in the morning there?”
I called back, and she answered, her eyes puffy and red. “Gram just died about 20 minutes ago,” she told me, without ceremony.
I knew it was coming, but it still didn’t stop it from hurting. Zac took Evelyn, a mere 3 months old, from my arms, and let me cry, unabated. Gram was a shell when she died – we had mourned her long before she actually passed away, but I cried mostly for Gramp. He would be lost without her.
Much later, years later, Deb told me the most “amazing, heartbreaking-ly sad, and wonderful” thing she had seen the day Gram died was when my grandfather cradled her body and told her, “I’ve loved you my whole life. You’re so pretty. How I miss you already.”
And we miss you both, Gramp.
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“We’re filled with the hope today, and we’re sad, of course, but we’re filled with hope because we know, deep in our souls, that we’ll all be with Arno and Diane again. And I know Jack isn’t here today, but I’d just like to acknowledge him in front of everybody because, as I understand it, we all have this hope because he shared it with us. And the hope is [that] it’s not over for [Arno] and Diane; it’s only the beginning because [Arno] has received his reward in Christ.” – my cousin, Daniel, at our grandfather’s memorial dinner on September 2, 2017.
An American in Kerala 