Grandpa uses what he calls the "HP method" of typing. "You know what that is, don't you?" he'll ask. Even though I do, I say, "Tell me, Grandpa." And I laugh every time he delivers the punch line: "That's the hunt and peck method." He has MSNtv, which is a very basic email service delivered through his television set. He sits in his Lazy Boy, leaning over the keyboard in his lap and "hunting" for the right key—pointer fingers ready. When he finds it, he "pecks" and then looks up to see if the letter made it to the screen. That's why he doesn't use the thing for what it was intended for. It was a gift from his kids so he could stay in touch. But instead of telling us about his health and wellbeing, every person in his contact list gets each piece of mail that's delivered to him. So I find myself opening emails that say if I forward it to eight people I'll get a free laptop or if I don't forward it to every person in my contact list, I don't love this country.
When he says, "Have I told you about the time…" chances are, he has. One of those stories is about how he still got checks from Grandma's pension after she died. When he finishes, he'll say, "I still get that check, but I'd rather still have your grandma." He still wears his ring and his license plate has four letters: her initials and his. One brick on his walkway (built after her death) commemorates their wedding day. They were married for 60 some years, but the last decade was marred by Grandma's Alzheimer's. As is characteristic of the disease, it got worse over time. It started with Grandma asking the same question repeatedly and progressed to her holding math "class" for the nurses at the retirement center. That's the peculiar thing about Alzheimer's. Multiplication tables were preserved perfectly in her brain until the end, but the names of those closest to her were locked away in files she could only occasionally find, no matter how hard she looked. But even as those files retreated deeper and deeper and even as the one with Grandpa's name faded and disappeared, he sent the story that keeps me opening his forwards to this day. Below is a re-telling, as I imagine it:
Gerald's first car was a Model T Ford he bought for five dollars and twenty-five cents. Or "five and a quarter" as he was fond of saying. He took Lucille for a ride to the ice cream shop in that Model T in 1941 and they married in '43. If he'd passed his physical to go into the service, the story might be different, but due to a perforated eardrum, he stayed home and built a family while his brother went to war. On Gerald and Lucille's 50th anniversary, they fell asleep at their party, holding hands. They woke as their grandkids carried a cake with the wax from 50 candles dripping onto the lettering: "Here's to fifty more years for the golden couple." They ate cake and told stories and then Lucille turned to her son and asked where the bathroom was for what felt to him like the 50th time that day. A few years later, when Gerald found her wandering on the front lawn in the middle of the winter night, he hired someone to help him care for her. Her memory, which had already begun to reshuffle itself, then scrambled inside out and outside in until her grown sons were still babies and lemonade was grape juice. They couldn't take care of her at home anymore. Gerald visited her every day at the nursing home even as her children's names, and finally, Gerald's too, fell out of her head. He brought her eggplant pie and flowers for her nightstand and anything else she used to get a thrill from. One day, as he checked in at the front desk with a bouquet of lilies in full bloom, the receptionist asked him why he came every day. After all, "She doesn't even remember who you are," the woman had said.
"Yeah, but I remember who she is" he said.
And that was enough.
