Grandpa

I think I finally just realized how out of the ordinary it is that my grandpa is still with us at 89 year olds. Considering the cancer rate is 1/3 and this increases with age, the fact he'll be turning 90 this Valentine's Day is pretty astonishing.

My grandpa has probably looked the same his whole life or at least the part that I've known him. He tends to spend ages combing his thinning hair and brushing his dentures. When he had his teeth, he never cleaned them hence the dentures. He pisses all over the floor when he goes to the toilet and I wondered if he did this when he was young. But then I figured this was an old guy thing; an amalgamation of poor eyesight, poor hand-eye coordination and less upper body strength.

The last few days, I've been having this recurring worry that I'll wake up one day and my grandpa won't be awake. He tends to get up around 7.30am and walk around the backyard for half an hour doing these sort of dance-exercise activities except more Jackie Chan than Ryan Evans. So I worry that I'll get up at 8am and his door will still be closed and my parents will already have left for work and my brother will still be asleep. I'll go to his room and knock. When I enter after a few knocks, I'll see him lying there, his wispy, last few hairs ruffled, not breathing.

With this thought in mind, I've been plowing him (er, poor choice of words? Fuck it, Helen, I'm keeping plowing) with ice-cream and chips and conversation.

To be honest, he looks half dead already. That's probably the most callous thing I've ever said and I might not even mean it or I might really mean it. But seeing the wastage of the human body over time is just really sad but natural at the same time.

I don't love him because I don't really know him that well. But my mum loves him a lot. You can tell by the way she always asks if he's had enough to eat, if he wants some ice-cream, if he wants to go for a walk with her. How when they watch TV, she'll explain what's happening on the news to him and she'll make purposeful exclamations at TV shows as if she's trying to make it more exciting for him.

I think that because my mum loves him so much, I, by extension, feel like he deserves my care and love.

This wasn't meant to be a depressing post but a post on "the human condition" (whatever that is) and ageing and fear of death and fear of dying etc. etc. Er, have a good day?

On a final note, I have fashioned a character in my current story on him. I called him Truman. Truman Raucous (a continuation of a short story I submitted for creative writing folio in year 12) is a mobster who loves his youngest daughter the most. Coincidentally, my mother is my grandpa's youngest daughter. Beyond the fact that Truman, at 90, pisses all over the bathroom floor and loves soft food, there's probably little resemblance. But I've also included mentions of Truman's late wife who had dementia and, during her episodes, was paranoid that Truman was having a mistress.

My grandma died three years ago and also had dementia. She was wheelchair bound towards the end but, whenever the curtain swished or one of my aunt's walked past the window outside, she'd get out of her chair and hobble over to investigate. She occasionally yelled obscenities at my aunts, thinking they were my grandpa's secret concubines.

Fun fact of the day: I hope my parents never die or, strangely enough, I hope they die after me so I won't have to bear that loss.

J