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A death in the family
Mar. 7th, 2018 11:21 amMy grandfather passed away yesterday afternoon.
This is only partly true. My grandfather, the man I knew as my grandfather, all but disappeared about 15 years ago. Sometimes bits of him would resurface. Not always the good ones. He could be tyrannical, belligerent and terribly stubborn. But in his good moments, he was super-proud of having great-grandchildren. He enjoyed the same jokes he had loved earlier. He was fond of parodies of the classics. Ich sei, gewährt mir die Bitte/ in eurem Skatclub der Dritte. - Sieh da, sieh da, Timotheus,/ die Ibiche des Kranikus. - Er zählt die Häupter seiner Lieben/ und sieh, es sind statt sechse sieben. - O tempora, o Moritz. That was the kind of humour he thrived on. He loved Loriot and Heinz Erhardt. Back when Jörg was introduced to him and he asked where Jörg worked, his reaction to the place - Essen-Kupferdreh - was "Oh, the part of Essen that's named after three animals! Kuh, Pferd, Reh!" He loved puns and malapropisms. In his bright moments, he read newspapers and discussed what he read in them with his sons. He was opinionated, and discussing things with him was never fun even if you agreed. But in those moments, he knew what he was saying and what was going on.
In his less bright, but still lucid moments, he wished for death. He always dreaded fading into dementia, loosing his sense of place and self and the present, and that was exactly what was happening to him; and when he noticed, he said that he hoped he would be allowed to leave this world soon.
He was thoroughly Catholic, so he was waiting for permission to leave. Those were his words. "Allowed to leave this world". "Get called home". All of his friends had gone before him, his wives had gone before him, and his siblings, too.
In his bright moments, he was nonetheless proud to have reached the age of 91 and become a great-grandfather. "Due to a kindly field surgeon," he said once - when he was already living at a nursery home because he was a danger to himself and others at home - and then, a story emerged that he had never told before. Grandpa never talked about the war, never told us stories from his youth or young adulthood, and he had never told his sons - my father and his two brothers - either. We all knew that he detested uniforms. He detested them so much that his sons weren't allowed to join the Boy Scouts, who were a big deal in their home town in their youth in the 60s. It even took my grandmother's intercession so they were at least allowed to serve as altar boys, whose red and white embroidered frocks are really as far away from any kind of 3rd Reich uniform as you can possibly get. He was an accountant, scrupulously strict, both at the workplace and at home. More than once, he must have made my grandmother cry because she had spent a few Marks somewhere and no longer knew where or what for. It wasn't about the money, it was about not knowing where it had gone. - My father will inherit less than his brothers because, due to taking his A-levels and studying medicine instead of starting training on the job, he was dependent on his parents' money for longer. A matter of principle. In the late 90s or early 00s, my grandfather bought stock shares that duly lost much of their value, and he refused to sell them and salvage what was left of the money until they had AT THE LEAST! reached their original value again. (Needless to say, they never did.) He loved classical music and had an impressive collection of CDs, and he would never listen to the same CD twice until he had listened to every other CD. I don't know whether he thought the other CDs would be jealous if they didn't all have their turn before there was a second go. But that was the sort of principle he was obsessed with.
Anyway, when Grandpa's memory went and he forgot that he didn't talk about the war, a story emerged how he had been shot through the buttocks, somewhere on the Eastern front, and a kindly medic declared him Too Ill For Transport. He missed the transport ship that his bataillon had been scheduled for, and while he was still in hospital, they heard the news that the ship had been sunk by a Soviet submarine. It was a famous ship, too, but I forgot the name. In that moment, he clearly felt that his existence now, at the age of 91, was his personal victory over the misfortunes of war. He was later taken into war captivity by the Red Army, something else that many didn't survive. He still knew the name of the town in Thuringia where it happened.
Then he regretted that it would be too hard to go there, to see what it looks like today, because of the border to the GDR.
...
Then a moment later he would talk about his expectations for the upcoming election and how it was likely that there would be another Grand Coalition, and he was in the present again, and in the mind that Did Not Talk About The War.
He was not a great man, the sort where you read the obituary and think "Wow, I wish I could have known this person". He was a doting grandfather, but he was also bossy and stubborn and selfish. I already mentioned that he drove my grandmother (who died of cancer when I was 11) to tears over the household accounts. He also drove my aunt, the wife of his middle son, to tears because she wouldn't cook the soup exactly in the way that his mother, or maybe my grandmother, did it - all the greens in huge chunks so you could easily fish out the bits you didn't like, and there had to be cauliflower in it. She had chopped up all the veggies nicely, like civilised folk do. It must have been a terrible drama. (I did not witness any of it, btw; they happened off-stage and while I was very young or before I was born.) My mother was spared from this fate because she was never an enthusiastic cook and gladly left this job to my father, who of course knew how to make soup the Only True Way.
After my grandmother died, Grandpa eventually married again, a woman he met on a bus journey, who was so comically subservient and overattentive that my cousins, my brother and I couldn't help making fun of it, but it wasn't really a joking matter. I'm sure they loved each other, but they were not good for each other; he would've needed someone who took no shit and didn't do every little thing for him. But they were happy, apparently, until she fell prey to Alzheimer's and rapidly deteriorated until she died, about 15 years ago.
My grandfather, too, deteriorated, but in his case it happened slowly, bit by bit. He was aware of it and hated it. He wanted to be "called home". He found it hard to live alone, or even alone and supported by a domestic nursing service and cleaning lady. At the same time, he refused to move to assisted accomodation or a retirement home because "there's only old people there". When he was finally convinced to try out assisted living, he drew back because "nobody's talking to me". So he stayed in his house until a few years ago, when he started to walk out at night and leave the door open and smashed furniture and it was clear that he couldn't stay unsupervised, nor in a regular old people's home. He moved into a nursing home close to his youngest son, whose relationship to his father was the least strained at the time. We visited once or twice a year, and generally saw each other for his birthday and Christmas. He was, as I said, very proud to have great-grandchildren, although he never managed to learn their names. But he observed how Julian looked just like my brother as a baby, while Felix had a completely different face (he takes after Jörg). The picture on the door of his room, where all the patients get to choose an individual photo, was one of my boys.
We knew that it was going to happen one of these days. In January, shortly before my father's birthday, he had a flare of confused aggression and demolished his room at the nursing home. They tried to adjust his meds, but he only grew more and more confused. He spent most of the day sleeping - which at least made him less dangerous to himself and others. Initially, he still noticed and sometimes recognised my father or his brothers when they visited (or knew it was one of his sons, anyway); then he noticed that someone was visiting, but not who. "We can only hope", my father said, and I didn't dare ask whether he meant hope for a miracle or hope for the end. Anyway, the end has come, and I'm almost surprised that I am crying.
Because the truth is, we didn't really have much to do with each other anymore, and what relationship there was, was purely based on duty, because family ties. Not the happy kind of family ties. My father's brothers, who saw him more often, were stressed out every time.
BUT of course I never said goodbye when he began to drift into dementia. It was a progress, and as such, kept on going on. Now that he has died, it has stopped; and so I have to confront the long, slow farewell. I cried when I got the news, and Jörg observed that it seemed to really shake me. But it is not the devastating sense of loss that I felt when either of my grandmothers died. It's just the finality that hurts. Saying goodbye always hurts. Telling Felix will hurt, not because he was any closer to Grandpa than the rest of us, but because of what it is. (Julian, who was still awake when I got the call, just asked: "So Great-grandpa is not in hospital anymore?" That's one way of putting it, sweetie.) But beyond that hurt, there is relief rather than grief. When Grandpa said that he wanted to leave this world, we would always dutifully go "Aww, don't say that", but I know that I secretly thought, and I suspect that his sons also secretly felt, that he was right. He did not enjoy most of the past (at least) ten years and outright hated much of them.
So now he was, at last, "called home". Whether that's upstairs or downstairs, well, that's fortunately not for me to figure out.
This is only partly true. My grandfather, the man I knew as my grandfather, all but disappeared about 15 years ago. Sometimes bits of him would resurface. Not always the good ones. He could be tyrannical, belligerent and terribly stubborn. But in his good moments, he was super-proud of having great-grandchildren. He enjoyed the same jokes he had loved earlier. He was fond of parodies of the classics. Ich sei, gewährt mir die Bitte/ in eurem Skatclub der Dritte. - Sieh da, sieh da, Timotheus,/ die Ibiche des Kranikus. - Er zählt die Häupter seiner Lieben/ und sieh, es sind statt sechse sieben. - O tempora, o Moritz. That was the kind of humour he thrived on. He loved Loriot and Heinz Erhardt. Back when Jörg was introduced to him and he asked where Jörg worked, his reaction to the place - Essen-Kupferdreh - was "Oh, the part of Essen that's named after three animals! Kuh, Pferd, Reh!" He loved puns and malapropisms. In his bright moments, he read newspapers and discussed what he read in them with his sons. He was opinionated, and discussing things with him was never fun even if you agreed. But in those moments, he knew what he was saying and what was going on.
In his less bright, but still lucid moments, he wished for death. He always dreaded fading into dementia, loosing his sense of place and self and the present, and that was exactly what was happening to him; and when he noticed, he said that he hoped he would be allowed to leave this world soon.
He was thoroughly Catholic, so he was waiting for permission to leave. Those were his words. "Allowed to leave this world". "Get called home". All of his friends had gone before him, his wives had gone before him, and his siblings, too.
In his bright moments, he was nonetheless proud to have reached the age of 91 and become a great-grandfather. "Due to a kindly field surgeon," he said once - when he was already living at a nursery home because he was a danger to himself and others at home - and then, a story emerged that he had never told before. Grandpa never talked about the war, never told us stories from his youth or young adulthood, and he had never told his sons - my father and his two brothers - either. We all knew that he detested uniforms. He detested them so much that his sons weren't allowed to join the Boy Scouts, who were a big deal in their home town in their youth in the 60s. It even took my grandmother's intercession so they were at least allowed to serve as altar boys, whose red and white embroidered frocks are really as far away from any kind of 3rd Reich uniform as you can possibly get. He was an accountant, scrupulously strict, both at the workplace and at home. More than once, he must have made my grandmother cry because she had spent a few Marks somewhere and no longer knew where or what for. It wasn't about the money, it was about not knowing where it had gone. - My father will inherit less than his brothers because, due to taking his A-levels and studying medicine instead of starting training on the job, he was dependent on his parents' money for longer. A matter of principle. In the late 90s or early 00s, my grandfather bought stock shares that duly lost much of their value, and he refused to sell them and salvage what was left of the money until they had AT THE LEAST! reached their original value again. (Needless to say, they never did.) He loved classical music and had an impressive collection of CDs, and he would never listen to the same CD twice until he had listened to every other CD. I don't know whether he thought the other CDs would be jealous if they didn't all have their turn before there was a second go. But that was the sort of principle he was obsessed with.
Anyway, when Grandpa's memory went and he forgot that he didn't talk about the war, a story emerged how he had been shot through the buttocks, somewhere on the Eastern front, and a kindly medic declared him Too Ill For Transport. He missed the transport ship that his bataillon had been scheduled for, and while he was still in hospital, they heard the news that the ship had been sunk by a Soviet submarine. It was a famous ship, too, but I forgot the name. In that moment, he clearly felt that his existence now, at the age of 91, was his personal victory over the misfortunes of war. He was later taken into war captivity by the Red Army, something else that many didn't survive. He still knew the name of the town in Thuringia where it happened.
Then he regretted that it would be too hard to go there, to see what it looks like today, because of the border to the GDR.
...
Then a moment later he would talk about his expectations for the upcoming election and how it was likely that there would be another Grand Coalition, and he was in the present again, and in the mind that Did Not Talk About The War.
He was not a great man, the sort where you read the obituary and think "Wow, I wish I could have known this person". He was a doting grandfather, but he was also bossy and stubborn and selfish. I already mentioned that he drove my grandmother (who died of cancer when I was 11) to tears over the household accounts. He also drove my aunt, the wife of his middle son, to tears because she wouldn't cook the soup exactly in the way that his mother, or maybe my grandmother, did it - all the greens in huge chunks so you could easily fish out the bits you didn't like, and there had to be cauliflower in it. She had chopped up all the veggies nicely, like civilised folk do. It must have been a terrible drama. (I did not witness any of it, btw; they happened off-stage and while I was very young or before I was born.) My mother was spared from this fate because she was never an enthusiastic cook and gladly left this job to my father, who of course knew how to make soup the Only True Way.
After my grandmother died, Grandpa eventually married again, a woman he met on a bus journey, who was so comically subservient and overattentive that my cousins, my brother and I couldn't help making fun of it, but it wasn't really a joking matter. I'm sure they loved each other, but they were not good for each other; he would've needed someone who took no shit and didn't do every little thing for him. But they were happy, apparently, until she fell prey to Alzheimer's and rapidly deteriorated until she died, about 15 years ago.
My grandfather, too, deteriorated, but in his case it happened slowly, bit by bit. He was aware of it and hated it. He wanted to be "called home". He found it hard to live alone, or even alone and supported by a domestic nursing service and cleaning lady. At the same time, he refused to move to assisted accomodation or a retirement home because "there's only old people there". When he was finally convinced to try out assisted living, he drew back because "nobody's talking to me". So he stayed in his house until a few years ago, when he started to walk out at night and leave the door open and smashed furniture and it was clear that he couldn't stay unsupervised, nor in a regular old people's home. He moved into a nursing home close to his youngest son, whose relationship to his father was the least strained at the time. We visited once or twice a year, and generally saw each other for his birthday and Christmas. He was, as I said, very proud to have great-grandchildren, although he never managed to learn their names. But he observed how Julian looked just like my brother as a baby, while Felix had a completely different face (he takes after Jörg). The picture on the door of his room, where all the patients get to choose an individual photo, was one of my boys.
We knew that it was going to happen one of these days. In January, shortly before my father's birthday, he had a flare of confused aggression and demolished his room at the nursing home. They tried to adjust his meds, but he only grew more and more confused. He spent most of the day sleeping - which at least made him less dangerous to himself and others. Initially, he still noticed and sometimes recognised my father or his brothers when they visited (or knew it was one of his sons, anyway); then he noticed that someone was visiting, but not who. "We can only hope", my father said, and I didn't dare ask whether he meant hope for a miracle or hope for the end. Anyway, the end has come, and I'm almost surprised that I am crying.
Because the truth is, we didn't really have much to do with each other anymore, and what relationship there was, was purely based on duty, because family ties. Not the happy kind of family ties. My father's brothers, who saw him more often, were stressed out every time.
BUT of course I never said goodbye when he began to drift into dementia. It was a progress, and as such, kept on going on. Now that he has died, it has stopped; and so I have to confront the long, slow farewell. I cried when I got the news, and Jörg observed that it seemed to really shake me. But it is not the devastating sense of loss that I felt when either of my grandmothers died. It's just the finality that hurts. Saying goodbye always hurts. Telling Felix will hurt, not because he was any closer to Grandpa than the rest of us, but because of what it is. (Julian, who was still awake when I got the call, just asked: "So Great-grandpa is not in hospital anymore?" That's one way of putting it, sweetie.) But beyond that hurt, there is relief rather than grief. When Grandpa said that he wanted to leave this world, we would always dutifully go "Aww, don't say that", but I know that I secretly thought, and I suspect that his sons also secretly felt, that he was right. He did not enjoy most of the past (at least) ten years and outright hated much of them.
So now he was, at last, "called home". Whether that's upstairs or downstairs, well, that's fortunately not for me to figure out.
