Undeniably Human

  

   

     Is there anything more indestructible than a grandfather? Is there anything more permanent than grandpa, outside, on the porch with a cigarette – or grandpa rocking, constantly back and forth in that chair?  They aren’t weak like you and me. They didn’t have such soft parents, or the same things to fill up their days. They didn’t have the same TV shows, or words, or routines. They grew up fast. They fought in wars, they’ve seen death, they’ve killed, and they still managed to start families – to provide for families – like they were taught by their fathers, and grandfathers, and every man before that. They were taught to be tough, taught to hide and keep things hidden. Taught to talk less, want less. Grandfathers aren’t like us.

I could never entirely relate to them, I could never carry conversation with either of mine, at least no conversation about them – I could talk about myself, but never about them. I realized that today – everything I know about them was passed through something or someone: all their war stories, fears, mistakes, and anything dark or heavy – I saw it in a picture, or heard it from my parents, or noticed it from the way they walk, or I saw it in the things they do, that resemble the things most people do, to forget the things they’ve done. Nothing from them, they were quiet. I could only talk about myself to them - because they loved me - not because I had anything to say.

Some things I learned too young to understand them, like that my mother’s father drank – a lot – too much. The first time I heard it I was supposed to be asleep, I pretended to be asleep, but listened carefully when a shadow crossed my bedroom’s slant of light. Just outside my room, in the hallway, I heard my mom mention it to my dad, calmly, like it was something she had mentioned a thousand times. She had mentioned it, I’m sure, but I didn’t really listen until that night. Grandpa is a “drinker”.

It was never news to me that Grandpa drank, but the thought changed as I got older.

Grandpa is a drinker – I drink things, am I a drinker? Isn’t everyone a drinker? Yes. We’re all drinkers.

Grandpa is a drinker – I’ve heard that in church and on TV, it’s a bad thing. Is Grandpa a bad person? No. Drinkers aren’t all bad, even though I think that’s a bad thing.

Grandpa is a drinker, but that’s the only bad thing he does – and he smokes – but those two are the same kind of bad, right? Yes.

Grandpa is an alcoholic – that is very bad, I know that from school. I know that from church.

Now I know the weight of that word, the screeching, sobbing substance of that word; I have seen the toll of that word on his brittle body, on Grandma’s quiet sadness, in my mother’s worried way of living – her constant unseen fear, the fear she has to fight every morning and tuck away every night, to stay alive. I have not seen the horror of that word but I have seen the effects – and I hated him for it. I hated him when I understood what he was. I hated him for the fear he put in her, in my brilliant undefeatable mother, and the fear he put in Grandma, and the rest of his kids. How dare you do that to them? You. You were supposed to protect them, not become someone else at night, an angry drunken monster that kept them up and gave them nightmares. You are the one who protects them from monsters, how could you become one – how could you – make them so afraid?

 It hit me one day, why he made them so afraid, when I learned another thing about Grandpa. As usual, it did not come from him, it came from my mother. It was overheard again, in the same hallway, “…apparently he was serious…I know…I’m worried…I guess it makes sense, he has nothing to live for without my mom…he’s alone.” As she continued I realized that Grandpa had said he was going to kill himself. So then I knew how he could do what he did, how he could make them so afraid.

He made them afraid because my silent Grandpa – in his leathery seemingly impenetrable shell – was  afraid. He didn’t do it to hurt his wife and his kids, he did it because he hurt. He didn’t do it to give them nightmares, he did it to fight off his own, they must have come every night – unrelenting demons, that dragged him back to battle with their claws, made him feel like a failure – feel it all again, and again, and again. He must have done it to escape from the demons, not to become one. He wanted to feel something, anything, other than want or guilt or grief, and he could not find that solace in sleep so he found it in a bar. He was not unbreakable, and he wanted to escape the demons. I have not hated him since that day, and I will not hate him again.

My father’s father was the same in a lot of ways – quiet, strong, never talked about himself – he was different because he did not drink or smoke, he was extremely health-conscious, he was a doctor: a psychiatrist. He is dead now. He managed to lock up all the little devils of war while he was alive – except one. I never saw the little devil, but my dad saw it all the time when he was growing up.

From time to time Grandpa would pull his finger back, quick, then his eye would twitch. He did that every day for years and years, he did it until one day my dad asked him why he did it.

“Do what?”

“That thing, dad, with your eye and your finger.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.”

“That thing! You pull your finger back and you wink!”

Grandpa thought about it until dinner the next night, when he told my dad, “I was checking the safety.” He meant the safety on his gun. He was still, decades later, checking the safety; so he didn’t accidentally hurt someone or get hurt – so he could turn it off, so he didn’t get killed – so he could be ready, so his friends didn’t get shot in front of him – so he could kill another boy who had a gun, with that gun he was checking over and over again every second of every day. That habit that had stuck to him for decades, that habit that he didn’t even notice, was snuffed out that same day when he figured out what it was. So, all that was left were the nightmares, every night. I learned about those from my dad.

My smart, sweet Grandpa who slept in a rocking chair, and listened to countless patients tell them what kept them up at night, was so profoundly affected by the war that he twitched every second and slept through it again every night. He was taught to keep those things hidden, and so they ate away at his insides and only came out in tiny, involuntary movements, until he forced them to stop. He was so tough, like he was supposed to be, but he was so undeniably human. I am so sorry I never knew.

I never thought they could feel fear, a grandpa doesn’t get scared or sad I thought; but they do, they feel those things like I do. They are painfully human, like me, and I wish they had learned to talk about what scared them. To talk about the war. To talk about why they drank, or slept in a chair and not a bed. To talk about why they yelled, or why they twitched.  To talk about themselves. To talk.

They were not the steel giants of another time, they were the young boys who had to shut up and fight when their country needed them. They were like me, when they saw their friends die next to them. They were like me when they had to hide from firearms and hide their own fear. They were capable of every feeling and they felt every emotion beat against them until they collapsed into themselves every night, or into a drink, or into their sleep. They sunk, inside themselves, like they were taught. So these old men that I would never understand were not so different from me once, and I know that now, and I’m sorry I didn’t know it sooner.