Last repost of the evening...probably one of the more important ones.
Now 7 years ago this month, I went and sat at the cemetery for a while on Easter...I still do miss him.
April 9th, 2008
"It may have a new perspective, on a different date"
Current mood:
nostalgic
I can't say that the call was completely unexpected..."Hi Jennifer, we went in to check on your grandfather at 12 and he was doing good, and then we went to check on him again around 12:30 and he had passed away". (Someone really needed to train that woman on how to break bad news to someone.) Just like that he was gone.
My mom had me at a pretty young age. 18. She worked two jobs, and I spent most of my time with my vavo and vavoe. They were my mom's grandparents. 15 years 5 days earlier my vavo had passed away, at around the same time, ironically. So from the age of 9 to age 24 it was me and him. At times it was hectic and stressful. He had a knee operation in 92 and had a bad reaction to the anesthesia, so I spent a lot of time taking care of him then. In April of 97 he had three massive heart attacks which left him with only 15% of his heart was working, he was in Rhode Island hospital for what may have been a week when they told us that there really wasn't much they could do for him and that they'd take him off his medication and leave him on morphine to keep him comfortable. My mom and I spent the night they expected him to die in the hospital. I stayed with him in his room, slept between two folding chairs and just kept hoping for some sort of miracle. I woke up that morning to find him looking out the window, telling me how he wants to see the sunshine...and we got 7 extra years with him. I've never really been sure that if he had the choice that day if he would have chose to stay, he always missed my grandmother so very much, he was lonely, and we spent a lot of time going in and out of the hospital. But on the flip side there was still al lot of things he wanted for me...
I really wish the people who've become close to me over the last 4 years who never got to meet him could have met him. He was the perfect little portuguese grandfather, about 5'2", big round belly, I remember him having a bad temper when I was younger (which I have inherited) but he was very friendly and mild mannered after he got sick, he once wore a shirt with penis cartoons on it to the grocery store and I don't even think he realized it. Or maybe he did and he was just lying to me! He wasn't highly educated because he only made it to 8th grade before he had to start working, but he always liked me to teach him new things, he had such a great sense of humor too, especially unintentional humor. He's just been on my mind a lot lately. I spent so many years having to take care of him, I called him everyday, was at his house at least every saturday, always had to drive from Bridgewater to Fall River to bring him to the hospital because no one else would and he would never go in an ambulance. The last year his health declined tremendously. He spent about every month in the hospital from congestive heart failure. He briefly had to rehab at the nursing home on New Boston road that I always forget the name of...I hate that place. I once mentioned that he was getting the wrong milk and his food shouldn't have salt...my nurse's response was "this isn't the ritz honey" looking back on it I'm still not sure why I didn't punch her in the face. Not before long he was back in the hospital getting surgery on his intestines and that was the beginning of the end. Complications due to age basically. Spent three months at another nursing home. He was never the same, I may have seen him smile once after that, he rarely spoke, he stared at me a lot, blankly but a lot. I planned to sacrifice for him again. I started fixing up my old room so that I could live there and take care of him. We met with his care workers on a Wednesday, he was to come home on Friday. April 9th. I figured he's be excited to go home, that's always where he wanted to die. I didn't visit him that thursday, I had every intention on seeing him, but after working and doing errands it was 8:30. I figured I'd just see him on Friday, went to bed early and was awakened with that call. Part of me thinks he didn't want to be a burden, and he was finally just ready to go. I still wonder if part of me feels guilty for not going to see him that thursday, or if it's just the worlds way of breaking my heart a little less.
I could really write so much more about this. The story is much deeper, between his dysfunctional children that treated him like junk, the way everything was thrown in to my lap, how I've really had a much harder time letting people in since then, and so on and so forth. But I just wanted to share a little, because I've really been missing him lately....
silly
amused
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3 years ago