Joseph P. Keene, an honorable man you were…you’re grandson loves you and wishes he was more deliberate in expressing it.
I got a text this morning from my mother that read: GM. give me a call when you get up.
This ain’t gonna be good, I thought. I was planning on getting up this cold May morning to visit my grandfather who had been suffering from advanced-stage dementia and in a nursing home, and he was 94 years old. Yesterday, my mom texted me saying that she was called by the nursing home reporting that he wasn’t doing well. That hurt. (I knew the day was coming and often tried to visualize my grandpop’s death as a coping mechanism so that I wouldn’t be totally lost due to the shock and finality of such a loss. Maybe that practice works, maybe it doesn’t… it still hurts.) I was already preoccupied with a number of things, but primarily the murder of Ahmaud Arbery (black) and how the murderers (white) hadn’t been arrested until this story blew up over social media a full two months since the killing. My mind was not in the best of spaces, so I simply texted my mother back: I’ll be there tomorrow. I need a moment. At the time I was out on a jog and shed a tear or two between strides at what I’d be seeing upon my arrival, at what I presumed was my grandfather’s deathbed. Would he look sickly? Withered? Frail? Not knowing made me anxious and so I needed a moment to mentally and emotionally prepare for tomorrow, which would have been today…
GM. give me a call when you get up.
I did as my mom instructed, even though I knew this wasn’t likely going to be good. “Pop-pop died last night…” then came a lot of one-word answers from me in response to my mom’s questions that I honestly ceased to hear fully, or understand for the remainder of that conversation. And now it’s hitting me, my grandpop is gone.
Though I knew this day was coming, and that it was near, hearing those words and knowing that it’s real, not imaginary or abstract, is hitting me differently. Maybe I should have visited him in the nursing home more, though COVID19 kind of stopped that recently, but perhaps I could have visited more before then. Maybe I could have visited my grandparent’s house before it got the point where he needed to be admitted. Maybe I should have initiated more conversations with him throughout my early twenties and throughout my own fatherhood journey. Regret…could’ves…should’ves, and what-ifs, are consuming me now and in all honesty, have been for some time. But it’s all for naught as he’s gone now… and I miss him.
Lord, please welcome my grandpop Home with open arms and words: Well done, my good and faithful servant…
