Back in time

Wednesday Night
Although in many ways it seems like just another terrible thing on top of a summer that has already had more than its share of difficult moments, I'm trying to see it as a blessing that we have arrived back in Seattle just as my grandfather, in Spokane, has come down with what is probably a terminal bout of pneumonia. So, we're leaving again almost immediately. But I think I am lucky that I even can; had it been a month ago, I would probably not have known until it was done, and wouldn't have had the chance to go see him.

That was in the back of my mind when we left. Since suffering a nearly fatal heart attack a couple of years ago (I rushed over then thinking the same things that I am thinking now) he has never really recovered and instead has been on a long downhill slide during which any week could bring the bad news.

I don't know that this will actually be the end; Grandpa is pretty tough, and he lived through some things we never thought he would make it through before, so I won't count him out now until he stops fogging the mirror. It forces me to reflect, though, on what a shame it is that he will almost certainly never get to hear about our trip. Even if he pulls through this, his degradation is such that he has difficulty recognizing family members, and he hasn't shown much interest in anything the last few times I have visited him.

But it's a shame, because Grandpa was always a great traveller, and he would have loved to hear about the trip and see the pictures. He had travelled to all fifty states with the exception of New Jersey... he just "never found an excuse to go through there" in all his journeys, he said. By the time I was a teenager, he had taken me to places he had found and enjoyed seeing in twenty-five different states, and being on the road with him was one of the most formative experiences in my childhood... among the few memories I still have of those years, in fact. Burnt toast, his favorite breakfast repast, will forever remind me of waking up in the camper in some place I had never been before; and not infrequently someplace different from where I had gone to bed the previous evening, as his years of working the graveyard shift for Burlington Northern often found him awake in the early hours of the day even on vacation, which he would take advantage of by putting on more miles while I still slept. I think I felt a bit like he must have as I conned the boat along the quiet waters of the Inside Passage in the mornings as Mandy still slept below.

At any rate, we are going to go pick up my mother at the ferry terminal downtown shortly and drive to Spokane tonight to see him and stay for a bit.

- - -
Thursday Morning
Grandpa passed away about 10:30 last night, just a few hours after we arrived in town and stopped to see him. He was comatose and didn't appear to be in much pain, although his breathing was very laboured. They had him on oxygen and morphine. We chatted with each other and told him a bit about the trip, and I hope that at some level it made it through to him, even if it was just the subconscious reassurance of friendly voices in the room. The nurses and staff at the Spokane Veterans Home were wonderful to him and although it would have been better if he could have been at home, it was a physical and financial impossibility this last year. I'm just glad that we did get back in time to see him.

He didn't want a funeral so there is really nothing much to be done here. We collected his few belongings this morning and are going to dinner tonight with my grandmother, mother, aunts and uncle, and that will be about it until we scatter his ashes later this summer. He wanted it done up along the St Joe River, a beautiful place.

I feel a little flat today.

We'll probably head home tomorrow some time.