So here I am - updating this for the first time in about a month. Where has the time gone? What have I done with my life? No one really cares...so why am I filling this with rhetorical questions? Don't you hate it when people do this in their journals? I do....
My grandfather died today. He had been fighting the effects of "hyper-acute oldness" for a very long time, and today was Grandpa's last stand. He died about 11:30AM. I saw him yesterday at about 3:30PM. It was the first time I had seen him in a while, and it was the first time I had ever seen anyone so close to death. Within 20 hrs of my visit to his hospital room he was dead. I'm approximately 30 years old and until 11:30AM today I had all 4 of my grandparents alive. Now I'm down to 3; with one of my grandmothers not looking so hot. I fear that the next five years will find me burying most of my elder family members.
This is supposed to be a very sad thing....yet I'm not all that sad. All the sadness I feel at my grandfather's passing is because my Mom (he was my Mom's father) is understandably upset. I never really knew him. My grandmother divorced my grandfather in the late 60's due to the fact he was a philanderer and an alcoholic. I never saw him when I was growing up. I can count on ten fingers and ten toes the number of times I've seen him in the last 30 years - most of them having been within the last 5 years when he entered the retirement home.
I have a distinct memory from when I was about 7 years old of "granddad leaving the house early" when he was supposed to be visiting us for a much longer period of time. I later found out Mom kicked him out after he came home drunk. Apparently Mom had enough of that when she was a kid - she wasn't going to let him do that in her house around her children.
Grandma once told me she had it all planned out how she was going to kill him - down to destroying the evidence. She decided to divorce him instead.
He's gone now. I'm not happy about it - but I'm not sad. He caused a lot of people a lot of pain. Yet, in his prime, he was an amazing doctor who eased the pain of thousands of his patients. He was a great musician - I'm told I inherited his "ear" for music and his technical skill. We even played the (sort-of) same instrument: he played the Eb Clarinet, I play the Bass Clarinet. Before he opened his practice he was a medic with the Marines and was with the main force that occupied Guadalcanal in WWII. He undoubtedly saved many lives in the hellish conditions of that war.
He was a great man - and he was an unconscionable bastard. He seemed to elicit strong opinions from people. He was a charmer with the ladies, even while in hospice care - yet the woman he chose to have two kids with refused to speak to him ever again; even after he asked for her forgiveness while in the same hospice care.
H. L. Mencken wrote, "To the living we owe respect. To the dead, only the truth." What do I say about granddad? Well, the truth is he lived and died mostly outside of the realm and influence of my life. Yet, his legacy was always there - in the hurt he caused my Mother and Grandmother and in the deeds and accomplishments of his successful medical practice.
It's too simplistic to look at his life and say he was a "good" man or a "bad" man. He was a man, for better and for worse, who did good and bad things. Maybe if his father hadn't been such a bastard to him and had just once said, "I love you and I'm proud of you" he would have turned out differently. Can you blame a man for not knowing how to properly show others love when he, himself, never knew it growing up?
Yet he did know how to love and my Mom has told me that she clings to those moments when she was a child and my granddad made her feel like the most special, beautiful, little princess in the whole world - something, I imagine, almost all little girls want from their fathers. She says that's the "real" man - the rest is a cruel, irresponsible facade.
From an outsider's perspective I don't think that's so. I think they're both "real" - it's the contradiction that was my grandfather. He, more than anyone I've met, through the simple act of living, equally and at the same time, embodied the ability we have within us to make this world either a beautiful or a rotten place.
He did both.
And that is the simple truth.
====================================================
I have many, many wonderful student anecdotes to share that I've been compiling over the last month. Here's my two favorite...
* Favorite student answer to a question:
"Alright....I'm going to structurally deconstruct post-structuralism. Is that okay?"
* Favorite complaint from a foreign-born student:
"The ride home was hell. My mom was so pissed at me that she yelled the entire way home. What sucked about it is that I got chewed out in TWO languages at the same time."
My grandfather died today. He had been fighting the effects of "hyper-acute oldness" for a very long time, and today was Grandpa's last stand. He died about 11:30AM. I saw him yesterday at about 3:30PM. It was the first time I had seen him in a while, and it was the first time I had ever seen anyone so close to death. Within 20 hrs of my visit to his hospital room he was dead. I'm approximately 30 years old and until 11:30AM today I had all 4 of my grandparents alive. Now I'm down to 3; with one of my grandmothers not looking so hot. I fear that the next five years will find me burying most of my elder family members.
This is supposed to be a very sad thing....yet I'm not all that sad. All the sadness I feel at my grandfather's passing is because my Mom (he was my Mom's father) is understandably upset. I never really knew him. My grandmother divorced my grandfather in the late 60's due to the fact he was a philanderer and an alcoholic. I never saw him when I was growing up. I can count on ten fingers and ten toes the number of times I've seen him in the last 30 years - most of them having been within the last 5 years when he entered the retirement home.
I have a distinct memory from when I was about 7 years old of "granddad leaving the house early" when he was supposed to be visiting us for a much longer period of time. I later found out Mom kicked him out after he came home drunk. Apparently Mom had enough of that when she was a kid - she wasn't going to let him do that in her house around her children.
Grandma once told me she had it all planned out how she was going to kill him - down to destroying the evidence. She decided to divorce him instead.
He's gone now. I'm not happy about it - but I'm not sad. He caused a lot of people a lot of pain. Yet, in his prime, he was an amazing doctor who eased the pain of thousands of his patients. He was a great musician - I'm told I inherited his "ear" for music and his technical skill. We even played the (sort-of) same instrument: he played the Eb Clarinet, I play the Bass Clarinet. Before he opened his practice he was a medic with the Marines and was with the main force that occupied Guadalcanal in WWII. He undoubtedly saved many lives in the hellish conditions of that war.
He was a great man - and he was an unconscionable bastard. He seemed to elicit strong opinions from people. He was a charmer with the ladies, even while in hospice care - yet the woman he chose to have two kids with refused to speak to him ever again; even after he asked for her forgiveness while in the same hospice care.
H. L. Mencken wrote, "To the living we owe respect. To the dead, only the truth." What do I say about granddad? Well, the truth is he lived and died mostly outside of the realm and influence of my life. Yet, his legacy was always there - in the hurt he caused my Mother and Grandmother and in the deeds and accomplishments of his successful medical practice.
It's too simplistic to look at his life and say he was a "good" man or a "bad" man. He was a man, for better and for worse, who did good and bad things. Maybe if his father hadn't been such a bastard to him and had just once said, "I love you and I'm proud of you" he would have turned out differently. Can you blame a man for not knowing how to properly show others love when he, himself, never knew it growing up?
Yet he did know how to love and my Mom has told me that she clings to those moments when she was a child and my granddad made her feel like the most special, beautiful, little princess in the whole world - something, I imagine, almost all little girls want from their fathers. She says that's the "real" man - the rest is a cruel, irresponsible facade.
From an outsider's perspective I don't think that's so. I think they're both "real" - it's the contradiction that was my grandfather. He, more than anyone I've met, through the simple act of living, equally and at the same time, embodied the ability we have within us to make this world either a beautiful or a rotten place.
He did both.
And that is the simple truth.
====================================================
I have many, many wonderful student anecdotes to share that I've been compiling over the last month. Here's my two favorite...
* Favorite student answer to a question:
"Alright....I'm going to structurally deconstruct post-structuralism. Is that okay?"
* Favorite complaint from a foreign-born student:
"The ride home was hell. My mom was so pissed at me that she yelled the entire way home. What sucked about it is that I got chewed out in TWO languages at the same time."
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
Anyhow, here is my student story from Fridays foods class...
Student 1(white kid): Ms. Sparkle we need to ask you a question over at our table
Student 2 (latino kid): Do you think Student 3 (Philipino kid) is brown or yellow?
Me: What do you mean??
Student 2: well his skin,
Student 4 (Indian kid): I think I'm brown and he's yellow, more like Asians
Student 3: no, I'm not Asian, so I'm brown
Student 1: I'm whitey
Me: Student 3, what ever colour do you think you are, thats what you are, it doesn't matter what I think
Student 2: but Ms. Sparkle do you think he's brown or yellow?
Circle of debate continues...
So you get BIG OL' COMMENT # 3202.
Hope you're having fun somewhere... cuz I see you're not here.