h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know what to say either, some times. But thanks for mentioning that you read it. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed it.

When we used to visit my grandma and grandpa on the farm near Assumption, Illinois, my borther and I slept in a stained pine-panelled room that had a collections of strange things in it.
On the wall were two pictures cut out of magazines or calenders and framed.
l. Jesus with his robe open and his bleeding heart standing proud of his chest with a crown of thorns around it and a nimbus illuminating it. This is a frightening image for a couple of little protestant boys. We refused to let them turn out the lights until we were asleep.

2. A colored photo of two black and white collie puppies against a bright blue sky. Now that was comforting. For years afterward we referred to the puppies as "Jesus Doggies".

The grandpa died of surgery for a brain tumor two years after he retired from farming.
the grandma died after a bout with abdominal cancer a couple of years later.

Man, isn't that how it always goes? I heard a scary statistic that average life expectancy after age of retirement is one or two or three years. Makes me want to call in sick to work a whole lot more, before it's too late.

That piece I wrote is probably unfair to my grandmother and to Jesus. I'm not too worried about dissing Jesus, but grandma probably got a lot of comfort out of the idea of him during her lifetime. Our grandparents probably all thought they were helping us or comforting us by turning us into god-fearing tots. The road to childhood nightmares is paved with good intentions and scary pictures of Jesus.

Well, I think it was very unfair of the gospel writers to leave out Jesus dogs. Simply disgraceful.

Not the best of words, 'touching', these days. It may have become its own opposite by force of overuse. I don't know. What I *do* know is that this piece 'touched' me. My religious views don't come into it. I don't have memories of scary Jesus pictures. I do have memories of trying to bring love and comfort to an old man that I loved very much when he underwent a complete transformation and the life slowly ebbed from his mind and body. It was painful. It seemed tragic. Such is life.

I prefer to believe that if I (and others that loved him) had not been there for him, even when he seemed not to acknowledge my presence at all, the end would have been worse for him. Arrogance. No, I don't think anyone would call it that. Some may say that it is a selfish need for re-assurance that I *was* doing *something*. I know that I did it partly for me, and for members of my own family who also loved the man. We didn't recognise the person we had known and loved, but we knew that we *had* loved him, that he was still alive and that we *still* loved him. In the end, I don't know who was bringing what to whom. I just needed to be there for him.

Now he is gone and that thought never makes me sad. I will never see his lively eyes again nor hear the cackle that he produced when something amused him. Things often did.

When my brother managed to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood to a sufficient level to visit the death-bed of the jolly old soul who had been such an inspiration to us as children, he didn't stay long.

"That's not Grandad," is all he said. Perhaps he was right. We both knew that Grandad was the man who cackled. This man in front of him could barely rasp out each laboured breath.

Death sucks, eh. But sometimes I say the same thing about life. I saw a man die who I had seen live. I want to live. And as long as I do, he too lives on in some small way.

Sp

That's kind of like my thoughts about homeless people, of which I have been one, once, and my uncle the Marine, was one: they are the ghosts of the inattentive.

Thanks, Spiff.

It is pretty heart-breaking to see the changed person left over after their mind starts disintegrating. But it's also like little kids. A two year old neice is still family, and fun to hang out with, even if she can't discourse on current events. (Sorry, I don't mean to imply that you would be like that.) What I mean is that the way I relate to my grandmother now is similar to the instinctual, animal-level way that I relate to small babies or toddlers.

When I first introduced my wife to my grandparents, my grandmother could still talk, but she could hardly form complete sentences anymore. She was on the level of a 3 or 4 year old child, sometimes more lucid, sometimes less. But the first time my grandmother saw my wife, there was a sort of animal magnetism between them, and they connected. My grandmother started saying, "I love you!" and repeating it and hugging my wife. Maybe gramma thought she was an old friend, or one of her sisters or something. Maybe she exclaimed, "I love you!" to everybody who visited, but it seemed to me that gramma just understood how friendly Melinda is. The way you can smile at a two year old and they decide in an instant whether to fear you or follow you around like a puppy.

I guess that doesn't make it any less tragic to hang around that person who's drastically changed, but you can still have new, positive experiences with them while they go through that horrible period.

*sadness*
My grandfather is a similar way, though his passiveness is enforced by his ears and eyes, not his brain. Or so they tell me - I can't communicate with him well enough to tell.

I'm not scared of death - but old age terrifies me...

Not as much as having to think of a stranger I raised 'taking care' of me.