Beauty in the Breakdown
When I was a kid my papa would bring us bouquets of Tootsie Roll pops.
He made life seem like it was all fun and games. When we would ask if we could go swimming in the pool he’d reply “Sure, as long as you don’t get wet”. When my sister and I would visit him as kids, he would say as we were leaving: “Come again when you can’t stay so long!” The jokes were never ending. Sometimes it got on my nerves, sometimes it embarrassed me when he would ask me about mine and my sister’s imaginary boyfriends he made up for us: (Julio and Julio- pronounced hoo-leo and joo-leo). But my Papa had a very rough exit out of life. He had to have his entire nose removed because of cancer that spread pretty quickly. He was wearing a mask long before covid, long before I even graduated college.
Somewhere around 2014 he started his decline and by 2015 he was in hospice care. He still flirted with nurses and cracked jokes during his treatments. I was there with him throughout his chemotherapy (despite my busy school/work schedule) because I knew I only had a limited time with him. I knew I’d miss him and I also wanted him to know how important he was to me. More important than anything else I was doing in life. When my Papa was on his death bed he was terrified. It was heart-breaking because he had no idea what would happen. Still, he managed to crack one last joke to my sister as we left him for the final time at the hospital. “Take the monkeys to the zoo for me”, he said, referring to my niece and nephew. He knew it was the last time he’d see us.
Because of that experience with my papa, I found the value in quality time with elders. It is one of the reasons I still live in a camper in my grandparents’ back yard. Honestly, I could get a job that pays much more; one that has benefits and could afford me lavish hotel stays in exotic locations, but working for my dad allows me to spend time with him, too. I know I can’t just do this forever, or even until they all die. I shouldn’t sit my life out in order to be with others, but if it fits into the puzzle nicely as it does now, I can learn a lot just by being with family. I project all of my frustrations and all of the things that hold me back onto them. Yet they still love me, unconditionally. That allows me to work through the judgement; it allows me to talk with all of those emotions and feelings in the flesh instead of trying to work through them all in my head.
My grandma stays calm and gentle. She holds space for others and hates asking for help. Below the surface she keeps secrets and gossips. These things I notice about her are things I know about me. I love how she welcomes and cares for others and I see this as the relationship she has with death. Grandpa, on the other hand, is confused and disoriented. The dementia is taking his brain slowly. He used to have control over every aspect of his life, and now he can hardly remember when he last ate. He is not accepting the aging process and he doesn’t want to meet death. I know he is afraid, and I know this to be true about myself, despite my daring nature.
I just want to do it gracefully. I want to go in a way that is not burdensome or full of regret. I know it could happen at anytime and that I might not reach old age. But if that is the goal, I don’t want to be miserable. I don’t want to be comfortable in a recliner in front of a television that is blaring the 24-hour news cycle. I want to be experiencing others and enjoying time with them and with myself. The question I have to ask sometimes is, what is most important, experience for myself or sharing that with others. Sharing myself with others and learning from interactions. What’s the use of exploring this life if there is no one to share that with? Setting off on a quest for the sake of experience gets lonely unless others are there.
So I guess I’ve been trying to carry them with me. I’ve been taking time to understand these people that I’ve known my entire life in order to know myself better. The way they interact with me is based on how they know me to be and also what they think I know about them. All those times they tried to hide things from me or keep secrets so that I would not grow up too quickly, I understand now. I understand why they preserved my innocence because life is a book that unfurls as you read it. If you skip ahead to chapters that are before your time, you can’t make sense of why things happen. It seems cruel and torturous when you know the ending before you should. Why spend the time reading the damn book anymore? Because there are sentences that give us chills, and there are paragraphs that make us cry, and there are novels that make us fall in love. We live to experience those interactions. Everything is as it should be.
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
