Things Consumed

 
Memories like blurry photographs. My paternal grandfather died this week of cancer at the age of 89. He had been in poor health for a long time; the cancer had been slow-growing, and had sapped his energy for a long time. Near the end, it had spread extensively through his brain, clouding his last days intermittently with specters of people who were not physically present.

My grandfather had never really taken good care of himself, and so his accomplishment of living to 89 (or "eighty nine and a half," as my father said) is impressive.

*

I was lucky enough to get to know both of my paternal grandparents in adulthood, through frequent correspondence. (Feign surprise that I'm a zealous letter writer.) Though I had visited my Ohio and Connecticut grandparents frequently in childhood, perhaps twice a year throughout elementary school, it hadn't occurred to me until college that they might be fun to chat with beyond suddenly infrequent cross-country visits. I took up correspondence with all four of my grandparents back then, and so was lucky enough to get to know 3/4ths of them (my maternal grandfather does not write) in adulthood.

I befriended my paternal grandmother before she died of cancer in 1993. Her funeral that spring was my most recent visit to Ohio, and the last time I saw my paternal grandfather. After she died, my grandfather began to write more frequently, and I got to know him a little better.

*

My favorite exchange with him resulted in a fun running joke. My father had returned from visiting him, and had brought back photos of my grandfather playing cards without his shirt on. (I should mention that my father discouraged me casually from visiting independently, for the reason that my grandfather's neighborhood was unsafe; he visited to enjoy his siblings and parents as a family group separate from our nuclear family.) Grandpa had earned every right to be saggy, of course, but Steven made a remark, which I repeated to my father, along the lines that if grandpa was going to play cards without a shirt on, at least he should have the decency to wear a bra.

My father's family is all about humorous insults, and so this remark was promptly repeated to my grandfather.

I then received the most exclamation-filled letter my grandfather ever wrote. He wrote that he could not imagine that his precious granddaughter had been exposed to such horrific slander about him; that he had been slighted beyond all measure; and that his muscular physique had been wrongly criticized by [various epithets] whom I should never, ever associate with, since such persons could not possibly be trusted, and so on. It was completely over the top. (I don't think this particular letter went on at length about his "long, flowing, golden tressess," which were the subject of another running joke because my grandfather has been mostly bald as long as I've known him, and had never had straight or blond hair.)

I wrote back immediately to assure him that he had been wrongly informed, and that the words Steven had spoken had been garbled in transmission: I wrote that Steven had, in fact, observed a photograph of my grandfather, and had immediately remarked on how grandpa could be mistaken for Charles Atlas in his prime. (If you're too young to know who Charles Atlas was, see Wikipedia on this topic.)

My grandfather LOVED this response. He immediately called my father and read the letter aloud to him. For some time thereafter, my grandfather went by "Chuck."

*

With my grandfather's death and the packing and cleaning of his home, a raft of childhood memories of visiting my grandparents in their home is coming unmoored: up until 1993, when I visited Ohio for my grandmother's funeral, their home was almost EXACTLY as I remembered it from my elementary school visits.

The kitchen still smelled faintly of bacon fat; the huge, firm, orange lounge-recliner was just as orange; the heavy, glass ashtray that had swirls of color like an abalone shell was just as large; the enormous glass jars of bath salts in the bathroom upstairs still sat under the yellowish light of the room, looking pale pink and unused, and the room still had that same, soapy smell... The books I had read in summer visits as a child, like Alice in Wonderland, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which had long rested on a little dresser in an upstairs bedroom, were gone, replaced by a low bed and chair my grandmother used during her battle with cancer. The garden seemed too small, but it turned out my grandfather had arranged to have the detached garage widened, and so the garden really WAS too small. The windows in the dining room, the paintings on the wall, the odd little folding door on the stairwell that led to the front door just before reaching the kitchen, the cool darkness of the living room, the dining table with so many leaves... It was like my grandparents were living in a time capsule, except my grandmother was gone, and the plastic covers on the green couch (which had been on every single visit I'd had in childhood) were missing.

*

Christopher James, an author of a famous alternative process photography textbook, writes that he likes photographs taken with his plastic-lens Holga camera, which are often almost randomly focused and moody, because they are what his actual memory of places are like - not like the hyper-real, clean images one takes with a professional camera, but instead like his recollection of experiences, with sharp bits and fuzzy bits.

I think I understand what he means, though my memories of my grandparents' Ohio home are more like images I've seen taken with "Lens Babies" - there is just one part of an image that is focused, and everything around it is a blur. I could draw my grandparents home in detail.... Except for the parts that I haven't the faintest recollection of. I could draw that green couch with the plastic cover, and the lamp beside it... But I can't remember if there was anything on the wall to the left. I could tell you how many paintings with black backgrounds were hanging on the wall on the mantle... but I can't tell you if there was still a fireplace there, or if there had ever been. I could draw the little magnet my grandmother had on the refrigerator that someone had given to her, a cookie-cutter like outline of a redheaded woman in a chef's had and apron holding up the name "Dorothy," and how funny it was (since Grandma was black, yet still a redhead, and the woman on the magnet was colored in that pseudo crayon flesh color that so many knicknacks are). I could draw a floor plan of the house (though I'm completely missing a room on each of the upper floors, whichever ones I wasn't allowed to enter as a child) and layout the garden, including the rosebush I ran through while playing tag when I was very young, but can't tell you what was on the kitchen wallpaper, though I remember it had orange tones...

Memory is a funny, very unphotographic thing.

When I went back for my grandmother's funeral, I didn't take a camera, but I took a long a watercolor pad and water soluble pencils. I did sketches of my grandfather playing cards, my aunt Norma, the tulips in the garden poking out through the snow, and the purple of the evening sky through leafless trees during thunderstorms. Those images aren't photographic, but I remember making them with amazing clarity, since I made them slowly and thoughtfully. My memories that those painted sketches bring back are some of my treasured, grown-up memories of my family Ohio.

Even if I had known then that my grandparents' home and the things in it would change dramatically during my grandfather's long co-tenancy with cancer, I think it's okay that I didn't bring a camera during my 1993 visit, and so couldn't record all the things I want to remember about my grandparent's and their home. The soft-edged, slightly blurry, watercolored memories I've got are just fine.
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:21 PM

Wednesday, April 05, 2006