I'll Always Have His Eyebrows

Monday, June 18, 2007

Another Fathers' Day has come and gone and, like so many in years past, I spent this one without my own father. Instead, as he has in so many ways, my grandfather stood in. Over the years, as my father came in and out of my life, grandpa was always there.

Grandpa gave me my first job. He used to pay me eight dollars to mow the lawn at his auto parts warehouse on Saturday afternoons the summer I turned eleven. Actually, I didn't do much lawn-mowing. Most of the time I used to watch him mow as he gave me detailed instructions about avoiding sprinkler heads and following the grain of the grass. That's just how he is.

Now, he stands in his living room window every Wednesday and watches the grounds-crew hired by his homeowner's association pull his weeds and edge his grass. I'm sure it kills him to not be able to bound out the front door and walk right up to the mower and explain to the poor guy about mowing at forty-five degree angles.

But he can't. My grandfather, once a captain of industry with a tight handshake and a confident gait, is now a frail and tired old man. This man who frequently drove from Salt Lake City to Detroit to check on a parts order for a store in The Middle Of Nowhere, Nevada got himself all the way to a gas station near my aunt's house a few days ago only to find he couldn't remember how to put gas in his car and couldn't think of who to call to help him.

Yesterday, I sat and watch him stare, half-blankly, at eleven year-old Cindy, as she asked him to tell her about the war and the great depression. He's very early in his fight with Alzheimer's but he's already losing. He still remembers the P-38's he worked on as a young soldier in France. He still tells the story about his father throwing rocks at the train engineers so they would throw coal, the only weapon available, back at them. But he sometimes wakes up on a Tuesday and gets himself dressed for church. He sometimes pays bills that have been sitting in his desk drawer since 1987 thinking they came in today's mail.

There aren't a lot of years left when this great man will even remember who I am. Who I wonder, after he's gone, will come and stand in his place and my hero and champion?

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