Blessings and Curses

Blessings and curses is an apt enough title for this blog post I do believe. My family, at least mom’s side, and just about everyone they’ve ever married into except for my dad, have been blessed with good lifespans; aside from accidents and death in wars, they tend to live into their late seventies to their early nineties. Yet with that blessing of longevity, there’s also a curse that we rarely speak of, because it’s not polite to do so, nor do we really like to remind ourselves of it too often. When we die, we do so in great pain and at great lengths. When the doctors call the family in, we know it will be days or even weeks until the suffering is at an end, that’s the way it always is; with my grandfather they called us in twice, and he continued to suffer for years after those times in a nursing home, rendered unable to move or mostly speak from his stroke.

It was, I guess, inevitable, that one of us would one day buck this awful curse and tell it where it could go shove itself. A little over a month ago, maybe a bit more now, my uncle’s father was diagnosed with aggressive stage four cancer that apparently began in his prostate. By the time it was discovered, it had spread throughout his body. The diagnosis was bleak at the least; there were no treatments that would work, he was going to die. Had he talked to the priest yet?

No I’m not kidding, the doctor and his secretary actually asked at the diagnosis if he had been talking with his priest. Telling him that the folks at church would do their best to help him around the house, and if he needed it, spiritually as well as he approached the end of his life. For that, I am extremely thankful; he had just started going back to church shortly before his diagnosis, and maybe he knew something was up. Maybe not. I don’t know if the doctor’s suggestion sparked anything in him or not; I do know that a week or so ago my aunt called over there and a person answered the phone saying he would have to call her back, that Pete was receiving the Eucharist at the moment. After years away from the Church, he had had them bring him the Host in his home because he was too sick to make it to the Mass.

We weren’t related by blood, but we were still reasonably close. My grandfather that I truly considered to be a grandfather, on mom’s side, died in the very early part of this decade; my stepgrandfather on dad’s side I never knew died when I was like three; my grandfather on dad’s side died semi-recently but I never met him in my lifetime…my father’s dad was persona non grata to us after trying to strangle my father to death while drunk when dad was a child. Pete was like a grandfather to me in these years since my grandfather on mom’s side died, and I think I was a lot like a grandson to him. He treated me just as he did my uncle’s children, his grandchildren by blood, and would always be making sure I was doing well in school and that I was eating alright.

It's so weird to know that he's gone now. I don't believe it's really set in, a part of me still is probably in denial about the whole thing, you know? He was always so strong and vigorous, so full of energy. Even into his eighties he would still be playing eighteen holes of golf and still have energy left to spare as his son and the other golfers who were half his age or even younger were complaining about how tired they were. He smoked when he was younger, but in my lifetime he had long since quit and ate healthy, watching his diabetes like a hawk with vigilance that anyone would have been proud to have. It was only towards the very end that he began to show any sign of frailty, and sense of slowing down; the man who survived Iwo Jima when so many of his friends did not, could not win a war with the cancer within his own body.

I'll miss him, and I know when his death truly sets in for me, I will grieve in my own way. I already am, by writing all of this out, by sending thank you notes to those who prayed for he and for our family; but eventually the duties of death will stop, and I will be left alone and given time to gather my thoughts. That, that is when the enormity of it will finally settle in; I will never hear his voice again as he asks how I'm doing in school, I'll never give him another Christmas gift, we'll never sit there and watch golf at my uncle's again, and so many other little things that may seem inconsequential from the outside, but made up the minutiae of our relationship.

I can only hope and pray that he swiftly finds his way to Heaven and that he is reunited with his love of more than fifty years, Catherine, at whose funeral I served as a pallbearer last year. God bless you Pete, may we meet again in the next life. Until then you will stay in my prayers, along with others who have passed, including your beloved wife.