Our last trip Out East started with a brief visit to my hometown in Central Massachusetts. Most of my family had yet to meet my son, who was already 15 months old. My mother, from whom I'd inherited my love of food, was in the middle of a major kitchen renovation, which I simply needed to see. And, finally, I needed to make a trip to a rehabilitation complex beside the old St. Vincent Hospital on Worcester's Vernon Hill. My grandfather was dying. I wanted him to meet the baby who would carry on his name.
Calling it a "rehabilitation complex" is a bit of a misnomer. "Rehabilitation" implies an ability to restore one's former self. But my grandfather was fallen by a series of mini-strokes, lashes from a whip within his circulatory system, each one cutting deeper into his mental facilities, even as his physical self remained as strong as pug-nosed boxer.There was no rehabbing him, just has there was little chance of restoring any of men on his floor to their former selves. Old cars can be rehabbed, old homes reclaimed, old furniture refinished, old gardens replanted. But age, despite all the promises of the pharmaceutical industry, moves in only one direction.
When we stepped off of the elevator I was surrounded by hospital smell. His floor was set up like any other hospital floor, with a front desk sitting before the elevator. I'd imagine this was to keep an eye on who was coming in, but just as important was who may be making a break for it. Like any unit seeking to present itself, the walls were decorated with cutouts and tourism posters from Ireland and Italy, a clear tip to the former neighborhood. On each door were back and white photographs of the men you'd find inside the rooms, waiting for their next dose of pain killer, or next packet of applesauce, or next attempt at a walk to the bathroom. But they weren't contemporary pictures. They were of handsome teenagers in uniforms of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines.
My grandfather didn't recognize me. When we told him I'd come from Chicago he was even more confused. He had no idea who my wife was either, but he was fairly confident that he'd seen her somewhere before. After a few efforts to place her at family party in the 1940s, he surrendered. Besides, the baby was far more interesting. I'm sure that by the end of the visit he knew that it was his great-grandson, the first to carry the Jakubiak name. The way we got there wasn't by telling him, it was by touch and smell. Within a few minutes of holding him, he began offering him gifts, puzzles that were meant to help an old man stay sharp, a thing you squeeze as part of physical therapy, a pair of socks emblazoned with a Polish flag. But then he wanted to give his great-grandson the award he'd won at a Polka Contest. He looked in his drawers for the certificate. He asked me look up on the sink and on top of his dresser. It was apparent we wouldn't find it.
The mood changed. "They took it," he told, me. "They stole it. You can't keep anything here. They take everything away from you. You need to hide things, because if they find it, they take it." He then asked me to slip the socks back into his drawer, but asked that I bury them beneath some papers and a his "memory book," a collection of photos of everyone in the family.
"Where did you say you came from?" he asked me again.
"Chicago," I said.
"Chicago. That's a big town. A lot of Polish girls there," he offered. "That's a long way. You came all the way from Chicago to see me?"
"We did," I said. "It's been too long."
He then looked at my father. "And where'd you come from?"
"Grafton," my father said.
"Grafton. That's right down the road. What's been keeping you."
"I was here yesterday," my father reminded him.
"Oh, right. And you've come to take me home?"
He waved me closer.
"OK, the lady's gone. On three we get out of here," he whispered.
Growing up I barely knew my grandfather. He had a strange form: long torso, short legs, wide feet, and the big, leathery hands of man who'd worked in construction and at a town dump. Occasionally we'd visit the house my father grew up in. Usually it was to pick to something up or to help haul something away. On each of these trips, my brother and I had one goal -- avoid my grandfather, avoid the slobbery wet kiss he'd glaze on our faces.
We never went there for dinner, or to grill, or dig in the garden. Once or twice there were parties there. There was a pool table jammed into the basement so snug that it left almost no room for a cue to be held at anything sort of an 85-degree angle. And then there was the Burt Reynolds poster that my grandmother had hung over her washing machine. If you remember the 1980s, you know they poster I'm talking about.
Right after I got married, the two of us visited my grandparents at their home. This was before the start of the strokes. I'd planned to stop by for five minutes and talk about the wedding and show them a few pictures. But something unexpected happened. My grandmother invited us into the living room to sit down and talk. They wanted to share some stories with us, stories that they weren't sure that we'd ever heard.
They began by telling us about the violin lessons. My grandmother had played the violin as a young person, and when my grandfather, a stranger, first approached her, she scoffed at him. So, like any diligent suitor, he decided he'd enroll in violin lessons, too. That's how they met. They'd practice violin together, the ydanced, and they got married. And then, well, The War was going on, and it was my grandfather's turn to serve.
When he first arrived at basic training, my grandfather knew what he was going to do. He'd get into the Corps of Engineers. His father owned a construction company and he'd been driving a bulldozer his whole life. How many of the guys back then, of that age, could boast that experience? It was a perfect fit, he could go into the army and drive a bulldozer.
The Army made him a medic, and sent him to Texas.
In Texas, he told us, he was surround by country boys, big boys, oxen from all over the place, places like Texas and Nebraska and Oklahoma and Georgia, places that had never heard of Worcester. And so, it didn't take long for my grandfather to get another name -- Boston. The problem was in Texas, in the 1940s, even in The Army, the name "Boston" wasn't a compliment. And, being undersized and less than intimidating, he decided he needed to take action. So he engaged in a series of acts to convince those around him that he was crazy. It worked. He made it through training as the wacky guy.
Then, in the spring of 1944 he received his orders. He was to head to New Jersey and would ship out with a convoy on March 17. But a couple days before he was to ship out, something happened. He told us it had to do with a U-Boat. His deployment was delayed. He sent word back to Worcester and invited his wife down to New York to see him off, they could even spend St. Patrick's Day together in The City.
By December, he knew his first child was due. He'd landed at Normandy and by the end of the year was towards the back of the line in the Ardennes. History books tell us that the Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944 and ended on January 25, 1945. As the early part of the German offensive began, my grandfather admitted that his focus was split. Every day when the mail truck would come through, he'd dash towards it, looking for news. Then one morning, he didn't remember the day, a new driver came through the small village where a number of wounded from the front were being treated. The mail depot was outside of the village, and the driver, nervous, didn't know how to get there. My grandfather offered to help, and was given leave to accompany the mail. The truck pulled out of the village and up a long hill, he recalled. As they made the turn into their destination, no more than a mile away, the German shells whistled down on the spot he'd just left. The mailman asked him if he was Jakubiak, and told him that he had a letter. My father had been born on December 19.
"I've never told him this," my grandfather confided in me. "But I truly believe that your father saved my life."
As we pulled out of the rehabilitation center I felt as if I'd betrayed my grandfather. I knew there was no way that I could care for him. I knew that he'd lashed out on several occasions, physically attacking attendants before being hauled down and drugged up. I knew that he'd gotten a bandage on his head in a fit of rage, when he declared that he didn't need a God damned walker, and if she didn't believe him she could watch him pirouette!
"He thinks he's in a Nazi POW camp," my father told me. "Not every day, but some days. He thinks we turned him over. Some days he'll have a good day. One day he told me that he escaped and walked all the way home. That was a pretty good day."
Last night my grandfather died just before 9 p.m.
His last days were spent in hospice with a morphine drip. "He was comfortable," my father assured me.
His ending was torture. It wasn't violin lessons and pushing earth with bulldozer. It was the nightmare that dwelt in the leather of his hands. It was the whistle of a mortar. But now, thank God, it's over. I wonder if peace will ever really come for my grandfather. But I have hope. It's the look he had for that brief moment when he recognized his great-grandson, despite his brain's failures. It's knowing that I can tell the story of father's birth announcement, even though he held it silent for 60 years.
It's my faith that death is end of rehabilitation. It's the ascension of the memories family carries forward. Now, at last, I have the power to release his pain and fill those places with stories of love of a veteran, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, and a man with leather hands.
