Do you believe in fate? The Norns, the hand of God, the will of Allah, the divine plan, whatever you call it, it is real.
By a series of coincidences, I was just where I needed to be, just when I needed to be there. This story requires a bit of a set-up so bear with me.
My mother’s father died a few days ago. I never really knew him very well because he lived in New Mexico for most of my life. From what I do remember, he was always kind to me. My mother is co-executor of his will so she and my father flew out to New Mexico for three weeks to settle his estate. My real concern is for my mother. Most people have two parents, she had five and Grandpa Paul was the last of them. Mom is holding up fine, but she’d say she was fine even if you dropped an eight ton truck on her foot, she’d smile and never miss a beat. Like I said, I hardly knew the guy and I only feel a sense of familial loss, I don’t know what mom is feeling.
My father’s father is my Pop-pop. His name is Carl Denver Morgan Jr. and I was almost named the Fourth after my father (the Third). I am much closer to him than my other grandfather. When I was a child in Connecticut, my Nana and Pop-pop were always around. When we moved to Savannah for a year, it was with them. When they moved to Hernando, Florida, we soon followed and landed in Jacksonville. I have never been far from my paternal grandparents. When my Nana died I was crushed, even at twenty-four years old it hit me hard. I just thought they’d always be there. It was no secret that I was Nana’s shining star and when she died I felt it cut deep.
A year later my Pop-pop had met a nice woman and they were going to get married. He took me aside and asked me what I thought of it. He asked if I thought he was trying to replace my Nana. I told him that Nana was gone and if he had a few more years left in him, why not spend them as happy as possible? You’d have to know my grandfather to know what an impact that little interaction had on me. He was a loving man but rarely talked about feelings or the like. He was one of the tough generation that believed in hard work. He busted his ass for his family and never whined about it, it was just something you were supposed to do. I got the work ethic from him and my father. I may bitch all about it here on the blog but have you ever seen me slink away from hard work? Will you ever see my family without an income? Not if I have any of my father and his father in me. Pop-pop was a hard working tough man and for him to ask my opinion on anything so personal really blew me away and I’ve carried it with me all these years.
Bring it up to the recent year… Pop-pop is starting to look old and he is having health problems. A few months ago he is diagnosed with bone cancer and he’s going through chemo. In conversations with my mom and dad about the inevitable death of Pop- pop, I mention that I’ve never been to my Nana’s gravesite. I ask where she is and they tell me that we will go check it out the next time we come down. We’ve been down a few times since and never got over there. So I looked it up online and found her gravesite. It is in Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, FL. I decided that I will go by there the next time work puts me on I-75 towards Tampa.
So, wrapping up the prequel… Sunday, just before mom and dad flew out to New Mexico, Pop-pop fell down in the kitchen and Grandma Esther has admitted him to the hospital because he is weak and breathing hard.
Ok, done with the set-up, now we are back on this week. I was scheduled for Sanford and Vero Beach on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Sanford was cancelled so I went back home and got plenty of sleep. Heffner and I got to talking and found out that he was scheduled for Craig Field, NAS-JAX and Mayport (all Jacksonville sites) this week and he lives just two exits north of Vero Beach. He asked the higher-ups why they didn’t switch us out and leave us both at home. The answer was mumbled and incoherent because there IS no reason why… So Monday night I drove to Vero but it was put off until Tuesday morning. This morning I get to site and find it under construction. The locals say we are denied access for the week. Troy tells me to drive into Gainesville and get ready for the Wednesday morning job. So I head out and because I have a whole day to get there, I decide today would be a good day to stop at Nana’s grave. I get there, take a picture, talk to my Nana and get back on the road. As I approach the exit that I would take if I were going in to Pop-pop and Esther’s place, I get the call that he is in bad shape and will probably not make it much longer. I take the very next exit and I am in the hospital within twenty minutes.
Had I been in Jacksonville or working in Vero Beach, I wouldn’t have been able to get there. If I hadn’t picked today to visit the grave I would have already been in Gainesville and possibly asleep. I was at the right exit when I was needed.
So I get to the hospital and I go in to see my grandfather. Hospital beds make everyone look so old. That guy wasn’t my Pop-pop. It was like an old Folgers coffee commercial. Some dude in an announcer booth was saying, “We’ve replaced Chris’ grandfather with another top brand, let’s see if he notices the difference.” It was strange. In another moment of strangeness, I felt like Michael Corleone showing up to the empty hospital. I just felt like, “Don’t worry pop, I’ll take care of you. Nurse, we’ve got to move this bed, we need to get him into another room, one where death won’t look for him in.” It’s funny what goes through your mind in moments like that.
I stood and sat about eight times as different people kept introducing themselves. Nurse, chaplain, head nurse, doctor, floor nurse. Lots of people checking in on him. But I just sat there and talked to him. When I first got there the social worker (cute girl but COULDN’T have been older than thirteen!) told me that he can still see and hear and will still respond. I talked to him and he squeezed my hand and I saw a bit of recognition in his eyes. After a couple of hours, even that was gone. Grandma Esther came in and she was stronger than I expected. We talked a lot and I hope I was able to comfort her in some way. She told me that she didn’t think I liked her when I first met her because of the Nana situation. I told her that not only did I not know her back then but that I was a very different person back then but I never disliked her. I held her close and told her that I am very happy that she is my family. She made the last ten years of my grandfather’s live very happy and I know that he made her life happy too. What more could you want?
I was in and out of the room making phone calls, updating the family. When I returned, I knew it was the last time. The air felt different. Pop-pop’s priest had shown up and Esther was sitting on the edge of the bed. I stood behind Esther and her daughter motioned for me to sit beside her. Esther looked up at me and said, “I think this is it, he’s going now.” We held his hand and I put my arm around her. We watched as his breathing became softer and softer. A few times she looked up and whispered “I knew it would happen but what am I going to do without him?” I held her tight and we watched and cried as Pop-pop slipped away from this world. The priest came around and I was surprised because I expected the same lines I saw on TV. He didn’t speak from the TV script, he said some beautiful lines that had no rhetoric in them, only comfort and solace. The nurse came in and listened as his heart finally stopped. We Morgans are a stubborn lot and his heart kept going for a long time after he stopped breathing. We talked, cried and said goodbye to a good man.
Grandma Esther is the last of my grandparents and because I didn’t grow up with her as my Grandmother, it feels different. My Nana died when Becca was only a couple of weeks old. To her, Pop-pop was always with Grandma Esther. But now I feel like the torch has been moved down a notch. Everyone was just elevated to the higher stratums. At the grandparent level is now my parents. At the parent level, where I used to see my mother and father is now where I sit; Teresa, myself, my brothers and my sisters. And the child level is now occupied by our children. This happened so gradually that I never saw it until the last of the grandparents vacated their thrones.
The last two in one week. Wow what a week. They are talking about a Friday or Saturday service. She asked me if I wanted a viewing or anything with the body or if I wanted the body in the church during the funeral. I felt weird answering questions like that but in my father’s absence, it fell to me. I always left the caveat of “someone else in the family might make a request but…” and I told her that he was her husband and that anything she wanted would have to be fine by everyone else. That body is not him anymore, it was just an empty shell but if she wanted to honor it through some ritual, I’d be there. Otherwise, have the service in celebration of him, not mourning his body. I tried to think of the family and what they’d want. Who was coming down for the funeral and would they want to see his body one last time? I tried to keep my own feelings on death out of the decision because most people don’t feel the way I do. I have no use for the body once the spirit within vacates. A lot of the Christians profess to feel the same way but I can’t speak for them yet here I was, doing just that. I told Esther that it was too early for decisions and that they could wait until tomorrow after she had a little more sleep.
Lots of religion around dying people. Old people and prisons. Few people find Jesus in the checkout counter at the “Kwik-Stop Grocery”. He’s always haunting the lock-ups and the old-folk’s homes. I smiled and felt genuine warmth every time they talked about “dying into paradise” or “leaning on God for strength in these difficult times” because that’s what he’s there for. That’s the whole reason for these aspects of religion. If it makes them feel better in a time of crisis, then it served its purpose and I hope they take true comfort in it. I played very nicely with the various brands of Christians and only had to dodge one direct question. I was able to use the generic “god” term when I spoke and smiled politely when I was spoken to. At one point they were discussing the differences in death rituals between Christian denominations. Grandma Esther and Pop-pop went to an Episcopalian church and she asked me, “but you’re a Baptist right?” and I went right into “Mom and dad are Baptists, yeah.” Not the time to stir that pot. This is a woman who still calls our dog (who we named Pagan) “Peggy”.
So by 5:30 I was leaving the hospital and saying goodbye. Esther is being taken care of by her two children and my sister Tammy is coming down to help with the arrangements. I am serving no real purpose here now that the hard part is done so I left and came here to Gainesville. I get to the hotel and they put me in room 125. The same room number we just spent the day in at the hospital. I’ll still be able to get my maintenance request work done tomorrow morning and then return to help out with any of the family duties. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I honestly believe I was in the right place at the right time for just the right reasons. My sister insisted on calling it an act of God, I agreed, I just didn’t specify which gods…
And as if to verify the whole thing, I was headed out toward I-75 coming to Gainesville and listening to a mix of music my Pop-pop would like. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Patsy Cline, Al Jolson… I hit a straight stretch of road and thought about how all the timing came together just right and that everything worked out fine according to however it was supposed to be. Just then a vibrant rainbow arced across the sky. It was there for a few moments and then it was gone. It didn’t fade, it just disappeared. I know a rainbow is no reliable sign but just for today, just for now, I want to believe it was there just for me.
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