As he walked out of the room, he stood as tall as he ever had; he requisitioned a cold beer and a sandwich because it was now time to watch some college basketball on television. My grandfather had just finished telling me his life story which was followed by his trademark devilish grin and the ellipsis in his words, noting that he is “not done yet, still have some more hellraisin’ to do.” He may be old and down, but he’s sure not out yet, and that was the one thing he wanted me to remember.
Throughout my life my grandparents have usually lived rather close to me, so their life stories are often interwoven into the streets on which I travel. It’s easy to listen to someone talk about riding his sled down a very steep hill in the middle of the city, but to know what hill it is, how it feels, freezes and thaws is a different experience altogether. To know the places they’ve been, to have seen the places where their greatest moments of happiness, sadness, defeat and victory came together like Russian dolls to fit into the grand canvas of their lives, that is somehow different than merely being told. Looking at a slum as a dispassionate observer is one thing, but to know that your family, whose blood runs through your veins came out of there and built a life, that is a sense of awe-stricken pride that many will never know.
I’m off-topic, however, I should be writing about my grandfather’s impression on me, how he left me feeling motivated to do something with myself, how when he walked into the room everyone grew quiet, not out of fear, but out of admiration and childish excitement over the humorous stories he would tell. I could tell you about the complete self-sacrifice that has become his life as he takes care of his wife who has been stricken with Parkinson’s disease, she’s always taken care of him and now he’s perfectly content to return that favor.
I could tell you all these things, and perhaps that would be an acceptable way to end this class, with a glowing testimonial about how talking with my grandfather changed my life, made me a stronger and more confident person and taught me through just his words a better way to live. I could do that, but I’d be lying, and beyond that, I’d be cheating him, it was his life he led, and I can’t take that and turn it into a pithy little dialogue about the human spirit, or the irritatingly clichéd topic of perseverance. Because to turn a life into a dialogue is not only unfair, it’s wrong.
My grandfather is something of a polarizing figure, (think of him as the Hillary Clinton of his town) in that, most people know him, or did at one time, and not all of them like him. He’s never been a person to pull the proverbial punch, and he never will be. I know it’s incredibly trivial to try reducing a person to two pages, reducing their impression on you to six hundred words, because in reality, others have a greater influence on us than we’d like to admit, but let me try, in short, to explain.
The greatest people in the world have all been not simple, but complex people, and that is something my grandfather understands. He himself is complex, he’s worked many jobs and admits to many mistakes, but he does not dwell on these things. The things he’s most proud of, in spite of all the turmoil and strange twists on life, are the simplest things that all of us want, his family, his land and his freedom.
