One of the many things I like about Facebook? You get to learn things about your family that you otherwise probably wouldn’t have known.
The man laying on the ground in the picture above is my grandfather – my dad’s dad. He fought in World War II.
I’m just going to post what my Aunt posted on Facebook …
Dan said his dad never talked about the war much (who could blame him) but he would tell us this story often.
One day there was an order to head out, so some of his buddies got into the jeep. Right before Leroy got in, his commanding officer said “Hutton you stay”. That jeep was hit and Leroy lost good friends. He would say to us, “If I would have gotten in, you all would have never been here, that saved my life”. Glad he didn’t get in!”
Isn’t it amazing to think that one moment in time, that one split second decision my grandfather’s commanding officer made, led us to this moment: Four children, ten grandchildren, nineteen (?) great grandchildren later.
It sort of boggles the mind when you stop to think about it.
My grandfather is in his early nineties now. We lost my grandmother, my dad’s mom, about … three years ago (?). She developed dementia toward the end of her life and it was a terribly sad way to say goodbye. It was very hard on my parents, I know. And now my grandfather is being moved to a nursing home today because we have reached the point where he can’t take care of himself and it’s physically too hard on my family to help. (He’s wheelchair bound and he requires physical assistance to get into bed, go to the bathroom, etc).
This is INCREDIBLY hard on my grandfather. He’s FIERCELY independent, has been his whole life, so now that he is being forced into this situation, well, it’s been difficult, to say the least.
My parents came over yesterday and they filled in the details. It was heartbreaking to listen to the anguish in their voices and watch tears gather in their eyes.
My grandfather begs them to take him home. He doesn’t want to go to the home. Who can blame him?? But though my family tried to take care of him in his home for one week, the situation is simply more than any of them can handle. They’re trying to make deals with my grandfather, work hard, participate in physical therapy, work on his strength so that he can at least walk on his own again and then they can take him home and work on a schedule to have someone with him at all times. But my grandfather is being stubborn. I’m sure the whole situation is embarrassing and humiliating for him. I see this in patients every day at work. It’s SO HARD to succumb to physical restrictions and have to rely on other people to help you when you’ve been so used to being on your own, taking care of yourself, your whole life.
This situation makes me think of my own parents a lot. They’re getting up there in age, too. Though they are still both relatively young and stay physically active (they go to a gym to walk and socialize every day), I can see early signs of dependency. It brings a lump to my throat to think me and my siblings may be in a similar boat one of these years. And though you can promise you’ll never, ever, put your loved ones in a home, you can’t TRULY promise that. I think this situation with my grandfather has taught me that. All you can do is the best you can do for the situation you find yourself in.
I also wonder how our boys will react when Kevin and I reach that age. Getting older has never really bothered me before, but honestly, seeing my grandfather’s situation has opened up doors I never really knew existed before.
I learned that being in a home, a DECENT home, is terribly expensive. This will likely put a huge dent in my grandfather’s money. I have no idea how much he has, it’s really none of my business how much money he has, but knowing my family, he likely has a nest egg somewhere he can rely on to help him through this stage. I feel terribly sorry for people that DON’T have that money to fall back on.
Kevin and I have talked about making sure we have a will. But I’m not sure we have ever really discussed our plan if one of us ends up in a nursing home. I have made Kevin promise me he will never put me in a home, and vice versa, but my grandfather’s situation has taught me, it’s never quite that black and white.
I worry that dementia runs in our family. I mentioned my grandmother had it and there are signs my grandfather might have it, too. I’ve always worried about my own memory – I have trouble remembering things NOW. What will I be like when I reach my twilight years?
I think that’s one big reason I refuse to retire. Which, I realize is unrealistic, my body will deteriorate … I realize this. But I hereby pledge to work on keeping my mind active. I’m not saying my grandparents did not do that, dementia is not something you can likely prevent, but I will do everything in my power to keep it at arm’s length.
In the meantime, life trudges on. All we can do is try and keep pace with it.
Filed under:
Life 
I come from a long line of brunettes - dark chocolately brunettes who, due to the nature of pigmentation, start to go gray anywhere from 16 (my mother) to 20 (me). In the beginning, I had a lone silver hair or two that I would viciously pluck. But as they multiplied, and vanity kicked in, I started to dye them.
The first time I dyed my hair, I was fourteen years old and about to enter my sophomore year in high school (yeah, I was a little young for my grade - that's what happens when you have a January birthday). I dyed it black to be like my then-idol, Winona Ryder. Coal black is not the most flattering color on a sallow-skinned teenager with too many zits; it didn't help that I avoided the sun at all costs that summer so as to try to cultivate a creamy, pale Winona-esque skin tone (but again: nature wasn't on my side there, as I have that Eastern European yellow-ness that often leaves people guessing that I'm Hispanic - ironic because I look more Hispanic than my half-Mexican fiance). I remember my classmates at the small private school I attended from fourth through tenth grades commenting on the black hair as a sign of "rebelliousness," which was of course what I was going for but in hindsight seems kind of childish of me.
Anyway, in college I played with various shades of red, running the gamut from a coppery brown to dark, hennaed Lucille Ball kind of hue (this happened when I was in London, of all places, after I got a crazy short haircut - well, short for me, shorter than I'd ever had it before - and Lauren convinced me I needed to go BOLD). But, eventually I grew out of wanting to play with color and went back to my (literal) roots and started dyeing my hair to match the chocolately brown that surrounding and increasing number of stray grays.
The older I got, the more gray sprouted through - and when you have almost-black hair naturally, you can really see those grays. Plus, I have very fine, very thin hair, and the grays come through coarse and wiry. So about every three months, I would hit the bottle and wiped out my stubborn grays.
Then, this summer, I ended up landing the interview that got me my new job. The night before my first interview, I'd planned on dyeing my hair, but a series of events conspired that kept me from doing so (including a wardrobe crisis, but that's another post for another day). So I didn't dye it, and it made me feel weird and self-conscious.
Color me surprised when every single woman I interviewed with that day had decided to go gray gracefully. And they all looked lovely and natural and like they had more important and/or fun things to do with their time than worry about pigmentation. I'd decided it was kind of fortuitous that I hadn't had the time to touch up my roots, and made a conscious decision not to dye my hair prior to the follow-up interview. And hey - I'm pretty sure that's not why I got the job, but I didn't want to mess with a good thing. So I stayed dye-free.
Only then I entered into this new "shortest-hair-of-my-life" phase (or, as my mom likes to call it, "practically bald"). It's more of an ultra-short pixie cut, actually, created in part to correct a botched haircut I got in September that left me with a mullet. Fun fact: most of my botched haircuts leave me with mullets, or at the very least, an uglier version of Mrs. Brady's shag. Anyway, Dorothy at the Hair Cuttery in College Square Shopping Center (who's fabulous, by the way - request her by name), helped me get rid of the mullet but the result was this ultra-short pixie. I liked the cut, because it's really easy to take care of, but best of all IT'S NOT A MULLET.
However.
Ultra-short pixie cuts reveal just HOW many grays a girl like me has. I had to keep plucking one particularly wiry strand that was determined to stick straight up on my head. I cringed every time I saw silver in the mirror. I'm still a few months shy of my 35th birthday, and I'm already growing more and more con
Approaching a birthday this summer, and about to lose my vision coverage, I decided to go get my eyes checked just for the heck of it. I wasn’t having any problems seeing, but it seemed a waste to let any chance for healthcare slip away. So, I made an appointment and sat in the waiting area with all those poor people who aren’t blessed with great eyes like some of us. When I met the doctor, I confidently shook his hand, knowing that we wouldn’t be seeing anymore of each other after he checked my vision. After a couple of tests (which I breezed through with my super great eyes), I waited for the doctor to say he’s never seen such great vision in a forty-three year old and that I hav
e the eyes of a teenager. But he didn’t say that. Or anything like it. What he said was, “Which frames would you like?” I was devastated. Glasses? Worse, reading glasses like some porch-rocking old lady? It’s not enough that gravity has had its way with me? I have to go blind as well? I exaggerate, of course, but I still desperately begged the doctor to tell me what I did to bring this fate upon myself and his response was, “Kept having birthdays.” Which is preferable to the alternative, but it still really stinks. In Tedd Arnold’s More Parts, one little guy goes to great lengths to protect what he’s got. I really need to start doing that.
http://www.amazon.com/More-Parts-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0803714173
http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00002322.shtml
