Oh, the Fickleness of Memories

My grandpa's eightieth birthday is nearly here, and as part of a big celebration, my aunt requested that we write a memory of him. Only I've run across a problem: most of my memories of him are sketchy, at best. Prior to my grandma's death, most of my memories are of the pair of them--and to be quite frank, more of her than of him. Her player piano. Her: teaching me how to play Scrabble while my parents were insisting I was still too young. (The closest to a jolly, happy, little memory I get is thinking of the many times I played Scrabble with him, while insisting I wanted to play with Grandma. Grandpa, you see, has always had a tendency to add -er to any verb and insist that it's a word--the person, you see, who performs the verb. Frowners are people who frown, likewise smilers are people who smile. You get the idea.) Both of them taking us out to lunch on our birthdays, but Grandma insisting we eat everything, including the lackluster tomatoes on our burgers... "Katie, some child in Bosnia would love to eat that tomato." "Can't we just ship it off to Bosnia, then?" (I just dated myself, didn't I?)

Herein lies my problem: I have one absolutely concrete memory of him, but I feel less than comfortable writing it down and including it in his birthday book. Not too long after Grandma died, little teenage me strongly felt that Grandpa needed some company. He seemed so lonely and lost to me, leaving our family house in Centerville to return to what now seemed such an empty place in Kaysville. So I stubbornly insisted that I be allowed to spend some time with him, and he reluctantly brought me with him back to his house. I'm sure we talked, but I don't remember what about. School, books, all those things that were important to me. And when I say "we talked," what I mean is that I remember jabbering at him a lot. (Yes, yes. For all of you who know me well, some things don't much change. I still have a tendency to jabber.)

Anyhow. He opened the refrigerator to a myriad of prepared, packaged meals that my aunts had left behind with labeled instructions, and heated one of them for dinner. But what I remember most is that after I had gone to bed that night, I kept waking up periodically, and I could hear him pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. Every time I woke up. When I mentioned it in the morning, he said he wasn't used to sleeping without Grandma yet. And when he dropped me off in Centerville, he looked every bit as lost and lonely as he had when he left our house. And I felt...utterly useless. Like I'd tried to do something good and nice for him, and I'd absolutely failed.

So hopefully you can see why this doesn't really work as the type of 80th birthday memory one might want to include in a book otherwise full of happy stories. I don't want to say, Happy Birthday, Grandpa!, my strongest memory of you is when you were at your saddest, when you were having one of the hardest times, and when I felt I failed you. It hardly seems festive.

Scrabble's far safer a topic.