Gramps (again) and a laptop

At this juncture, I am officially dedicating this blog to my Grandpa JoJo.

I’m writing this current entry on my new laptop. And let me tell you, it’s a doozy. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing yet…. Actually, yes I do. It’s a good thing. I have been saving up some bucks for a laptop for about a month or two now, not really knowing exactly how much I would spring for. Turns out that I had a stroke of good luck, and a whole lotta love shining my way from my Grandpa. For those of you not familiar with Gramps, I wrote a short post on him a few weeks ago. You can find that post here.

Gramps decided he wanted to contribute to something before I left for South Africa, he heard I was saving up for a laptop, and so told me that he was going to pay for it. The only restriction was that it had to be a really good one, and one which I would be happy with.

Damn you and your kind heart Gramps!

In light of recent developments, I have decided to extrapolate a bit on Grandpa JoJo. Gramps was down for about 5 or 6 days. He had come a few days before Father’s Day and spent Father’s Day at a big family picnic we had with the other side of the family. The rest of the time here, he spends reading whatever material is in front of him. In the mornings, after taking an hour to eat one egg, a piece of toast, 5 and a half pills, and a cup of coffee with one sugar and half and half, he’ll read the paper. But when Gramps reads the paper, he reads the entire paper. Every headline, every tagline, every article, and I believe most of the advertisements that find their way into his line of vision. Cover to cover. It’s a daunting task, but he says he’s got nothing else to do.

Grandpa has been living on his own now for 21 years. My Grandma Edy died early in my life. I was just about 2 at the time, and she had died of ovarian cancer, on Mother’s Day 1986. Gramps always kept busy after that - mainly through travel. Grandma Edy was a social butterfly like no other, and a lot of that wore off on Grandpa in his later years. He would take trips anywhere, from Africa, to India, to Italy and Antartica. He would go with a travel group and meet people thru there, or he would go on his own and make the effort to befriend another adventurous spirit.

At 91 years old, you can imagine life gets pretty lonely. That’s why he comes down about once a month, and we go up to see him every so often. It’s tough because for him, there is no rush at ALL for ANYTHING. He doesn’t care if it takes 4 hours to complete dinner with other people. He doesn’t care if totty time goes from 5:00 to 7:30 and he’s still only on his second drink. He doesn’t like to be rushed, and you can tell that he’s soaking up everything around him. The way he delicately forms a forkful of food, combining tattered broccoli pieces with scattered onions, a small piece of meat and that little bit of gravy that has collected in one corner of the plate. It’s as if he knows exactly what flavour combination he wants to experience at the moment, or just the opposite, he thinks, “Now what other delights can I form with this generous palate in front of me?”.

Gramps loves the outdoors, and always has. This past week he sat outside on the swing in the backyard, tilted on his right side, and was just staring at the trees. He wanted nothing. He was content to let his eyes wander, and take in sights that he probably had seen many times before, but never grew tired of looking at.

Anything we ever needed as a family, Grandpa would not hesitate to do for us. Nothing is as important to him as his family. It’s obvious from the pictures we have watched together - always as slides, almost never as print. Why? “This way many people can view the pictures at once.” His slides show how much he valued family. Camping trips, boating and fishing, birthday parties, communions, graduations - all standard topics for family photos. But it’s in the way he posed everyone - waiting for the right smile, the right feel, the right time. It’s also in the way he organized his photos that shows how much he cherished these memories. Every photograph he’s taken since 1947 is organized by year in tidy rectangular boxes made for slides. These rectangular boxes are in larger boxes and each large box is accompanied by a black and white composition notebook that has a description of every single slide in the order they appear. It’s pretty incredible.

I’ll get to the point. I could probably write pages and pages if not a book on my Gramps. But I’ve been in a funk the last few days and you may be able to understand why if you do the math. Gramps = 91, Joey = South Africa 2+ years, Gramps - hearing - health - energy = unknown. I hadn’t thought about the drastic changes I will come back to after 2 years of service abroad. I can only hope upon hope that Gramps will still be ok until I come back, but I can only afford to be cautiously optimistic, and nothing more.

The best thing I can do for Grandpa JoJo is to update him frequently on what it is I’m doing, and to have him read not just the newspaper, but blog entries and emails that I send out. If he knows I’m doing what makes me happy, it gives him cause to smile. On top of it all, I will update him via the internet, the complexity of which and the ease of which information can be passed along absolutely boggles his mind.

I will be able to do this with ease when I arrive thanks to Gramps. After all, he was the one who bought me this laptop.

Cheers Gramps….