My Grandpa Is Old

My Grandpa is old.

He wasn’t always old. He just became old recently.

When he wasn’t old, he made more jokes. His brain was younger. Faster. He laughed sometimes, but he’s always smirked more than anything. I’d see the smirk when we were making jokes or, as was more often the case, when he was making a joke that would make my mom mad. They don’t agree on politics a whole lot, but every once in a while my Grandpa will say something really outrageous. I watch my mom get mad. Then I watch my Grandpa smirk. I love that.

But my Grandpa is old now. He doesn’t smirk as often.

My dad’s parents died when I was young. His dad died when I was a baby and his mom when I was in elementary school. I remember her in fits and spirts, which makes me feel guilty sometimes. She was probably a really good Grandma, but my relationship with that side of the family is complicated, and her memory is more muddled than it should be. I bet she was a really good Grandma though.

My mom’s mom died when I was in high school. I won the lottery with my mom’s parents. I loved my Grandma. I know we would have been friends if she were still alive. I think most of my adult life would have made her proud, and that’s something I think about a lot. I think she would have eventually gotten over the fact that, even after a decade of living in LA, I’m still not a Dodger fan. Everything else though — everything else I think she would have liked.

I say all this because I never got to see any other grandparent get old. When my Grandma died, I was fifteen and devastated. Until the last eight months, I would randomly think about how unfair it was that she was taken so soon. That I never got to know her as an adult. That we never got to be friends in a way I think we would have been.

But now my Grandpa is old.

All of a sudden.

My mom and I have a lot of conversations about it. He can’t live alone right now. Whether that’ll change is impossible to know. Moving him into my parent’s house, or having her and my stepdad move into his house both require work and significant construction — an expense of money, time, and mental stability.

I worry more. I worry about my mom. I worry about my grandpa. I worry about the house I grew up in. I worry about the house I was an adoring granddaughter in. I selfishly worry about how this will impact me.

I worry about publishing this because I know it will upset my mom. My mom, who reads everything I put out into the world. Who was the first person to buy my book. Who sometimes goes to my Twitter profile and likes every tweet because the algorithm doesn’t always show me in her feed. My mom, who has continuously supported me and now I struggle to do the same for her in a way that really means anything. In a way that’s enough. As if that’s even a thing.

My mom, who worked incredibly hard to build a prehospital-care program that is an educational standard for other programs to emulate. My mom who, while she put me through college, was also working towards a graduate degree. My mom who retired just a few years ago, but now finds herself with a full-time job once again. She is, just as she was before I even existed, a full-time nurse. On-call constantly.

My Grandpa is old.

He is not always as nice as he should be. He is not always as appreciative as he should be. He hovers when she cooks in his kitchen. He argues about medicine. He’s combative and confused. Onery and on the offense.

Seeing my Grandpa grow old is a blessing and a curse, which is a terrible thing to say. To feel. On the days that I longed, heartsick, for just a few more minutes with my Grandma, I never could have imagined feeling like I do today. Grateful beyond words, beyond literal measurement, to have been able to see my Grandpa last weekend. An unquantifiable joy just to have been able to see him sitting in his chair.

But if the picture of him sitting in that chair is crayoned in colors of euphoria, it’s outlined in concern. Worry.

There will be a day, I know, when that worry will be gone. That outline will disappear, and the love and pure delight of having had a grandpa as I have will spill across the pages of everything I’ve ever written. Of everything I have yet to write.

So, being aware that that day will one day come, I try to be more appreciative of these days. Appreciative of a mom who brings her sewing machine to my Grandpa’s house so that she can maintain a little normalcy and sanity. Appreciative of a stepdad who’s frustrated that my Grandpa let so many plants at the house die, sure that they were my Grandma’s favorites — even though he never met her. Appreciative that he brought three fruit trees back to life — those plants probably were her favorites, and so were those fruit trees… she loved that yard and what it grew. Appreciative that he and my mom sleep in their RV, parked in my Grandpa’s driveway. The RV they bought when my mom thought she was a retired medical professional. The RV they use now to keep a little bit of normalcy. They have a space that is theirs, in a place that isn’t.

Appreciative that they’re currently staying at my Grandpa’s house because my best friend’s little sister is in town for a week, so they’re letting her and her family stay in their house.

Appreciative that regardless of all that worry, all that frustration, all that makes our days harder, even when I’m 100 miles away, I still got to see my Grandpa. To talk about the Padres. To hear him worry over the mail. To watch him do his physical therapy.

Loss is not new to me. We’ve long been acquainted. Old age, though — this is new. None of it is easier, but old age carries its own difficulties that none of us expected.

All of this to say that I think it’s ok to feel everything at once. It’s ok to feel grateful for a conversation about Wil Myers being a player the Padres should appreciate more, while also being frustrated that his main comment about the dinner my mom made is that she used the heavy plates. It’s ok to be worried that all he does it watch mindless TV with the volume up too high, while also figuring out how to build a casita in the back of his house. Or my mom’s house. It’s ok to worry about my grandpa and my mom and my stepdad while also being so damn grateful that they can’t build a casita at my apartment 100 miles away.

I don’t want to pretend that any of this is easy. It’s not. It is so so hard. This is it. This is the hard stuff.

But-

Last weekend I got to see my Grandpa. We talked about the 2020 candidates and the pilot I just finished. And I get to lock all of the conversations away. Hold onto them forever. Praying that I get to make a million more. I’m grateful for the worry. I’m grateful for the frustration. I’m grateful for the sleep lost.

My Grandpa is old.

I’m so grateful for all of it.