When He Starts Forgetting Things

Elderly couple holding hands.

I gave my grandfather a hug, his shoulders thin and drooping. He was never a large man, but age and illness have shrunken him even further. At 5'4" I stand taller than him, and at 150 pounds, I outweigh him by a couple dozen. I am strong and sturdy, and my grandfather feels like the maple leaves in late October; dried out and thin, with just a bit of color left in his cheeks. Nothing makes the sky seem greyer than watching someone transform from a strong, capable man to a shadow of himself. I thought about the summers I spent with my grandparents, how my grandfather built stone walls with nothing but his strong, sinewy arms and had a garage full of tools and trinkets. He could fix anything. The men in my family are all fixers, and they have ruined me. I had to learn the hard way that not all men can rewire the electrical circuits in a barn or fix a washing machine or change a tire. Not all men can see what is broken and fix it. Most men can’t even see that they’re broken themselves.

I have never been able to piece together items or understand how things work, in that tear-it-apart-just-to-put-it-back-together way that some people have. My grandfather is one of those people, as are my father and brother. I, on the other hand, have spent my entire life trying to understand people, trying to understand myself, and trying to make language make sense. I have failed more times than not…