Sigh.

Whadda week.

I've been consoling my mom, Aunts and Uncle for a majority of the weekend. Thusly, homework? Yeah right. This isn't good, due to the fact that I'm already two weeks behind in After Effects, but other than that, I'm up to par on the rest of my stuff.

I think. It doesn't matter all that much to me right now. I'm just mentally and emotionally drained. I feel guilty that I'm pissed off that my entire long weekend to catch up on homework went the way of the Do-do, but you make due with what happens, and work harder to fix the problems that come along the way.

You can skip this post, if you'd like. I'm kinda waxing poetic about the history of Gordon Moxam, the guy that I called "Grandpa"... Medical and otherwise. It's long, and and probably boring to those who never knew him, not that many people that do will read this... But it's necessary for me to write...

So, honestly? This has been a horrid week. I'm glad it's over. I feel guilty for being relieved that I'm at home, and not hugging my mother, and getting a soggy shoulder, while I rub her back. Ah, my poor mother, She's so distraught over the death of her father.

It's not to say I'm not upset. The copious amounts of crying I've done have been largely in private. First when I got the news, at 12:45 on Saturday morning, and a few other times. Largely alone, though. I hate it when people watch me cry. Some women are graceful, and inspire men to comfort them when they cry, and others, (like myself) drip fluids from places they'd rather not, get all sweaty and their face goes red, and sound about as pretty as a flock of Canadian Geese honking away. Needless to say, I cry in private, if possible.

I think I just handle this better than my mom. Now, if it was MY dad that died, I'd be in floods. For weeks. I'm terrified of losing my parents. And honestly; I wasn't that close to my grandfather. And I'd given him until the end of this year. I knew his health was bad, and I was preparing myself for the time. I'd just really really hoped he'd make it until after Christmas, and he didn't.

I didn't know all that much about him, and what I learned, I learned from his children, and from the few stories he told me when I hung out around him. I was a little intimidated by him, and maybe it's the weaker, more timid part of my nature that just didn't understand the relatively standoffish, quiet, alone-time appreciating individual that he was when I was between the ages of five and eighteen, the ages I was living with my parents in the basement suite underneath him and my grandmother.

I told this story already, not as detailed, but I did this in Metrotown today, telling Damien about him, and to my horror, I choked up, and tears started streaming down my face. I guess I needed to tell it to someone, instead of being the person who was the crying shoulder for my family...

They all talk to me about him. About who he was. About what they'll miss, and it was all I could do to just listen to them, and try to help them though their pain. I'm pretty good at listening, I guess. I just wish someone had bothered to have the time to listen to me. Well, Damien volunteered... Sort of. It's not really the place or the time I wanted to start crying. Not surrounded by hundreds of people, and all the ones around looking at me, while I sniffled and cried in the middle of the Food Court. If I can't talk to someone, then I do most of my storytelling here. Though, I've been known on occasion to tell a few stories with enthusiasm to willing listeners. I'm a writer, not really a speaker, unless I feel like it.

Anyways, I'm digressing. Somewhat. I'm so tired, my head feels full and useless.

There is no service for him, he didn't want one. I think that's a bit sad, but only because he had heaps of friends. Good friends. Close ones, that will miss him immensely, and it would be good for them to all gather together, and remember the good stuff about him. But he didn't want one, so we're not going to do anything. Instead it was a relatively sad and stifled Thanksgiving Day dinner, where we tried to cover up our grief with a charade of mirth. Pseudo-Mirth, I guess.

It was relatively uncomfortable for me, being that I'm close to that side of the family, but closer to my Father's side. I felt like a little bit of an outsider there, and having the entire family sitting in the living room, lined along the edges on the couches and chairs, not saying a word for half an hour other than the occasional murmered comment, was uncomfortable and awkward to say the least.

My mom was/is mad at everything and everyone, including the nurses and doctors at the hospital... But, I suppose I should start from the beginning, and work my way to this point, if I wanted to be linear about my storytelling.

My grandfather was almost 74. He'd have turned 74 a month and a day from now, on November 11th, Rememberance Day. Needless to say I, Miss "brain-like-a-sieve", actually remembered his birthday every year.

When he was a kid, he got hit by a truck while he was riding his bike, I think he was about seven or so. The truck ran over his left leg, from the knee down, and when I was little, and he'd walk around wearing shorts, the only thing covering his shin bone, was a layer of skin. I remember looking at it, I remember asking to touch it, and he let me. I remember asking how it happened, and he told me. Nothing detailed, just the rough story behind it. I suppose it was hard for him to remember the details, though I'm not certain that it's easy to forget something like that. This is the innocence and curiosity of children. I guess surgery back in the late 1930's was lacking, and he was lucky that he didn't lose his leg from the knee down. Well, not yet at least.

After that he was always cold. Always. Even in mid-summer. I suppose the blood circulation was messed up after such major physical trauma, and his hands and feet were always frozen. He had a zillion fleece sweaters. My mom crocheted him at least six lap blankets over the years.

When he was 15 years old, he ran away from home, by jumping on a boat. At the end of his journey, he found himself in San Francisco, where he had the opportunity to become an artist. I don't know if San Francisco was his goal, or if it was just the place he ended up at. Either way, he stayed there for a few years.

My grandfather was deft with a pencil and paper, and it was his instruction that eventually taught my mother how to draw. When he left San Francisco, he swore to himself that he was never going to draw again, and stood by that saying until he gave my mom an easel, and art supplies for her birthday present. When she looked at those supplies, not knowing what to do, he taught her bit by bit, how to draw portraits, scenery, and still life. She tells me it shocked the hell out of her to learn that he knew how to draw. He'd never let on beforehand.

When he returned to Vancouver, he became a plumbers apprentice, working hard long hours, learning how to repair and fit pipes and heating ducts as well. He always needed something to do with his hands. He met and married my grandmother, and they had four children and adopted one into their household.

He was passionate about fly fishing and hunting, his skills with pencil and paper adapted themselves to creating flies for his hobby. His flies were sought after, and he was well appreciated in the Burnaby Fish and Game Club, both as an avid member, and as a craftsman. He never sold his flies. He usually gifted them to individuals that he knew would appreciate them, usually as prizes in a children’s fishing tournament, or to like minded individuals that loved fly fishing as much as he did. It was never for profit.

He took me fishing and camping all the time when I was growing up, and I think the thing that he liked to do most, was teach us how to fish. Properly. Not this hokey crap that you do on the shoreline, but actually a mile out in the lake, quiet and peaceful. That was his zen, I think.

He refused to retire at the age of 65. He hated not having anything to do; so he started his own plumbing company, and had tons of work on his hands. I don't remember if it was when he was working for his own company, or before he retired that he got pretty badly burned by an exploding hot water tank, but he had third and second degree burns over about 60 percent of his body, for a while. He recuperated from that, though.

Two years ago, the wound on his leg, that he'd had for sixty some odd years became infected. It went gangrenous. Yeah. Gangrene. That's like WW2 shit. But because he was a stubborn old bastard, and if he hadn't shown my dad his leg, he'd probably have died from blood poisoning, because there were already streaks of red going up his leg, and you could smell the infection when he finally was worried enough to show someone. They removed his left leg from the knee down, in the hospital, and it took him about six months to "get used" to not having it. I don't suppose you could ever get used to not having half of a limb.

He had a prosthesis, but he never used it, and the house was changed around, installing a wheelchair lift to the second floor, and renovating the bathroom to suit wheelchair access. And he was fine. He still tied his flies in the garage, which is where he spent most of his time, he still went fishing with his buddies every now and then; and I'm pretty sure he even went hunting for deer once or twice as well. He kept on trucking.

Then, he was diagnosed with cancer. Bladder cancer, specifically. He went through round after round of chemotherapy, after the drugs he was taking didn't have any effect. He spent nights in the hospital for minor surgery, and tests. And nothing worked. So they scheduled an operation to remove his bladder, hoping that it would circumvent the cancer that was poisoning his body.

That was Friday, late in the afternoon. The likelihood of survival was roughly around 30 percent, given his age, and his health, and a myriad of other details that always play a part in situations like this. Surgery went fine. He had told my Mom that he wanted to die with this surgery. I don't know how to take that, to be honest. He was just tired of suffering. He was tired of being in pain, and cold, and not being able to keep food down. He was tired of having a sporadic sleep pattern, not being able to sleep for more than three hours at a time.

His heart failed, and by the time they resuscitated him, he had suffered medium to severe brain damage. The hospital called my grandmother, and told her what had happened. Did they want the staff to keep him alive? Yes, she said, and my mother and her went to see him, to see if they needed to sign a letter of release. And they did.

He had tubes in his throat, and even though they said "brain damaged" he was trying to talk, and swallow but he couldn't. He was looking around the room, he was trying to THINK, and he was looking at my mother, who was holding his hand, and talking to him in a low voice. The staff was talking over him, like he was already dead, and my grandmother couldn't say anything. She didn't know what to say, other than "fifty years." in a small, sad voice, that didn't seem to belong to my grandmother.

They'd just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary earlier this year. I was there.

And because she couldn't say anything, my mother did. My mom talked to him, the entire time he lay there dying, smoothing his hair back, and telling him stories about the stuff he loved, the stuff that made him laugh. My mom watched the heart monitor go from 48 beats per minute, to 27 beats per minute, to three beats per minute, until he died. It only took twenty minutes, after they stopped life support.

It's so hard to see such a strong person, brought so damned low.

And my mom was angry. Furious at the doctors, and the nurses, because she thought them callous. Flagrant disregard for the life of a person they already considered gone, and how they talked over him like he was dead already. And it's hard to justify that for her. It's hard to tell her, diplomatically, that they see death everyday, and that it's not them being cold-hearted. It's them having to "Get used" to seeing people die. I don't think it's something you get used to, to be honest.

I think she needed to say good-bye that way, though. I think it was closure, and a way for her to say good-bye to her dad.

And it makes me wonder, that if it ever came down to that point for me, would I be strong enough to do the same thing?

Honestly, I couldn't answer you.

As for the remains of my grandfather, he's going to be cremated, or has been already. Of that, I'm not certain, and I'm not sure it really matters. His ashes are going to be spread across the lake, where he found his peace, fishing up in the interior of British Columbia, by my mom, Grandmother and Auntie Terri, sometime in the spring.

As for me?

I'll remember the sound of his laughter, which was more a cackle, that had a wonderfully wicked, fun-loving sense about it when you cracked a rather cheeky joke, and the fact that even after his second chemo session on Christmas Eve, he was smiling the next day. Even just as a facade. That's the important stuff. That's what matters to me. He was a tough old bird, but he's gone to the "Happy Hunting Grounds". Literally. He's probably wherever we go when we die, sound of limb, trekking after moose, and pulling up all the fish he can imagine that he's sent to Valhalla many moons ago. That and reading Science Fiction novels and watching bad movies, laughing at the jokes he always laughed at. I knew him that well, anyways.

Rest in Peace, Grandpa. I'll miss you, ya punk.

Gordon Arthur Moxam

November 11th, 1932
October 8th, 2005