A marginally happier post. Or maybe not! Also, I confess, one tossed together, but one I’ve thought about for many, many years. Female’s post on separation (and the way men and women deal with it differently) made me think of this. (Trust me, I’ll pull the threads together at the end)
This one does verge on maudlin and sentimental, but I’ll do my best to avoid that.
My Grandfather was a tall man. He towered over most of his contemporaries and most of his family.
He was very honorable, and incredibly honest. I don’t think the man could lie. This was not always an asset. He often was rude and blunt.
As young kids, he’d glare at us and say. “Get a haircut”. “Stand up straight” He was certainly the embodiment of what feminists decry as the “patriarchy”.
I will never forget the time I was a young child in his care. He assigned me to cut a watermelon with a large knife. Being 5 or so, I cut myself and blood poured out. I panicked.
He attempted to reassure me by telling me of how, if the wound wasn’t taken care of, I could lose my hand, then my arm, then die. He went into great detail about gangrene. Grisly, I suppose, yet see below for my reaction.
He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was a Victorian (albiet very belated) man, and an engineer.
To him, describing the gruesome stages of blood poisoning and losing limbs was useful. Indeed, as he spoke on, I began to forget my momentary pain and became fascinated in what he said.
After disinfecting me, and bandaging me, he made me continue cutting the watermelon. It was a good lesson. He was showing me respect. Telling me I could do the job even though I’d failed. It was scary for a five year old, but, I think, necessary.
Enough of the watermelon. Enough of me. Let’s focus again upon my grandfather.
He loved his wife dearly, and treasured her. He never showed it though, to his shame.
I don’t think he treated her very well. I didn’t notice as a child, but I did listen to my parents talking, afterwards. They (my grandparents) had an old fridge. She (my grandmother) had to regularly defrost it. She didn’t like doing so.
She complained. He responded that it was what they had. He was terrified of being poor. He’d worked hard all his life to provide for his family, and he hated spending. No, he wasn’t a miser, but he was very cautious.
She didn’t complain much. She was truly a lovely woman. Lovely of face, of form… perhaps the only angelic person I’ve ever met on Earth. She cherished us, as grandchildren, in a way that no one else ever has. Before or since.
And then she died.
It was no one’s fault.
Except perhaps hers.
She complained so infrequently. And she didn’t complain about the strange pain she felt in her lower back. And how could she? It was near the buttocks, how could she speak of that even to her husband?
And his.
He didn’t perceive the flinch of pain across her face. The shadow of agony as she slid into bed, or bent to feed the dog. But she said nothing of it.
And when it became too late, and they were only near a provincial hospital… It was too late.
He’d driven through the African bush and been near decapitated when she was pregnant with my father and entering labor. He’d got her there safely.
But not this time. In her end, it was too late. He got her there, and she died.
Her kidneys failed utterly.
Swiftly. With a smile on her face, and thinking of others.
She went gently into that ‘good’ night.
And my grandfather? He lived on, of course.
But he was dead.
And this is Female’s point. Men are much worse at dealing with separation than women are.
The culture of divorce — which on its surface permits fertile men to divorce non-fertile women and remarry fertile, younger women — isn’t beneficial to anyone.
Stipulated: some divorces are necessary.
Back to my grandfather. He simply started fading away.
He did one thing, to his eternal shame.
An honest man of extraordinary integrity.
He replaced the fridge.
He couldn’t deal with the defrosting. She’d complained about it and he hadn’t listened.
I know he was ashamed of it, for I was there near his death. He spoke to me, thinking I was at times his son, and at times his father. In the last 12 months of his life he never did grasp I was his grandson, but he always knew we were related.
But he couldn’t live without her. He declined so rapidly. It was stunning.
It was obvious.
For all his protection of her — and make no mistake, fridge or not, he did protect her — if he’d died first, she would have gone on.
He couldn’t survive without her.
And that’s an interesting lesson in the relationship between men and women. Female’s statement was quite right. In some ways, men are weaker than women.
-wolfe
