Being a Survivor

(This was actually meant to be a response to a post by Maile. It got kinda out of hand, so I decided to post it here.)

Being a survivor sounded like fun when I used to curl up in the big red chair and listen to my live-in grandfather’s stories, his gnarled hands cradling a burnt corn cob pipe as he drew puffs of slightly bitter smoke. His Midwestern drawl would lend a sepia tone to every new adventure he divulged I learned about the hard times of the Dust Bowl, growing up as the rambunctious youngest brother of eight kids, the Great Depression, and donating steel for the War. He was still a powerful man into his 90s, repairing farm implements and tearing apart diesel tractors (even though he stopped to rest and smoke for durations almost exceeding the times he would work), and contributing greatly to our welfare on the farm up in the mountains.

Then I started to lose people.

At first, it didn’t register. Here I am, eating breakfast next to a nonagenarian who only last year was patching the barn roof. He’s fine, how can anyone be gone?

It got worse. The people I lost got younger. Best friends. And much closer. My dad.

I remained very philosophical about it, while slowly the joy leeched out of me. I was sampling the acrid bite of existing beyond the lifespan of my friends and family. I saw my grandfather from a very different perspective now – no longer as the grizzled champion of longevity, but as a young man who watched as important people who brought light into his life disappeared, leaving him behind in a dry and darkening room.

And then, he was gone.

It was not altogether unexpected, since he was 99 and had been weak for several months. His best friend was hit the hardest. In response, Alfred took up the task of retelling the stories, now filling in the lurid details that I had not been privy to. It lent an entirely new dimension to my grandfather, and I regretted very much not being old enough to hear these stories directly from him. I grew very dependent on Alfred during these years. He made me feel like my grandfather was still alive, just up the hill while we worked away on a cord of wood by the creek in the waning days on the fall, the chill blowing down through the saplings and settling in the valley.

Then the news. Alfred had mesothelioma.

I watched as my connection to my grandfather slowly severed, conducted all this time by a man who was in pain from his passing. I also realized that I was losing a father for a second time. Alfred had been guiding me for so long, I thought my values were my own spontaneous creation. But they were not. Alfred and my grandfather were the lights that were leading me.

The second light went out.

Many years have passed. I must admit that even as new joys were entering my life since then, the drought I felt in my heart since losing these people has been long and severe. But not permanent, and certainly not irreversible. I have since learned that joy is water in a reservoir, with the people in my life filling it constantly. Surviving through the lean years means having the vision to see the high watermark both in the past and in the future.

I have a little wellspring of my own now, fed by the memories of these people. I will keep it flowing for as long as I live. But the pain is always there. The difference these days is that I use that pain as a bracket to contain and fully realize the new joys that enter my life, even if only for a while. I think I know my grandfather better now. His goal was never to be a survivor. He just wanted to live.