A guest post

One wonderful thing about siblings is that we often share experiences but experience them in our very unique ways. My little sister is twelve years younger than me. She was six when my Grandfather moved in, I was 18 and in college. The following year I moved out of my parent's home. For good. She was raised in a house post-divorce and during new marriage. I left the house at the same time my parents left the marriage. It is precious to me, though, that age difference aside my Grandfather made the same impression on us with his particular expression of love. My sister wrote this piece last year and I asked her permission to post it here. You can read more by Emily at her blog http://emilyinthephilippines.wordpress.com/.

“Don’t Forget”

He always rose with the sun. While the rest of the house was sleeping, Grandpa began his morning routine. He shuffled down the hallway, through the kitchen, and to the bathroom then return to his large room above the garage to start getting dressed.

I was five years old when my grandma passed away. She and Grandpa lived in California and I would talk to them on the phone every weekend. It was a Sunday and I had been the first one to get to the ringing phone. Usually I talked to Grandma first, but Grandpa was on the other line, stern, asking to talk to my mother. My dad brought me to church while my brother stayed home to comfort my mother. Grandpa moved across the country to live with us soon after.

He wore a white undershirt with thick flannel button ups in the winter, plaid short sleeve button ups in the summer, and khaki slacks. Everything in his walk-in closet was organized and folded immaculately. He would then make his bed with unique precision, pulled so tightly, I always wondered how he got in. These routines reflected signs of his OCD mixed with habit of strict Navy routines. He would then go to his soft, green arm chair placed next to his bed, stare out the window and pray. Prayer would turn into thought, and as the day got lighter he would sit in that chair with his hand folded under his neck as a resting place for his chin, watching the birds fly by and the light prisms project dancing rainbows on the walls.

His hearing got continually worse throughout the years, but he always knew what time I would arrive in the kitchen. Only in times when I woke up unexpectedly to get a glass of water would I catch him in his morning routine before he would shuffle in and turn on the stove to heat water for my daily hot chocolate. When I was six, he always put an ice cube in my mug since it was too hot to drink and I was too impatient to wait for it to cool down. I ate peanut butter toast with my hot chocolate, dipping each piece in for a delicious combination Grandpa had come up with years before. He sat on the opposite side of the dark wood table and I would play with the frayed edges of the dark green place mat. We made small talk about the day but as I turned into a teenager jaded from my parent’s divorce and my mother’s new husband, I became more annoyed with his cheery manner when all I wanted to do was go back to bed. I often would divert my eyes to the collection of trinkets collected by Grandma held in the wood framed cabinet with glass doors, memorizing their placement, the porcelain dove closest to Grandpa. He sat with me on my grumpy days in silence until I was done, then took my dishes and I got up and finished getting ready for school.  
One of his many joys during the day was doing the dishes. No one was ever allowed to do them themselves for two reasons. One, we didn’t do them “the right way”, and two; he didn’t have much else to do with his days while my brother and I went off to school and my mom went off to work. The dishes became his one main duty, so he learned just how many cups we had, how many bowls, dishes, even spoons. God forbid one went missing, and the whole house heard about it.

“Does anyone have a spoon in their room? One is missing,” he would ask politely. We all made sure to check our rooms for the spoon we had used for ice cream the night before, but if we forgot to check in the morning it was as though that was all he could think about all day. Once I arrived back from school he was waiting at the door, ready to ask about that damn spoon again.  I guess I couldn’t blame him though. After living a life of routine for over forty years with Grandma to living in a big house that was empty half the day must have gotten lonely.

He kept up with certain routines he would have done with her, like sorting the bills, keeping years of receipts and records. He watched certain movies over and over again such as Sleepless in Seattle, and E.T. because those were movies he always watched with her. When I was ten, we always watched the 1998 version of The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, when she was innocent and cute. He had hundreds of Laser Discs that he kept in alphabetical order and for about a year, The Parent Trap was our favorite. We had the special handshake between the butler and the twins down pat. Sometimes I did homework while I watched, or sparked up random conversation with Grandpa. The movie was hardly ever my main focus, but having it on while I sat near Grandpa was comforting to both of us.

In the afternoon, I curled up on his soft green couch adjacent to his loyal chair and across from Grandma’s old, floral rocking chair. I didn’t remember her well, but she lived on in his room in several ways. Winnie the Pooh paraphernalia was everywhere because she loved Pooh, not because Grandpa did. A painting Grandpa composed of her as a young woman hung above the T.V. stand. Her brown curly hair and blue eyes stared over her shoulder in a blue dress with bright red lipstick on her lips. I sat on the couch watching movies, or listening to all the stories stored neatly inside Grandpa’s pristine memory.

Living with Grandpa was different compared to my friends’ relationships with their grandparents. He was always there, even when I didn’t want him to be. Telling me that I could write a better story or draw a better drawing no matter how hard I tried. Teasing me if I had an overly dramatic fight with a friend when I felt it was the end of the world. Like a parent-daughter relationship, I got angry and annoyed with him just as my mother got angry and annoyed with him. My friend’s visits with their grandparents were temporary and short so it was hard for me to justify my behavior or explain our relationship to them. More importantly however, I also could be completely myself. I sat in his dark green, squeaky, leather, computer chair that I felt would tip over at any moment but never did. I sat on his computer writing pages upon pages of fictional stories about girls growing up to be successful or happy families and as I got older chat online with friends and listen to music he probably didn’t enjoy.

When we put him into a hospice, I was seventeen years old. He was eighty-four, and due to his religion of Christian Science he didn’t believe in medicine. Some disease had slowly taken over his face. His ear had started to deteriorate when I was younger but he hid it with a bandage. Eventually whatever it was moved to his right eye, cheek, and lip making it hard for him to see, eat and speak correctly. With his questionable health, over the years I often imagined what it would be like when he finally passed, but the reality hit harder than I expected. I was a senior in high school wondering where my life was headed while the one of the only people who had been a constant was leaving. Since he couldn’t hear or see, when I decided to travel to Thailand after graduation, I wrote him a letter in type twenty font because I knew my decision would make him proud. He smiled and tried to talk about it with me but the effort was too great. When he found out my sister was pregnant with her third child in six years he managed to mumble “What do we gotta do, beat them away from each other with a broom?” I was so grateful for that memory, so that I could remember him for his unwavering witty attitude instead of whatever it was that took his life.

I often wished that I had taken more time to write down his stories, to have more patience with him, or to tell him more often that I loved him. Yet somehow I knew he knew how much he meant to me. No matter what the circumstances of my attitude, he always smiled at me while I sat in that green, leather, computer chair, and tell me he loved me in his own unique way by saying “Don’t forget.” And I never did.