To paraphrase Green Day: Like my grandfather’s come to pass, 25 years has gone so fast.
I can still remember so much of that day and evening so vividly. This is going to be a rough post, so I’m giving a bit of a content warning. I guess the kids these days would call this a “trauma post”. It feels like the right thing to do, though. I’ve felt a lot of healing through these sorts of writings and posts. I’ve tagged this “Creative” because this reads more like a novel, but I wrote it that way on purpose, because I wanted it to be felt. But all of it is real. This is what genuinely happened to me on the evening of the 7th of July, 2001.
We were at my grandfather’s house. My aunt and her family were supposed to join us the following day for a large family gathering as my cousin had just turned 3 years old. I was really interested in auto racing at that time, and there was a race at the Daytona Speedway that evening. Pop singer Britney Spears was on track to tell the drivers to “start your engines”, which I thought was really cool. I liked her music, but I also thought it was so cool to see a woman involved in racing, even though she obviously wasn’t doing any of the actual racing.
The drivers began the race. It was perhaps a few laps in to the race that my mum and I heard a weird noise in the kitchen. It was nearing dinner time anyway, so mum went to start cooking. I genuinely don’t remember exactly what we were to have, but I feel like it was a frozen pizza.
I heard a scream. That definitely wasn’t normal. I got out of my chair to see what the fuss was about, and saw my mum running from the kitchen screaming “no, no, no” and then grabbing the cordless telephone. (This was before any of us had mobiles! Yes, kids, there was such a time!) I tried to ask her what was going on, but she ran back to the kitchen with the phone.
I followed.
I honestly probably shouldn’t have followed.
A part of me wishes I hadn’t followed.
I would never be ready to see what I saw.
I would never be old enough to see what I saw.
I’m still not old enough to see what I saw.
But wow, did I ever grow up really, really fast in the ensuing two hours.
My grandfather had collapsed on to the floor of the kitchen. The noise we heard was that he impacted the towel rack and brought it down with him as he collapsed. He had already passed; my mum futilely attempted CPR at the direction of the emergency services on the telephone. For my part, after recognising what she was doing, I ran to get the book I knew we had on various emergency situations. I opened that book to its CPR section, and set it near to her.
I’m not sure if anyone even noticed that. But there you go, 10 year old Spots tried her absolute best to be a helpful Dalmatian.
The emergency services arrived. They did what they could. To distract 10 year old Spots, I was invited into the cab of the rescue vehicle. I got to turn the lights on and off. That was actually really cool, because even back then, I was really interested in being in the medical profession in some way. And Emergency! had certainly impressed on me a certain appreciation for paramedics. At any rate, he was transported in the ambulance, and we followed along in my grandmother’s car. I always liked the clock-style dash of her 1987 Grand Marquis. I thought that was such a cool thing. I remember staring at it from the back seat, sitting next to mum. The speed wound up and down on the speedometer like a stopwatch ticking back and forth.
I asked mum what we were going to do if grandpa wasn’t okay. She said she had no idea, but it didn’t matter because he had to be okay.
I think my absolute distrust for “Things will be alright”, and my desire to “plan for any eventuality or disaster to happen”, are rooted in this exact moment. Call me Dante if you have to, but I have the lived experience that made me that way.
Sitting for an eternity at hospital. Just sitting. I don’t even know how, or who called them, but my aunt and uncle arrived. I remember thinking that had to be a good sign. Family gathers when good things happen. Ah, poor little Spots had never been to a funeral before. I remember hugging both of them. Mum was shaken. Her hug wasn’t very tight. But my uncle’s, his was tight. Strong. Like it could be okay. Like it would be okay.
More sitting. More waiting. Good Samaritan, the place I will live from now on, because I’m going to be sitting here for the rest of my life.
A doctor walked out. It’s been 25 years and I can still quote the entire conversation from memory. “Wilcox family?” My mum stood up, the rest of us lagging behind, but her stand was instant, a trigger reflex, a need for information in the most immediate of fashion. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news.”
“Isn’t there any good news,” my mum pleaded with him, like somehow she could change what he was about to say through sheer force of will. “I’m sorry, ma’am, we did everything we possibly could. We worked on him for as long as we were able. He passed away.”
If you’ve ever seen a film where a main character loses everything they’ve ever had, and they dramatically fall to their knees and scream out nothing in particular, then you saw what I saw. Only this was real life. This wasn’t a film. This was my mum. This was my provider. This was the foundational bedrock of my life, especially since I didn’t have a father; he left the family years prior. Broken. Snapped like a twig. Decimated.
It was a massive heart attack. His arteries were, in points, over 90% blocked. Check your cholesterol and triglycerides. Seriously. If there is a lesson you can learn from this article, please, please let it be that one. Don’t leave this Earth early like grandpa did.
My grandmother was crying. My aunt was crying. My uncle was obviously quite upset, though I don’t recall if he actually cried there. I think I cried. I don’t rightly remember. I felt the enormity of the loss and honestly, my first instinct was to hide, not cry. But there was nowhere to hide. There was no den, there was no burrow, there was nowhere. The doctor said we could see him and say our goodbyes. The room seemed so large to little Spots. I now know the term of art for this sort of room: acute cardiac care. There’s enough room for six medical professionals, each with an assigned position and role. Lives are fought for, and occasionally won, in this room. But there was no one in this room, beyond grandpa in the bed, and us.
My grandmother went first. My aunt and uncle didn’t spend long. My mum and I went next. I kissed him on the cheek, and I pet his eyebrow. I always did that. He would sometimes act annoyed, but it always made him smile. That was just my thing. I always looked at the people most important to me in my life as dogs, because I felt like I was a dog, so they must be too, right? So I gave him scritchies on the eyebrow, that was my “love language”. And I did then. It’d be the last time. And then my mum went again.
My aunt and uncle left. My aunt said she couldn’t be here any more. I didn’t know what she meant then; I do now, but I didn’t then. My mum really didn’t want to leave.
I didn’t know what to do. I knew this wasn’t right. I knew we needed to leave, we needed to let my grandpa be at peace, and mum would probably never leave if she wasn’t forced. What could I do? I thought for a moment.
There was an innocence, and a maturity, in what I did next.
I’m honestly surprised I was able to find the sort of clarity I found.
I was winging it, literally. I remembered the Wise Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh. Specifically, the episode of the television series titled Find Her, Keep Her where Rabbit adopts a baby bird. Towards the end, the baby bird has grown up, and she has to fly south for the winter. In that, she has to leave Rabbit – who ended up like a father figure to her – behind. And Owl tells her, “Now then, it’s time to soar.” And I turned to my mum, and said “There’s nothing more to be done here. Now then, it’s time to go.” Somehow, that actually worked.
My grandmother drove us home. We arrived back just before one in the morning.
I walked through the foyer. The foyer where we had so many warm family receptions. The foyer where my grandpa and I would set up a Christmas village every December. The foyer where, every summer, I would wait for him to come home from his work and I’d run to unlock the door and open it as he walked up the front step, calling it the “magic door”, like it was opening just for him. And it was opening just for him.
I walked down the hall, where he taught me how to paint a wall with a roller.
Into the guest bedroom, which had become a “computer room” of sorts since he was running a nonprofit out of this house. We would all help. Even 10 year old Spots helped with the occasional HTML writing, or helping to layout a brochure.
His computer was still powered on. It had a half-drafted email open. I don’t recall the contents, or to whom it was addressed. I just remember thinking: he is never going to draft another email.
This keyboard is never going to feel the touch of his paws again.
Nor am I.
You know, I held it together pretty well writing this out. This is the first time I’m actually crying writing this out. I made it a lot farther than I thought I would.
25 years.
I can still remember the way the spinny chair was spun in front of that Compaq. The 19″ CRT displaying Hotmail’s UI in Netscape Communicator.
There are so many things he taught me. He was an amazing man. I wish he could have taught me so much more. Just in the foyer paragraph I shared three of the treasured memories I have of him. There are thousands more.
I remember how devoutly religious he was, but at the same time, so curious about it all. And he encouraged that in me, too. This was not the textbook “Thou shalt be Christian” upbringing that so many children have. He encouraged exploration. He told me I have to find out what I believe myself; no one can tell you what to believe. He had books on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, so many different religions of the world. And he welcomed me to any and all of them.
I still think Christianity is the best explanation we have, but honestly, having that openness has left me with the realisation that no single church, no single text, no single person can ever truly possess perfect knowledge of how the universe works or who, or what, controls anything, if there is anything. Like I said, I believe there is, but I acknowledge maybe there isn’t. We can’t know. We just have to go with whatever we feel is true, and live it!
And I feel like that sort of belief wouldn’t be possible without him.
It feels like a truer belief than most Christians have in Christianity.
It’s a more organic belief.
I didn’t even know the blessing that I was receiving from his education and wisdom. I wish I could have told him. If I meet him again in the afterlife, that’s going to be the first thing I thank him for. There’s so many things, but that’s the most important one.
Because religion can positively be a jail cell for thought and reason. And mine is, instead, an open door. And through that door, thought and reason flow freely alongside my morality and spirituality. Without one, the other would not exist in its current state – it could exist, but not as it does now.
And the basis of everything I’ve done, everything I am doing, and everything I will ever do, is built on that foundation.
And it’s a strong foundation.
And it’s the one that he helped me build.
Thank you, grandpa.