louis

im up @ 210 in the morning, typing from my niece's laptop after spending christmas day with my family. it was a pretty good year this year, considering my granddad is dying... he's going to be 90 in february. 90. i just can't imagine living that long. we saw him on the way to visit for xmas and it wasn't a good visit. he didn't know me. he didn't know my cousin. he didn't say much and he didn't even acknowledge our presence. he just kept staring past us and through us or kept staring at the family portraits that lined his walls and filled up his bureau tops. i lost it about 5 times. his eyes glazed over and obviously victim to cataracts, his frail body of skin and bones... it was the hardest thing i have had to witness in a long while. i took myself out of the room upon the times where i just couldn't handle it anymore and the last time i looked on the wall above his name plate. there was my favourite picture of him. the photo was dated 1955, my granddad would have been 39 at the time. he was something else. tall. handsome. strong. i remember thinking about how i saw him when i was a kid. he was always so huge to me. so strong. he was an oak of a man. and i remember feeling that he was positively the strongest man alive. he knew everything about the outdoors. trapping, hunting, fishing, camping, EVERYTHING! he taught me how to make a whistle out of a willow switch. he built me, my sister and my cousin bows and arrows, treeforts, skating rinks, swingsets... anything he could think of or anything we would ask of him... he didn't say much with us grandkids... but i watched him... when he was with his friends; everyone listened to him. he laughed and told stories with such charm; he was always, at least to me, the life of the party. the time before last he was telling my cousin and i so many stories of when we were younger, when he was younger and a time that he seemed to never want to forget. given the quality of life he had, i can't say that i blame him. and this is how i love to remember him. not like he is now, where even since 2 days ago his condition has worsened... oxygen, iv, etc... refusing to eat... refusing to drink... i looked at him and thought 'grandpa, why are you still here? why have you hung on so long? where has this will come from?'... i love him so much and i hate to see him as he is... so i keep those memories fresh in my mind. the man that he is in my mind... just as my grandmother is... the best possible visions i have... the picture on the wall...