My grandfather is sick.
He's sick in a way that can't be repaired. Sick in a way that sending a "get well soon" card would be like a horrible joke. He has Alzheimer's disease.
On top of his Alzheimer's disease, he has other age-related illnesses. Heart problems. Blood pressure problems. Mobility problems. Diabetes. He is not going to be well again.
Hearing myself admit that he is not going to get better causes me to feel light-headed. Surely that can't be true, he is the same man who had the unbreakable spirit, the staunch beliefs. He told me the hard facts of life, that dying is inevitable and that some people aren't good people. When he was a younger grandfather, he was described by all as being abrasive at times. Resilient. A man who fought in a war and came back without any regrets. A man who supported a family as best he could, who had to move around to find work as a welder, who left the tenderness up to his wife.
And yet...
There was a time a few years ago when his senility was just whispered among family members, and it was only suspected because he had become more gentle. I was at their farmhouse for a visit, and afterward he wanted to walk me to my car. He stood there, talking to me through my driver's side window for a half hour. We spoke of his time deployed overseas in Japan, and something miraculous happened. Instead of the usual "America! Land of the Free!" position he stood behind all his life, he broke down in tears. He told me about the children who had to be rescued from the sea from the port because they were swimming for his ship to escape, of the desperation in the women's eyes. I had never known that there was hidden empathy anywhere in him.
As his present condition worsens with every bleed and fall, the softer side of him comes out. He no longer knows who I am, but he still calls me "sister" just like he always has. When I ask him how he feels, he always smiles at me and says that he's just fine... even though I know he isn't. I miss him already, and he isn't even gone.
My grandmother is his safe haven, and is the only person that he recognizes these days. He panics when she isn't in the same room as him. When I asked her if she feels overburdened, she told me "We've been married for 63 years. I can't give up on him now."
As unlikely as their love is, it's the purest love I know. She doesn't get impatient when she has to explain things to him all over again.... And over. And over. She walks him to the bathroom, and changes him when he can't make it. She doses out his medicines and feeds him- literally feeds him.
I know that she needs him just as much as he has ever needed her. In this way, I am learning about the true nature of committed love: like the rings that we exchange, our love is constant and closed off. In our vows, we promise to guard that love until death do us part. I am figuring out that death is not the end of a marriage for the person left behind.
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