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He certainly looked like a genius. As a tenured college professor, my grandfather didn't feel proper unless he was wearing a suit. As far as he was concerned, formal attire was appropriate for virtually any life event. That's why it wasn't unusual for the neighbors to see him cutting his lawn on a hot summer afternoon in a suit and tie. If fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he was wearing the very same outfit a number of years earlier when he conceived my mother.
The suits my grandfather owned were several decades old and were often coming apart at the seams. Little threads were always dangling from his cuffs like baby eels and the elbows in his suit coats were nearly transparent with wear. Still, he wore these threadbare formalities with all the dignity of a Roman emperor.
I imagine it was easier for my grandfather to pursue his studies when he didn't have to worry about every little fluctuation in the fashion world. After all, he couldn't be bothered with trivialities when there were urgent jellyfish matters that needed his attention.
* * *
My grandfather gave me an insect collector kit for my twelfth birthday. It contained a killing jar, a bottle of ether, a box of stick pins, and a wooden display case with a layer of cork on the bottom. My grandfather was hoping this gift would cause a great awakening in my analytical mind, inspiring me to become the next great scientist in the family. He dreamed about the day when I, too, would wear a suit to every meeting, party, and oil change that life presented to me. It didn't take me very long to disappoint him.
The day I received my kit I got right to work on my quest for scientific enlightenment. I spent all afternoon catching insects and tossing them into the killing jar. When my little prisoners fell still, I plucked them out of the jar and impaled them on push pins that held them to the bottom of the display case.
Before long, I could feel a vibration in my body as my grandfather's scientific DNA began to awaken in me. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I were born for a reason. No longer a child, I had stepped into the arena as a scientist.
Unfortunately, it was a short lived awakening. Later that evening I heard strange sounds coming from my insect collection. Opening the lid, I saw, to my horror, that the insects were still alive. There they were, flailing around on their pins, desperately trying to free themselves from the cork-bottomed display case. It was clear at that moment that my grandfather's great scientific legacy had come to an end.
It must have been a shock for my grandfather to see such a remarkable display of mediocrity in his grandson. Up until that moment he had expected me to take my place in the long line of scientists in the family. This proud legacy stretched as far back as history could recall and was expected to extend into eternity. I have no doubt that once he saw my tragic insect collection he quit imagining me in a suit and began imagining me in a hair net.
My grandfather tried to save me from my dismal fate. I was the recipient of a thousand lectures from him, each one designed to fill my alarmingly empty brain. I heard his How to use a microwave speech at least a hundred times, even though I was the person who showed him how to use the thing in the first place. He started it the same way every time: First, be sure there is nothing obscuring the vents in the back of the microwave. Then, be sure that it is plugged into a grounded outlet... My grandfather loved to give lectures. He could give a remarkably meticulous speech about the most mundane subject as if he were Buddha, sharing the secrets of the universe with his students. He was always the most comfortable when he was reducing the world into a series of precise, bloodless, scientific principals. In his mind, this was infinitely preferable to the emotional world, where chaos and irrationality ruled the day.
My grandfather applied scientific methodology to every part of his life, even when it seemed alarmingly inappropriate to everyone else. It wasn't unusual for him to condemn an artist for living an unconventional lifestyle or to tell a woman to get an abortion if she didn't have enough money to raise a child. He didn't seem to notice that these comments were upsetting to the people around him. When it came to emotions, he had all the sensitivity of a tree stump.
It was probably a good thing my grandfather was an emotionally detached man because he was married to his polar opposite. My grandmother was a tormented woman. Plagued with mood swings and chronic nervousness, she relied heavily on tranquilizers to get through the day. Even when she was heavily drugged, though, Grandma was wound as tightly as a rat trap. The tiniest stimulation would be enough to send her into a terrifying frenzy of squawks and twitches.
I remember many occasions when my grandfather sat and read his books in a determined state of oblivion while his wife escalated into an hysterical frenzy over a misplaced piece of silverware or a ringing telephone. It was clear that even though these two people inhabited the same house, their minds were never even in the same solar system.
The only thing that united my grandparents was their knack for obsessive behavior. While my grandfather spent a lifetime puzzling over the dating rituals of various species of jellyfish, my grandmother became increasingly obsessed with her living room carpet. She was convinced that it was her job to keep those precious fibers clean in order to prevent a major shift in the cosmic balance. She put plastic mats over all the areas where people were likely to walk and policed the living room as if it were the border between two hostile countries. In reality, even the ugliest stain would have been more attractive than her carpet mats. Still, my grandmother believed that this thin layer of plastic was the lone barrier between the forces of good and evil in the universe.
Although my grandmother's obsession with carpeting was no less extreme than her husband's obsession with jellyfish, she had the supreme misfortune of living outside of the academic world, where her sickness was never rewarded. Sometimes life works that way.
Needless to say, it was fairly challenging to be a child in this environment. I would spend my visits trying to maneuver around all the trip wires in the house while my grandparents carried on with the business that contributed to their respective obsessions. I was rarely successful at avoiding conflict, though. The balancing point between oblivion and hysteria was too small for me to navigate at such an early age.
During one visit I accidentally knocked my fork off the breakfast table. Although this would appear to be a minute offense, you have to remember that a person only has to split one atom in order to unleash a nuclear explosion. Before the fork even hit the ground, my grandmother emitted a shrill scream. She jumped up from her chair and started flapping her arms like a chicken, screeching in some language that only certain breeds of burrowing animals would understand.
It was an extreme response. People who are engulfed in flames are often more subdued than my grandmother was being at that moment. Still, this kind of thing was business as usual in The House of a Thousand Obsessions.
Grandma's outburst caused my grandfather to burrow even more deeply into the book he was reading. I wondered what kind of face he was making under that protective layer of words. He looked like a soldier, flinching in a bomb shelter while the world was being pounded to bits over his head.
It was no wonder my grandfather liked jelly fish. As dull as they may have seemed to everyone else, at least they weren't given to shrill cries or wild gesticulations. They just floated about in a pristine silence, not caring in the least about the condition of the living room carpet or the disposition of the family silverware.
As a result of a dozen or so grandmotherly outbursts, Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents' house always felt like a picnic in a mine field. I found myself envying orphans and kids who lived in societies where troublesome elderly people were set adrift on ice floats whenever it seemed necessary.
* * *
A year or so before she died, my grandmother suffered a stroke. This assault on her brain reduced her mental capacity to that of a three year old child. As a result, she began sharing her opinions without the slightest hint of diplomacy. In fact, one of the last things she ever said to me before she died was You had better have a strong back because you don't have a strong mind. My grandmother's reconfigured brain caused her to engage in a number of repetitions hand motions. Initially, she tapped on the railing of her bed for several hours every day. Then, she found a more appropriate outlet for these motions: She began obsessively petting her cat, Mittens.
Although I'm pretty sure Mittens was the one who suggested this arrangement, my grandmother took to it with enthusiasm. She would pet away her days while the cat just lay there, shedding like a lunatic.
Mittens seemed to like my grandmother a lot better after the stroke, when all that nervous tension could be translated into feline pleasure. It was all a matter of perspective; While the rest of us fretted over my grandmother's medical tragedy, Mittens celebrated it as a wondrous miracle of nature.
* * *
With his wife incapacitated, it became my grandfather's job to take care of the cat. Although he studied animals for a living, he never liked house pets. He preferred to observe animals in a detached, scientific manner than to get emotionally involved with any particular specimen.
This feeling intensified when he had to clean up after Mittens. Although my grandfather took care of her, he made it clear that his new obligations were a violation of natural law. He was always explaining to us that higher-order species were never meant to do labor for lower-order species. He would often mutter, We didn't develop opposable thumbs just so we could empty litter boxes as he shuffled by, carefully trying not to get any litter on his suit. We all knew something had to give somewhere.
The first time Mittens failed to use the litter box, my grandfather decided that she was sick . Of course sick in this case actually meant inconvenient . As soon as the visiting nurse left for the day my grandfather took Mittens into the basement, held a handkerchief full of chloroform to her face, and kept it there until all signs of life drifted from her little body.
This act was not intended to be malicious. My grandfather was just acting out of practicality, with the same emotional detachment that he utilized when he practiced good science. He assured us that he had simply put the cat out of her misery, even though it was Grandpa's misery that was actually being snuffed.
Of course, this feline homicide made us wonder what plans my grandfather had for his wife, who was destined to remain helplessly in bed, waiting for her body to figure out that she was dead. We debated whether or not to dispose of the bottle of chloroform that he kept hidden in the basement. In her declining state, Grandma wouldn't have been able to put up as much of a fight as the cat did.
Once Mittens was gone from my grandmother's life, the months began to drag like an endless traffic jam. The days were nothing but boredom and bedsores; the nights were nothing but a black sea of heavily medicated sleep.
Mechanical processes had replaced her bodily functions by then. Rubber tubing and surgical steel were employed to take on the tasks that the flesh was no longer willing to do. It all seemed so hopeless. Without the affection of her little pet, the world became little more than a waiting room to my grandmother.
* * *
After a year of lying in bed and wondering where her cat had gone, Grandma shifted into a more active form of death. One by one her organs began to fail and her incessant tapping evolved into spastic heaving motions that rocked her entire body.
The doctor came to check on her status. As her vital signs became increasingly erratic, he downgraded her to a liquid diet and suggested the family hurry over to say goodbye.
Death was always a spectator event in my family. We always liked to cheer our family members on as they departed from the planet. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
Overnight, the relatives started arriving in town to see my grandmother for the last time. People who had lost interest in her several years earlier suddenly appeared at her bedside and spoke to her in gentle, loving tones. They couldn't have expected to get anything good off of the old woman; She certainly didn't own anything of value. I assumed that many of the relatives were there to settle a bet or just to make sure my grandmother was actually dying.
I joined the crowd of spectators at my grandmother's bed side. It became immediately obvious that Grandma had no idea we were there. I wasn't even sure she was there. She was breathing heavily and thrashing around in bed like a dying insect. I said goodbye to the writhing body in the bed, knowing that I was simply performing for the other family members in the room. There was no trace of human consciousness left in her at that point.
A few days later, a stillness came over my grandmother and her tormented life came to an end. Seventy years of nervousness was enough for one body. It was finally time for her to get some rest.
It isn't a nice thing to say, but I was relieved when my grandmother died. She was the most tortured person I had ever met and her talent for sharing this discomfort made her impossible to like. I wondered if people were going to say the same things about me when it was my time to go.
My grandfather responded to his wife's death in the same detached way that he responded to the cat's death: He just kept working. There was never any display of emotion to shatter his dignified, professorial demeanor. In fact, he even carried on the same ritualistic behaviors that he developed when his wife was alive.
For the rest of his life he carefully walked the living room from one plastic mat to the next, desperately trying to stay off the carpet. He also continued to shower in the cold, cinder-block basement because his wife had claimed the master bathroom for herself several years earlier. Apparently, he didn't want to waste time coming up with new ways to negotiate his way around the house when there were still so many jelly fish matters that demanded his attention in the final years of his life.
* * *
After five years of carefully following his dead wife's rules, my grandfather's body started to betray him. A long-standing heart problem that he had been nurturing for a number of years finally blossomed into a full blown crisis.
Week after week, the doctors hastily treated his symptoms and sent him home. They didn't want to waste time on my grandfather when there were so many patients who actually had a chance to recover. It was a horrifyingly practical decision, as bloodless and scientific as any my grandfather ever made.
In his constant state of decline, new symptoms appeared almost daily to replace the old ones. We found ourselves forcing more smiles than a group of television talk show hosts as the Don't worry, you'll be fine act grew more transparent with each visit.
During one trip to the hospital my grandfather turned to me in utter defeat and mumbled, I don't see any end to this . I didn't know what to say. There didn't seem to be any point in lying to him; we both knew he was going to die. We sat in the emergency room hallway and stared at the shiny floor tiles in silence, the space between us growing wider by the second.
Soon after, the doctors informed us that my grandfather had taken a bad turn. Judging by the condition of his heart, they told us he wasn't likely to live more than a day or two. After hearing the news, most of my family got into busses and airplanes to be by his side for his final moments on earth.
On the evening that was to be my grandfather's last, all medical care was relinquished to the nursing staff. It was their job to provide him with whatever painkillers and tranquilizers he desired. The plan was to make his inevitable journey into the afterlife as comfortable (and as psychedelic) as possible. Yes, Grandpa was going to die like a rock star.
Several family members arrived that day. We gathered around the hospital bed to say goodbye to this quietly dignified man. Under the influence of morphine and an assortment of other medications, my grandfather began speaking with a display of emotion that was unlike anything we had ever seen in him before.
He carefully chose the words that he knew were going to be his last. In no time at all he was spouting top-notch greeting card material from his hospital bed. He said things like, Well, I fought the good fight. Now it's time to say goodbye. The family stood around, weeping. Knowing that the moment of death was near, we reassured Grandpa that we would stay with him until the very end.
One hour went by. Two hours went by. Three hours... Grandpa was running out of brave and eloquent things to say to us. Four hours went by... Five... We started to make awkward glances at our watches...
We went home. It looked like Grandpa was going to wait until the following morning to pass away. The next day we gathered around his bed and waited for the inevitable. Again, eloquent speeches and weeping filled the room. Then...nothing happened.
As it turned out, the doctors were wrong. Grandpa's death appeared to be the twenty-four-hour variety. The nurses eased him out of his purple haze and he returned to his usual, detached self. Everyone packed their bags and headed home, feeling embarrassed and, frankly, a little disappointed. There didn't seem to be much reason to stick around. After all, what do you say to a man after you have already spent two days saying goodbye to him? * * * One year later my grandfather died in his own bed without any ceremony whatsoever. At that point, the family had hired a Chinese couple to watch him. Unfortunately, these new attendants had a frail grasp of the English language and my grandfather's last words were lost in their foreign ears. Knowing his fondness for long dissertations on the mundane, though, I suspect that he was delivering a lengthy speech about the properties of jello or the contents of his sock drawer.
* * *
This is one more story that still needs to be told about my grandfather. Shortly before he died, something happened to repair the rift in the cosmic balance that occurred when he killed Mittens.
Truman, a rather obese cat that lived next door to my grandfather, started hanging out around the house. He didn't just stop by for casual visits, either; This cat socialized with all the enthusiasm of a seasoned stalker.
Truman had been inflicted with unfortunate pigmentation. He was an all white cat except for his genitals, which were jet black. This caused people to feel a certain level of discomfort in his presence. Nobody likes to be reminded that a cat has sexual organs, especially when he is a particularly affectionate animal.
For some unexplainable reason, Truman fell in love with my grandfather. It was rather touching, actually. He found that he could climb a tree to the second floor of the house and coo to Grandpa, who lay captive in his rented hospital bed all day.
While this act appeared to be profoundly satisfying for the cat, it was a constant source of agony for my grandfather. He used to lie in bed and complain about the loving oaths that came spilling in through his window every day. After all, the last thing he needed was to end his emotionally detached life amid a passionate outpouring of feline love.
The attendants tried, unsuccessfully, to make this obscenely affectionate animal feel unwelcome. Truman seemed to thrive on the attention, though. Even when the attendants resorted to shoving him with a broom, he erotically arched his back against the bristles and purred loudly. As a result, my grandfather -the great genius- spent his final days at the mercy of the fat white cat with the black genitalia. Right up until the end, Truman cooed lovingly at the window while my grandfather wiggled, uncomfortably on his pin like an insect that had only appeared to die...
