What it feels like to be old

No one goes through my grandparent’s front door. It even has a stoop like the one at my place in New York, but all of their packages are delivered to the back of their house. There’s a window in my grandparent’s kitchen that faces their driveway which, as a kid, I thought was absolutely fantastic because I could see when my uncle Tom would pull in and hop out of his partner’s truck. He’d enter through the kitchen door, which functions as the main entrance of their home. As I got older, I noticed that I wasn’t alone in my high opinion of their kitchen layout. My grandma, who we call Nana, and grandpa Dutchie felt the same thrill when they’d look up mid-mayo-on-sandwich-spread to see a car whip the round-about and welcome in whoever it belonged to. Nana is from Nova Scotia, a place I only knew for it’s mints and smart-witted, lavender-loving grandmothers. If every grandmother who sprouted out of Nova Scotian soil was like mine, they’d have thick, dark hair, enjoy eating raw, thinly sliced potatoes with table salt sprinkled on top and have mothers who lived until 106. My grandfather is a little different. Also from Canada, Dutchie has impressive survival genes. He, too, likes simple things, and he likes bigger versions of them. My aunt Cheryl, the eldest of 6, remembered that “he doesn’t love a good margarita, he likes a large one in a fishbowl glass. He didn't go to the Hendersonville corner store for the quality of beer, but the size of the giant, cheap container.” He was also easy to please. He would eat canned baked beans and say that they’re the best he’s ever had because he was hungry and they were edible. He wouldn’t say these things to be nice and get along; he really meant them. Dutchie was a hands-on type of grandpa. Every year, we’d visit my mom’s side of the family for Bilmore Forest's 4th of July Parade. The best part was the costume competition, and we’d always win because of our homemade, giant State of Liberty and Uncle Sam heads that Dutchie built out of plywood and finished painting in a week.

I know the VanBlaricoms as their own entity, as well as my close family, because thinking of them as just my relatives doesn’t describe capture their spirit well enough. Living in the same house since my mom was born, her family creates memories so unthinkable and rich, you can listen to retellings of them again and again (even if you’ve memorized every one over the years) and still cackle in disbelief when their stories are over. Aunt Cheryl is known for telling them poorly, like forgetting the punchline after spending 10 minutes piecing together the build-up aloud, or wanting to start over when she’s already got everybody hooked. Things like that, quirks about each family member, become their own gold. When she starts to tell a joke, her siblings say something like “oh, here we go.” I don’t think of her as a poor storyteller, though. In fact, of all of her siblings, she’s the least interested in jokes, and what I discovered this weekend is that it’s probably because she has her own stories to tell that are hardly funny but would make a fascinating memoir. She, my mom and I got mimosas and a bite to eat before a Saturday afternoon funeral service, and I felt closer to her than I’ve ever felt in my life.

My mom is the youngest, and I remembered a long stretch of my childhood when she and Nana didn't speak much. They laugh about it now. It reminds me of my mom and I. I think the three of us are exactly the same.

Dutchie told me stories of his childhood in Alberta and his path to becoming a neurosurgeon when I was really little. He is my favorite storyteller of all of the VanBlaricoms. With a life like his, it might come across as proud to tell stories of your accomplishments and hint at your extreme intelligence. Dutchie, though, sees a bit of that remarkableness in most people he speaks to, and always connects his past to your present to relate and learn from your experiences. “I am looking for work,” I’d say. “You have so many capabilities. You can choose to do anything,” he’d answer. Then, he’d tell you that he saw a surgeon practicing neurological procedures and decided to stay in school for at least another 4 years, but it didn’t matter because he was doing what he loved so it never felt like work. He’d tell you that he was one of a very small amount of highly skilled neurosurgeons in America at the time — so skilled that sometimes they’d fly him out of the country to preform emergency surgeries others couldn’t. You’d ask about the charcoal pictures he sketched that hang in the in the bathroom and he’d tell you that he also drew artwork for medical books. My sister was able to find them in college. “Anyone can do it. You just have to be interested enough to learn.” He’d tell you about how he met Nana when they were 18 or 19, and Nana would chime in and say that, at that time, if you didn’t have a partner by 21 people would start to worry. Dutchie also told incredible jokes. His cadence and timing was that of a well-versed, nonchalant comedian. I can’t think of an example because I don’t know any good ones off of the top of my head. You knew you told a good joke if you got people to laugh like Dutchie would. No one really nails it like him, but my Uncle John is just about there. I think they look the same, too. It was nice to hear Uncle John tell jokes after his wife’s funeral, not only because getting everyone to lean in for a good story makes him excited, but because Dutch doesn't tell as many anymore. Dutchie is known around Asheville for hitting 8 hole-in-ones, and Nana 6, but I don’t think he’s touched a club since he was in his early 90s. At 101, you’d expect any old man to be fragile and slower than he was compared to the version of him that existed when you were smaller, but there was something about the way my grandpa would live past every milestone he marked as his last few years that made him seem invincible. I remember sitting at a dinner table in a fancy restaurant to celebrate my older sister’s high school graduation. Dutchie said he was so grateful to be there, so proud of my older sister, and admitted that he probably wouldn’t make it to my brothers’ or mine. He attended my graduation. He and Nana texted me on the day of my college one, too. I saw him after my aunt’s funeral. He couldn’t attend because his back hurt so badly. It took him the day to put the pieces together, but he hypothesized that the sharp pain was from a spinal surgery he had 5 years ago. I thought, “why not get another?” and my mom explained why that’s more dangerous than living with the pain. She pointed out to him that the right side of his face was droopy, almost like his muscles were only functioning on the left. He explained every reason why that occurs using watered-down medical terminology so we could understand. He showed us how he couldn’t blink all the way. I remembered when he used to sit on the back porch and read to me even when I didn’t want him to. His right hand shakes constantly, too. When I looked at it, I wondered about the last time he painted or sketched something. Dutchie read all of Stephen Hawking’s books in his 90s. I wondered if has trouble turning pages. He used to make sketches of his thoughts to help you understand a complex idea. I don’t think he’d do that now.

“It’s interesting to experience senility as a doctor. When I was in practice, I used to diagnose and treat patients who were at this stage based on their symptoms and test results. Now I am living through it.”

He takes a tissue from his mobile side table and wipes the tears that fall from his eyes. He wasn’t emotional about this topic.

“My eyes and mouth water uncontrollably,” he explained.

“When I read a book, I see two versions of the same page hovering in thin air. One is slightly offset above the other and it makes the words illegible.”

“I have things to say, and when I try to speak them, they disappear. Someone with Alzheimer’s disease may not be aware of what’s going on. I am, but I can’t fix it. Like when a baby is born and can make sounds, but can’t connect those sounds to thoughts well enough to learn a language and speak full sentences. I have the sounds, but I am losing the neural pathways that help me speak before my train of thought is gone.”

Dutchie couldn't speak in sentences as full as those. His speech was broken, as if he’d have to use the first few words he spoke to remind himself of the overall topic of conversation, and then get back on track again. My mom would finish his thought for him sometimes. You could tell he loved having someone who easily understood him. It look pressure off of him, I think. They’d always been extremely close, he and my mom.

When I was in middle school, I think I found out what death would feel like. My friends and I would make each other pass out by standing against a wall and crossing our arms over our chests while one of us pushed on the “X”. After a few seconds, blood couldn’t get to my head, and I’d fall to the ground. Though I remember waking up almost immediately after we’d try this stupid trick, I could briefly recall and be able to describe in detail the surges of bright colors and moments I saw that weren’t real. Then, there was nothing. Never scary or bad, I knew these thoughts would be similar to death. Everything and then nothing. At my sister’s graduation dinner, my grandpa explained death and his thoughts about heaven to me like an older brother would when admitting the reality of Santa Claus. At the time, death scared me a lot more than it does now, so even when I had first-hand (crossed on chest) experiences about losing consciousness, it was hard to hear him describe how he imagined his lack of existence once his time came.

When I was 2, I fell into a pond and was dead for 15 minutes. I think I was supposed to have brain damage — actually, I might — but I have this weird memory of being in a yellow raincoat in somebody’s arms. I think I could’ve made it up as my own neural pathways developed when I was 4 or 5, but part of me still believes in this vivid, dreamlike image. I wish something like that happened to me when I was older so I could really remember what it felt like to die and come back to life, and maybe become rich when I write a book about the existence of an afterlife (or lack of one).

All that to say, I know death. I don’t know what it feels like to be dying. At least, I didn’t until this past Saturday.

I know that Dutchie has lived a full life. He’s done almost everything he’s ever wanted because he of his willingness and his unfaltering lack of fear, particularly fear of failure. Since he isn’t afraid of it, I never really saw him experience it. He did not fail.

At my grandparents’ breakfast table we sat together — my mom, my Nana, Dutchie and I. My mom brought us coffees, a matcha, a bagel with avocado spread and three breakfast sandwiches. We started talking about skin cancer for some reason, and Dutchie asked my mom to grab his hearing aids from his table upstairs. After she came back down, my mom insisted that I tell Dutchie about my DIY mole removal. Recently, I bought wart freezer and used it on a mole on the right side of my chest. I told everybody at the table how I froze it until it scabbed and fell off. A new one grew back almost immediately I said, and I told them how this one was much smaller and cuter. My mom put her hands on her face. My grandpa smirked. “If it’s not abnormal………..or growing……………….rapidly, there isn’t anything…………………to worry about.” He tried to recall a story of an old friend who had skin cancer and treated it. He couldn't remember his friend’s name, so he asked Nana. He tried to explain something about his friend to jog Nana’s memory, but had trouble coming up with the words. “Just wait. He just takes a minute,” she told my mom and I. I am reminded that she, too, is learning how best to love a man she has lived with for 70 years. She loves him by waiting. He called out the name of the place they used to golf all together. Nana reminded Dutchie of his friend’s name and he went on with the rest of his point. He told us how his skin cancer got treated, then came back one day and killed him. I told him how my removal would’ve cost $600. He is surprised at how much medicine has changed. My mom shared how she couldn’t believe how many people in the old videotapes her and I watched the night before had died. My uncle walked in through the kitchen door and we started talking about me somehow. Since we finished eating weren’t sitting around the kitchen table anymore, people began to speak over each other and move their faces as they did, and I could tell Dutch couldn’t hear any of the conversations well. He sat silently and watched. Even when I sat next to him so we could talk by ourselves, the voices flooding into the dining room from the kitchen disrupted his thought process. I know he’d like to hear more about what I’ve been up to, but instead he cut the conversation short and told me that he is proud of me.

Nana and my uncle waved goodbye to my mom and me as we got into our car and looped around the driveway, but my grandpa couldn’t make it out of the door. I know he wanted to. He was probably watching through the kitchen window.