Am I a bad person?

[Hawk]

I agree with Jase...go for a quick visit before you lose the chance to! Not having the chance to say goodbye could sting for a long time!

[Khyber53]

Sometimes, it's not about you and the person that you are visiting. It's about the people you share relationships with, the family members you were both close to. I agonized over this one when my grandfather passed away a few years ago because there wasn't a healthy relationships there and I had always felt I was nothing more than a minor footnote in his life.

But my Mom wanted me to be there and visit him near the end, so my wife and I made the five hour trip to see him. At the time, I resented the trip and the time I would be spending to make it, as there had been times in the past when he had come to the town where I lived and never made an effort to tell me he was coming or even to make contact with me. I had real, deep, "this serves you right" anger on the issue and there was definitely a "What the hell did you ever do for me" thread running through it.

But we got in the car and went. I stewed and stewed over it for the first couple of hours until we made it to Franklin, VA where he'd crashed his airplane when I was about 13. Something just broke in me at that moment and I saw both him and the journey in a different light.

I had been staying with my Dad for the summer when I was 13 and it was on the way out to breakfast that he said, "Son, I've got some really bad news for you. Your mom called last night and told me that her parents crashed their airplane yesterday evening."

As a kid, you can't help but think the worst, and I was devastated in the few seconds pause before he continued. My granddad, the pilot, businessman, career Navy man, Marine who'd survived Iwo Jima and Okinawa, invulnerable, infallible, distant like a hero on a mountaintop had fallen so tragically. "Your grandparents survived, but they were hurt badly," my Dad explained, "and they are in the Navy hospital in Norfolk now."

He had survived, but he had also died for me for that moment. He had gone from being something grander than my life to being something human, flawed and fragile as the rest of us. The curtain had been pulled back. In the coming years, I would see him differently, not as some kind of demigod better than the rest of us mere mortals. The crash set about wiping away the mythology that had been instilled in me and, in turn, built by me. As the years passed, I saw him as a man wrapped up in pride, avarice, self-righteousness and disdain for people like myself and others in my family. Slights from him no longer slid off so quickly, resentments built, a dislike for him and the kind of person he was grew.

The hero of my early youth was shown to be nothing more than a bitter, aging man who put on airs and looked down those who hadn't followed his life path. A man who once took his new Mercedes back to his old hometown in the NC mountains, parked it at the main intersection of town and proceeded to polish it as a big F--- You to the people who had chosen to keep living there. You get the picture.

And I was fine with despising him, even being embarassed by him, because, well, that's how we deal with people, good and bad, we create their archetype in our minds based on our observations. We get it settled and let it sink in, the ease of an emotional filing system we all hold within ourselves.

Then we hit the town limits of Franklin and smelled that God-awful reek of the paper mill that permeates that city to the pores and something just broke down. Odors and memories are tied up tightly in our brains and the stench of Franklin brought back the rides to Norfolk to see him as a little kid and it also brought back the plane crash. That turning moment when he was no longer Superman in my eyes.

You see, he came out of the crash with a broken wrist, broken ankle, broken nose and cheek. My grandmother was found in the baggage compartment -- broken arm, broken leg and four shattered vertebrae. The married couple traveling with them saw the wife walk away with no teeth and a broken jaw. Her husband, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, died. My granddad did what he could after the engine went out in the plane, he glided the plane until he spotted a pea field and approached it from an angle that would allow the Piper Cherokee to pass between two trees and clip both wings and their fuel tanks off.

As I drove through Franklin, my wife beside me, I realized that the guy must have been something to have had the wherewithal to do that. And in doing so give the passengers the best chance of survival he could. Without wings, though, that plane was going to be a missile going nose first into the dirt. I'd have been terrified of the impact had I been there at the front in the pilot's seat, that I wouldn't have lived. I'd have tried to just land the thing, and the crops and furrows of the field would have flipped the plane into a cartwheeling ball of fire.

He did something selfless, something I had never imagined him capable of, but I understood him a bit better. And everything else I had put on him started sliding off as we left Franklin. Over the next couple of hours, I talked with my wife and worked out not who I thought he was but how he became who he was. You see, his father left his mother when my granddad was just a toddler. His mother died when he was twelve in front of his eyes -- she'd had major surgery just a week before, but was carrying a galvanized tub full of wet laundry she'd taken in to wash to earn some money to feed the family. The stitches ruptured and she bled to death quickly, but painfully. Over the next six years, he went from one family to another until he graduated from high school and in none of the homes did he ever feel good enough to be there, he was just some poor orphan they took in and didn't have a family of his own. And I'm sure he heard that a lot.

He wanted to be better than that, to prove everyone wrong, and make the life that he was never allowed to have. When WWII broke out, he volunteered for the Marines, signing on to be a pilot. Instead, he drove the Amtrak landing crafts. The war ended, he returned back to his hometown and found only work at a chair factory and a new wife whose parents were too good for him. It didn't take long for him to bug out of that place and enlist in the Navy, where he did twenty more years to end up in the lucrative real estate market in the growing Norfolk area. He thrived and became the big shot he always wanted to be, and he was proud to put a chip on his shoulder about it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like who he came to be, or the deep, abiding hatred he had for his hometown (which was where I was born and raised) and the people there. But somewhere on that last drive to see him, I came to understand him, somewhat at least.

And my wife put the final coda on the ordeal for me as we pulled into the nursing home parking lot in Virginia Beach. She said he was just a man made by the circumstances, and I guess we all are in the end, but part of who he was makes me who I am, that I'll always carry a piece of him around in me affecting what I do and how I look at others. Now, pride, strength, drive, disdain, were all stripped from him, he was just a man at death's door who had nothing left that would be any value to him whatsoever more than the bonds of the family he'd be leaving behind. And to be there with my Mom, for my Mom as he passed, well, you understand. He wouldn't take the last step alone, but that his legacy, good or bad would be there.

And me, I guess I needed it to. He wasn't able to talk when I got there, but I got to spend a few minutes alone with him. What was said doesn't really matter, and I couldn't go into it verbatim if I had to, but something changed in me on that ride and some old chains fell off as I set by that bedside.

Sorry, I'm sure that this falls into the tl;dr category, and I have meandered all over the original subject matter. Not sure why I set it all out there for everyone to read, but thanks for your time if you've made it this far.

Go see folks when their time comes, you may need to be there for you, you may need to be there for them.

[Wither]

Awesome post; thanks for sharing.

[boo7382]

Sometimes, it's not about you and the person that you are visiting. It's about the people you share relationships with, the family members you were both close to.

Go see folks when their time comes, you may need to be there for you, you may need to be there for them.

Wow. I just cried a little at work, but what a great point and story. Took a lot for you to share that I'm sure and I know we all appreciate it. Good for you.

[charlotte49er]

My stepdad died of cancer. When he was down to his last breaths I left the hospital called my mom and told her I wasn't coming back. I didn't want to see him that way.

That's the tough part. right now you remember how he looked the last time you saw him, but when you go to the hospital, you remember that image!

I experienced it with my Father. He looked a lot like Walter Matthau, but the last time I saw him in the hospital, he was almost a ghost. Fortunately I still have a few pictures of him when he was healthy, so I'll remember him that way.

[tarheelblue89]

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update.

He passed away very early this morning. Which to be honest, it's nothing short of amazing he made it this long. We were all expecting him to go last Monday.

The day I made this thread, I did end up seeing him. Unfortunately by that time he was already ready to go that he was barley responsive at all. I saw him a couple times, let him know that we were there with him.

Anyways, thanks for the responses in here.

[The Saltman]

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update.

He passed away very early this morning. Which to be honest, it's nothing short of amazing he made it this long. We were all expecting him to go last Monday.

The day I made this thread, I did end up seeing him. Unfortunately by that time he was already ready to go that he was barley responsive at all. I saw him a couple times, let him know that we were there with him.

Anyways, thanks for the responses in here.

sorry for your loss bud

[Darth Biscuit]

Yeah man, sorry. Glad you got to go see him.

[ladypanther]

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update.

He passed away very early this morning. Which to be honest, it's nothing short of amazing he made it this long. We were all expecting him to go last Monday.

The day I made this thread, I did end up seeing him. Unfortunately by that time he was already ready to go that he was barley responsive at all. I saw him a couple times, let him know that we were there with him.

Anyways, thanks for the responses in here.

Good for you. I am sorry for his death. What you did likely meant something to him, it certainly meant something to others in your family. In the long run, hope it is meaningful for you.

Sometimes, we just need to do something for someone else. I think we are better for that.

[Khyber53]

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update.

He passed away very early this morning. Which to be honest, it's nothing short of amazing he made it this long. We were all expecting him to go last Monday.

The day I made this thread, I did end up seeing him. Unfortunately by that time he was already ready to go that he was barley responsive at all. I saw him a couple times, let him know that we were there with him.

Anyways, thanks for the responses in here.

My sincere condolences.

[Hawk]

sorry for your loss...I'm a firm believer that he knew you were there!

my best friend died this spring and before he went, he had a couple days that were really bad and we thought he was pretty much gone. They changed his meds and he made some progress to the point that he was awake and talking some...and he said he knew we were there. Hardest thing I did was sit there in his room when he took that final breath and there wasn't anything we could do about it. Amazing what the human body can do!