Personal History - My Earliest Impressions of 'Old'

Who were the oldest people you remember as a child?

Grandpa Fowler

 

My memories of Grandpa Fowler, my grandmother's fourth and last serious relationship (third husband), are so faint as to be nearly non-existent. Although, when I look at pictures of him from that time, I can sort of 'recognize' him.

He died of lung cancer from smoking when I was two, so that's not wholly unexpected, and Grandma Fowler talked about him so much that he seemed very real to me as a child, even though he was gone.

Grandma Fowler

Grandma Lora lasted a bit longer than Grandpa; she passed away when I was eight years old. I wish she could have lasted longer.

I remember a lot more of her - sitting with her in the rocking chair, reading with her, her face and her smile and her laugh. She didn't seem old to me, because she never really acted old. But she could get cross with me, and sometimes she did.

Overall, my memories of her are similar to Rosalind Russell's performance of "Auntie Mame". Pretty, feminine, energetic, and laughing, with a strain of mischievousness that I really loved - she came from a long line of passive-aggressive champions, and she was right in there with them.

Grandpa Eden

My Eden grandparents were a different story, and I'm glad I lived to get a fuller picture of who they were from other family members with good things to say about them. They lived with us a long time, and passed away when I was into my late teens and early twenties.

The truth is, I didn't like Grandpa or Grandma Eden very much as a child.

Grandpa was slow, and mostly seemed to sit instead of stand or walk. His teeth were dark and stained, so I didn't like it when he smiled, although I did like to hear him laugh when he occasionally did.

All he and Grandma ever seemed to do was watch wrestling on TV, and he swore up and down that it was real. Even as a little kid, I knew it wasn't, and I found it boring.

I would come in and sit with them, when my parents indicated I should.  We would sit with them at Christmas and I tried to help my mom take care of them as much as I could.

But they scared me - when I was with Grandma Fowler, who seemed so much happier and lighter, old age didn't seem so bad. Around them, old age looked to me like a curse coming at me like a freight train. Was this what I had to look forward to someday? Growing up like this?

My little brother Mark adored them, and they adored him. I would see Mark sitting with them many, many times since he was small. I couldn't understand how that worked, but it did plant the idea in my mind that maybe somehow I'd gotten off on the wrong foot with them, and maybe they weren't as bad as I thought...although our personal relationship never improved.

Grandma Eden 

I also couldn't get along with Grandma Eden very much - she and Grandpa just seemed so different from me that I mostly avoided them whenever I could, something I regret now, but I couldn't do anything else as a child.

She seemed very negative when I did listen to her, but she did talk more than my grandfather, so I did get some family stories from her once in awhile. My mother remembers her as very supportive and accommodating, so that was another secondhand impression that was different than my own.

She suffered in my mind from comparisons with my earlier memories of Grandma Fowler - she didn't seem to me as pretty or nice. She was harsh and brusque with me, and seemed just as happy for me to ignore her as I was ignoring.

When we moved to Maryland, Grandma started having massive strokes, and all of a sudden, I watched her lose the power to communicate. Her mouth and arm didn't work right anymore, and she couldn't think straight anymore, and she knew it. It scared her, and she would mumble through her thick mouth and tongue and cry a lot after that, which I absolutely could not take. I left my mother to take care of them after that, and avoided them as much as possible.

The first couple of time I came home from school to see an ambulance or a chopper taking my grandma away to the hospital, it was scary and shocking. From the third time on, it settled down into some sort of cynical reality that never felt right to engage in, but I did - oh, there she goes again. Another stroke.

Once when I was about twelve, my parents took me to the hospital to go pick her up after her treatment for stroke. I didn't know what was going on, or what to expect, other than I was going to 'help' her get home.

I was completely unprepared for what I saw - the image of my emaciated grandmother, stark naked on a hospital bed, crying and flailing, unable to take care of herself. My mother and father got busy getting her covered up and getting the staff to help us get her out of there, but I froze. It was like a nightmare, seeing that happen to a person. Especially a person with the same gene pool as yourself. That image got burned on my brain that day, and that same question kept coming to my mind on the way home - will that be me someday?


She eventually required a lot of hands-on care, and I got called on to help my grandmother with applying her hemorrhoid medication (and yes, even with the gloves on, it was truly as awful as it sounds, on several levels).

We couldn't handle it anymore at some point with me moving out and my mother working full-time, and she and my grandfather went to Florida to live with their youngest son Alan and his wife Denise.

Denise was a champion, and she really took care of them well after that. It was a relief for everyone that they were finally getting the care they needed. Eventually my Grandma Eden passed away, cut down after her seventh stroke, and Grandpa Eden never acknowledged that she was dead. He would just start crying whenever Denise tried to gently tell him the fact, but he couldn't always remember things himself.

Grandpa passed away from complications of Alzheimer's in a rest home a few years after Grandma went.

And even to this day, I think about them and wonder, "Is that my future?" I can't help it.

My experiences with them left their mark on me in many ways.