Towards that which doesn't respond in words

He goes to visit every day. My grandfather. Most days two or three times. To talk to her, to hold her hand. My grandmother sits in a wheelchair, unresponsive, but sometimes she moves her hand against his. Those are good days. They’ve been together for 73 years. A lifetime, now expressed in hand movements. 17 years old when they met. Children. A Friday night, a Catholic school Coke Dance, the boys had been bussed in to the girl’s school. He saw her from across the gymnasium, went to ask if she would teach him the Charleston. She did. Then they had seven kids. Fourteen grandkids. Now they’re 90 and on Sundays he walks to the other wing of their community, to pick her up, to wheel her to mass. For a long time she was in the choir at St. Pats in Chicago, always loved to be surrounded in song and prayer. He can still do this for her, take her out of her room for an hour of ritual. But one Sunday she screamed out in the middle of mass. Everyone turned to look. He wheeled her out to the hall. The priest was young, brand new, and my grandfather waited at the end to apologize to him, said he wouldn’t bring her to mass anymore. The priest knelt down to her in the wheelchair, face to face. He put his hand on her head, said it’s okay, it’s okay, you come back. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. She never cries, not since the Alzheimers. My grandfather looked at the priest, told him. She never cries like this. Thank you, he said, thank you. The priest nodded. Everything is okay, he said.

His words, my grandfather, almost 91:

“She has only an inner life, in a quality that none of us understand. When I’m with her, I’m always touching her, in whatever way, and that’s my way of not losing touch with her on a spirit level. When she’s unable to respond on my daily visits that can be very hard, but it helps me to say why don’t you reach out to somebody else who’s also hurting, why don’t you listen and be aware. I feed on the fact that I can try to be close to people, because that also heals me, to be able to touch your shoulder and say you’re hurting aren’t you, and let’s talk about that. I can do that, and I’m not leaving the playing field. That’s the challenge I remind myself of every day. Don’t leave the playing field. Don’t despair, don’t throw anything away. I intend to be true to the things I value, and not turn away from what life unfolds. It means a lot to me to have an internal life, to try to understand and fathom my relationships, deeply and open-mindedly. You have to go deeply within yourself to reach other people, and you get into some deep spirituality if you are wanting to probe things that way. We ascend through the transformation in our lives, day by day, week by week, decision by decision, we take ourselves in that direction. I’m never going to say it’s over. Her spirit and my spirit have been together for 73 years, and we will be together, our spirits will be together. When we pass on our spirits will have ascended to God. That’s what I believe. I am examining my own unity consciousness with her, as we fathom no boundary together. I hold her and she talks through her fingers. I tell her I love you, I belong to you, we are together.”

He wrote this when she was diagnosed

In our youth, his letters to me and my brother and cousins always signed off in the same way:

Peace & Restlessness