Will I be Strong Enough?
By: Emilie Mitcham
Tags: Family History, Mental Illness, Memories, Heroes, Veterans Day

If he hadn’t have been able to be as strong as he was, she would have gotten to dance with him, and we never would have gotten to hold hands together and walk in what felt like a green, green park with big trees and little cooing bird sounds from the tops of the trees. Everything felt just fine, and it didn’t matter that he jerked his head and his arms and flung cigarette ashes everywhere, and had to have the nurses gently wipe the white stuff that curled out of the corners of his smiling mouth.

He took me to the swimming pool that the hospital provided for the patients in the summer. It was dry and hot outside and the water sparkled blue, like his eyes. He wore swimming trunks when he came out of the dressing room, and he had a towel around his neck that covered his caved in chest, and swung a little as he lurched across the cement, barefoot.

He took ahold of his towel and flung it on the table in one smooth move that demonstrated to me that he had learned how to go with the flow of the jerks in his body, the tardive dyskinesia, which was a side effect of the medicines he had to take even though he had a surgery that calmed his behavior. He still had to take medicines that were hard on his body but he was strong and brave, and he took them his entire life and he found a way to move with the jerkiness in his limbs, instead of fighting it.

He smiled and walked, or almost pitched himself toward the deep end where the diving board sat bolted to the concrete. I stood still, in my black one piece and my mom sat at the table with her book and her dress still on, and she watched. I was going to get in the water, but I waited for my grandfather, this still handsome man whose eyes matched the brilliant pool water. He climbed the ladder and I couldn’t help being afraid for him.

“Watch me!”

My mom and I watched, and he stood teetering at the very end of the long board that bounced just slightly with his weight, and then quietly — oh, so quietly — he bent his knees and went flying up into the air, made this perfect arc and then curved his body and down he sliced into the water with no sound. Just a tiny splash like it was maybe a spear that had hit the water instead of a seventy-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia and a lobotomy. He sprung back up out of the water and laughed with us, and then got out and dripped water as he see-saw walked his way back to the ladder, climbed up and did it again just exactly the same way.

Then he needed a smoke and got dressed so we could go meet his friends in the cafeteria. We met a friend who, he said, was a war hero, and who had one half of his face missing. Instead of the face that used to be there, was a big bulb of mountainous flesh. It almost looked like it was dripping and I didn’t look too long, but I looked long enough to make sure he knew that I wasn’t afraid of him. I smiled and he smiled with one eye and part of his mouth. I was proud to eat lunch with these two heroes, and my mom was too.

My grandfather said his friend’s family never visited and he wanted to make sure he got some time visiting with us, so that he wasn’t left out of all the fun of having two beautiful girls to hang out with on a Friday and Saturday.

“Are you my wife? I love you, you know.”

And we said we loved him too. And we did. I loved him with a kind of love that I have reserved for my grandfather all my life, and that I still carry for him now.

I named my second son after my grandfather, Mac, and he was born with those blue eyes. Photo by Paul Mueller, 1999.

After lunch, he wanted to smoke again and we sat at an orange plastic chair in a little room off the lunchroom. The vending machines made on and off and clanking growling noises, as they tried to get my attention with their sugary chocolate and sodas, behind the plastic. But I only had eyes for my grandfather. He was dashing still. His head bent to the side and his cigarette ash got flung into his Styrofoam cup of black coffee. His blue eyes shone at me, from slightly hooded lids and his lips curled up when he looked at me.

“You’re beautiful. Are you my daughter?” “No, I’m your granddaughter. Your daughter is my mom.” “Do you know how to shoot pool? I bet I will beat you at pool, but I will show you my tricks and you can learn how to beat me.”

We played pool and he showed me how to hold the stick behind my back, and tip my body backwards just a little, but keep one foot on the floor so that I don’t cheat.

“No cheating!”

He laughed and hit all the balls in before I could even get one into the pocket. And then he put some music on and he showed me how to do it myself.

We danced too. I might have imagined that. Because I associate music and dancing with my grandfather. For some reason, I know he was a good dancer. And for Christmas one year, when I was fifteen, and in dire need of good things to happen to me, he sent me a present. When I opened it, it was a tiny Walkman, that could fit into my pocket. And I would put the earphones on, and I would walk, and walk, and walk, and listen to music that would soothe me into a calmness that I hadn’t felt before. And then I would dance a little as I walked, and I would think about how my grandfather gave me this opportunity, and how I would possibly not even be alive if he hadn’t been so brave and so strong.

And later, after he died sitting up in his chair with his favorite nurse nearby, he came to me when I needed him most.