Cleaning the Lamp Posts

Grandpa's Wisdom in the Midst of Parkinson's

Last week, while I was home for a few days with my parents and grandparents, my grandfather took a spill. It was only when we had already helped him up that we realized he had a large, bruising bump on his head and required immediate care.

Parkinson's disease makes too many everyday tasks for my grandpa more difficult than they have ever been before: walking, moving, standing, sitting, eating, talking. His hands shake, his limbs are stiff, and his mind seems perpetually clouded. He has always been an exceptionally brilliant man. If everyone has but one thing they personally consider self-identifying, Grandpa's intelligence is his. And he is now often unaware, or dazed, or seemingly incoherent, but frequently he seems frustrated as well, as though he is not only in a haze but confused as to how he got there when he knows - he knows - that he is a bright, strong, competent person.

It's difficult for him to understand us - not that his children or grandchildren have ever really been all that easy to understand - but he finds it difficult to know our intentions, answer questions, and follow conversational threads. It's difficult to understand him, too, though sometimes he makes himself especially clear.

One day this past summer, he stood before me and looked me square in the eye. "Enjoy life," he said, his expressive eyes compensating for the brevity. He doesn't always know who I am, but some things are too important to say no matter who says them and to whom.

This time, as I was icing his bruise, Grandpa told me, complete with its anecdote-esque dialogue tag, "He said, 'Merry Christmas, Nancy.'"

His wife's name. We attributed the rest of the sentence to the fact that my mother and grandmother had just been listening to a CD that I'd compiled for my parents last Christmas, which included a couple of seasonal tunes.

We were fairly sure that Grandpa's difficulty conversing and general quietness were more due to the Parkinson's itself than to the fall, but we needed to be sure that he remained conscious until the EMTs arrived.

"Were you listening to the music?" I asked.

"Of course."

"What's your favorite song, Grandpa?"

"Beef." He threw me for a loop on that one. His expression hadn't changed and it was impossible to gauge whether he was being humorous or serious or had misheard me or had simply chimed in with a nonsequitur.

"Beef?"

"Beef!" More animated this time; not coarse, but strangely energized if just for a moment.

It reminded me of Stone Soup, because we'd recently been talking about that story, so I quoted a line from it about beef and used it as a segue. "Did you like being a butcher?"

"Not particularly." This a conversational tone; honest, not detached, but without great lament or disappointment.

"Well, what's your favorite thing to do?"

"To do?"

"Yeah. In the whole wide world."

"Ah," he said. "Cleaning the lamp posts."

I'm not entirely sure why, but this struck me as significant, poignant.

An unexpected answer, to say the least, though I know Grandpa to be a hard worker who has always valued diligence. A man who, for years, labored lovingly over his own garden in addition to the time and energy he devoted to his business. So the idea of him cleaning lamp posts - even enjoying it - does not radically stun me.

But the imagery did.

Immediately I thought of illuminated paths in the dark, a guiding light in the midst of unfamiliar ground.

I thought of the tall poles that in daylight appear meaningless, or else only aesthetically interesting - shapes and hues of wrought iron suspending a glass encasement in the air. At night, these works of craftmanship may all but disappear in the darkness despite themselves. Certainly their structure and technical mechanisms are integral to their effectiveness, yet sometimes all that can be seen is the light at work.

In a fantastic irony, as a young child my brother used to say that our grandfather made the streetlights come on. I'm not sure where he came up with that tale - surely my parents' twisted influence - but I still think of Grandpa whenever I travel by the glow of streetlights, and especially whenever they first go on for their night shift.

Today I attended a talk during which the ever-inspirational speaker, Dr. Lynne Westfield, mentioned that artists depict us with lightbulbs shining above our heads to signify new ideas, seeing something illuminated in a new way.

My grandfather may occasionally confuse his meats and his music, but to this day, at 89 years of age, he can open my eyes to see life in a new light.


All photos above are my own, taken from 2007-2010. Their locations, in order:

Vienna, Austria. Vassar College, New York. Madison, New Jersey. London, England. Sarah Lawrence College, New York. Arboretum in Hamptonburgh, New York. Central Park, New York. Sarah Lawrence College, New York. Florence, Italy. Nice, France. Venice, Italy.