As the youngest of the family at 16, never having seen death, I was protected for a long time. He was in the hospital for a long time, in and out of the ICU, and I was not taken for visits even while everyone else spent their afternoons there. It was a nice thought, I suppose, this wordless urge to shelter me, and I went on handing in papers and taking tests. Only once did my mother collapse on me in hysterical tears — and I never saw that again.
But when it became clear that the end was near, I was taken to the hospital to visit. I sat in the waiting room for a long time with my hands clasped in my lap, biting my lip. This was a room of people accustomed to waiting, so that the horror of it was very distant. My mother and grandmother both had knitting — they had long ago learned to come prepared for long waits. The smooth cream-colored walls had friendly paintings of boats on sunny seas. The clicking of knitting needles was everywhere, and two women, waiting room buddies I suppose, compared their products. Everything was relaxed and comfortable; there wasn't anything to fear.
I followed my mother down a bright blue hallway and into the ICU, where my grandfather was. He was pale, immobilized and muted by a breathing tube, but I saw his eyes following me. I knew I was supposed to step forward and say something, and my lips worked, but there was something writhing in my throat so that nothing came out. After a few swallows I managed, "It's good to see you. It's good to see you." I clasped his dry white hand and he squeezed mine very gently. It's good to see you. That was all I could say.
His gray hair was spread wildly across the pillow, the only time I had ever seen him less than immaculately groomed. It came from his days as a TV anchorman I suppose, but even while relaxing at home in a striped bathrobe he was distinguished, slow-moving but perfectly measured, a duke majestically turning the pages of his newspaper while I played with plastic animals on the pristine carpet. Behind him in the den was a wall of black-and-white photographs of him and Marilyn Monroe, holding microphones in front of Nixon, Johnson and Ford and laughing with Lucille Ball. He never left the house without his hat, a soft gray fedora that always sat on the credenza when not in use. Every day after sitting with him in the hospital, my grandmother returned to the apartment and saw the hat on the credenza, waiting.
He liked to sing. When I visited, the apartment was always filled with whistling or soft little tunes from another generation. His favorite was "Royal Telephone." His singing was gentle — he was gentle. I remember him stooping very slowly and carefully, extending his fingers just so our cat could rub up against them.
He had a pencil and paper to write for us, but he was so weak that he could barely make shapes on the paper. His hands drifted aimlessly, and I remembered his special present to me, "The Dictionary of Commonly Misspelled, Mispronounced, and Misused Words." My love for precise language was his too. When I was little, he was the one who taught me the difference between "weather" and "whether," "quote" and "quotation." Now he could barely write "yes" or "no." Finally he fell back, discouraged, and clasped my hand again with surprising strength, just trying to hang on. I looked and looked and swallowed and did not want to look away. It's good to see you. That was all I said. Then my mother put her hands on my shoulders and guided me away — somehow she had decided I'd had enough. I was always the baby of the family, the one whose tears were most carefully guarded against.
That was the last time I saw him. Days after my visit to the hospital I would find myself humming very softly, "You can talk to heaven on the royal telephone." I was afraid to sing it aloud.
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