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It was difficult for my grandfather to accept that his body was failing him. Inside his frail shell, his spirit raged. His soul remained young and willing, but his days were filled with long winters that came like an avalanche, weighing him down and suffocating the life out of him. He realized that there would be no more springs.
"I guess we'll be taking my elephant skin to a nursing home," he said with a laugh, as my young son tenderly caressed his arm, which he found exotic and beautiful, much like the elephant's skin he had seen at Brookfield Zoo.
"¿Qué piensas, astronauta?" he asked my son. My son smiled and rested his cheek on his great-grandfather's arm.
Just a week or two after our visit, my grandparents reluctantly moved to an assisted living facility. There, they befriended an elderly man in a wheelchair who had no visitors and hadn't seen his son or daughter in years. Every time I drove my parents to Muscatine, Iowa, we would invite him over for a visit. We brought him sweets, word puzzles, and knick-knacks, but most importantly, we engaged him in conversation. He would share memories of his wife and children. It was often emotional, yet I always managed to maintain my composure. Whenever he saw us, he would roll down the hallway as quickly as he could, waving and greeting us with, "¡Buen día, amigos! ¡Buen día!”
After my grandparents passed away, I became so consumed by my own problems that I pushed the memory of him into the far corners of my mind, where he gradually faded into obscurity. Years later, while talking to a friend whose parents were considering moving to an assisted living facility, I suddenly remembered that tiny old man. Since then, whenever I reflect on my own mortality, I imagine him sitting in his wheelchair by the entrance of the nursing home, beneath the apple blossoms, anxiously waiting for my arrival.
