It was 8:30 Wednesday morning, and I was still in bed. Wednesday was my only day off from my job, which was at my family’s bakery. When I say my family’s bakery, I mean just that: it was my parents, my sister, and myself and that was it. We had other employees at one time, but they had to be let go, because standalone bakeries were becoming obsolete in the early 1990s. My parents had recently sold the second bakery they had bought five years earlier. That bakery proved to be a financial disaster.
That Wednesday was also my day off from driving my sister and her friends to school. My grandfather Vance was living with us then, and he drove them that day. He was in the hospital the previous fall for almost three months. He came to live with us after he was released in December, which is partly why I dropped out of college. I was to take care of him in the morning, then go to work in the bakery in the afternoon. I would sit with him some nights and watch television until he went to bed.
At first he had trouble doing anything for himself, but gradually he became stronger. I helped him with his morning ablutions and made him breakfast and lunch. After a few months, he was able to go out, so I mostly took him grocery shopping. I think I took care of him in this way for six to eight months before he was able to do everything for himself, including driving, which was pretty good for an eighty-year-old man. Out of all the things we had to do for him when he was recuperating, I think he missed driving most of all.
I heard my grandfather come in on that Wednesday morning. I was still in bed, but awake. I was feeling lazy that day and I didn’t want to get up. I heard him walking from room to room downstairs, and I heard him scolding one of the cats. I don’t think he actually hated the cats we had at the time (there were four of them), but they always seemed to be in his way or shedding on his things. He used to say to them, “Get outta here!” the same way I hear my dad, Vance’s son, do now when I talk to him on the phone.
It was quiet for a few moments, and then I heard a loud thump. Having four cats, this was not an unusual sound, so I stayed in bed for a few more minutes. I realized that I didn’t hear my grandfather scolding the cats, so I reluctantly got out of bed to investigate. I had on a pair of shorts, but I didn’t bother putting any other clothes on, because I planned on going right back upstairs to bed after I found out what happened.
It was not the cats that made the loud thump. I saw my grandfather’s legs on the floor as I came off the stair landing. He had fallen on the kitchen floor, and he must have been trying to steady himself with one of the kitchen chairs, because he pulled it down on top of him. His nitroglycerin pills were scattered all over the floor. I can only assume that he felt what was coming and tried to stop it, but he was too late. I was starting to panic at this point, and I called out to him, but I received no response. What made me panic even more was the sharp, raspy, and loud intake of breath that came after I called his name. I could see that he wasn’t breathing aside from this, and I was frightened and I didn’t know how to help him. I did have the presence of mind to dial 911, and I called my dad at the bakery right after that. In the first of many regrets I have about that day, I left my grandfather on the floor in the kitchen and went upstairs to put a shirt on. I am still amazed that despite my terror at my grandfather’s situation, I was selfish enough to do this.
When I came back downstairs, I noticed that the fedora that he was wearing was still slightly on his head. I gently removed it and put it aside. Soon after that, the first police officer arrived, less than five minutes after I called 911. I explained the situation to him, and he tried resuscitating him. A second police officer arrived within minutes of the first, quickly followed by an ambulance crew. They brought a stretcher in and cut through his clothes to try to revive him. He was wearing a dress shirt, along with a vest and a sport coat, which is what he normally wore. He used to tend his garden in a dress shirt and pants in the summertime.
The ambulance crew decided that they needed to take him to the hospital, so they put him on the stretcher and took him outside, which is when I saw my dad pull up in his truck. I don’t know how he didn’t get pulled over, because he made the trip home from work in half the time it usually took. He got on the ambulance with my grandfather and went with him to the hospital. The police also left, and then I was alone.
I thought that my grandfather would be fine; that my dad would call in an hour or two and tell me that Vance was okay, that he just had a minor setback. I was in a bit of a daze, but I decided to hang onto these thoughts and do something normal. It was breakfast time, so I decided to make some pancakes for myself. I had the batter all made up when the phone rang. It was a lady from the hospital. I don’t remember what her name was or in what capacity she worked for the hospital, but I did know from the fake tone of her voice that my grandfather had passed away, which she confirmed for me seconds later. I know she was just doing her job, that she probably had to make dozens of these calls every week, but I wanted to jump through the phone and punch her in her face. I didn’t want her talking about my grandfather like that.
I started to cry when she told me that my dad wanted me to come and pick him up at the hospital. To me, this meant that the world was not going to stop now that Vance was gone, which made me feel worse than I did. I attempted to compose myself so I could go and pick up my dad. He was waiting outside where the lady said he would be, and his eyes were red and puffy. I had only seen him cry twice in my life. He told me that he went in to see my grandfather after they pronounced him dead.
I drove back to our house, which seemed very empty. I saw the pancake batter on the counter, so I made the pancakes for my dad and I. I didn’t know what else to do.
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