1. My parents b*tch at the way my sister and I drive. According to my parents, my sister drives too close the car in front and shouldn't go over 80mph, and I make reckless turns and brake too late.
2. My dad always feels the need to make a stop to stretch his legs, which is code for "smoke break." The rest of the family b*tches about his lung-choking cigarette stench.
3. Before we can even see the cows, we smell their tortuous malodor. Mother always asks my dad the same question: Are they milk cows or beef cows?
As we make our way into San Pablo, CA, we notice a grillz store flanked by a mom and pop Mexican restaurant, liquor store, coffee shop and beat down motels. Grillz?! Too funny! It was the first time that we had been back to my grandpa's house since my grandmother had died last July. The exterior and interior of the house remain the same despite the 20 or some odd years of my grandparents' residing there. Walk inside and you're warped back to the eighties. Yellow-brownish shag carpet, popcorn ceilings with cobwebbs and water damage, yellow kitchen countertops and stove. But my grandpa managed to make it unique in his own way. Ceram wrap covers the wall above the stove to prevent splattering oil from staining it; papers with phone numbers and inspirational quotes are pinned to the wall; and multiple calendars from the previous and current year line the wall, as if they were decoration...and they're in every room of the house.
But I'm not done--I have to go into detail with this oddity--my grandpa has an obsession with compartments. (He's a neat freak and I can see where my mom gets it from...and it explains why I'm a bit anal...but that can be saved for another time.) For every group of items, he groups them together and puts them in trays. DVDs, pens, notepads, medicine, nail clippers, tape, etc. He even has trays within trays. He'll have a pull-out compartment and inside are several trays with different items like q-tips, cotton balls and tissues. There are different colored and sized trays. Some compartments have lids, some are round, some are rectangular, some have handles, some can be linked with other compartments to make a stackable large one. Oh my freakin' goodness! They're everywhere!
Then there's the one quirk about my grandpa that is endearing...or annoying at certain times, but nevertheless, thoughtful. My grandpa takes a camera with him everywhere that he goes. The first thing I noticed when I walked into his house was the new cabinet that was by the doorway. This type of cabinet is usually used to display fine china, but my grandpa decided to exhibit my grandma's photos. It was as if he created a museum to memorialize my grandma. There she was, in seven pictures, playing the piano. But each picture was from a different year. Pictures have a way of being cruel, capturing the changes in aging and sickness, but it also has a way of being giving, offering a precious moment forever frozen in time. The many photos of my grandma hanging from the walls remind my grandpa of the love that he once had and forever will have in his heart.
So back to the reason why we came up here. My uncle. When we were in the waiting room for the ICU, I had planned to not go in his room. I didn't want to see him like that. I didn't want to remember him like that. But I went in. Bags of different liquids and medicines fed through the many tubes that went into my uncle. An oxygen machine sat at the foot of his bed, quietly pumping air in and out of a tube that went through his mouth. Another machine to his left pumped in new blood and took out the old, while different screens monitored his heart rate and other vitals. His black hair was longer than what I remembered it to be. It was smoothly slicked back, naturally from laying on his back all day. His skin was yellow. His eyes were open but there was no movement in his eyelids, no life in his eyes. His chest moved up and down but that was artificially created. Tears streamed down my face the moment I saw all of this. I couldn't hold back. (Damn birth control makes me so emotional!) I saw my mom holding back her tears but the cringe in her face and the intensity in her eyes spoke loudly enough. She spoke to her brother, telling him to get better and go home.
As of right now, we don't know why his body shut down on him. He had nose cancer and was awaiting treatment but his body got infected and his liver stopped functioning. I think the doctors gave a conservative estimate on my uncle's life span. He did show signs of slight improvement. We're just waiting for him to get better. He was a workaholic but he always found time to take care of and spend time with his daughters. I believe that he has the strength to pull through. He loves his family too much to let them go now.
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