Leather Chairs and Charity

Miranda Maughan        

Sarah d’Evegnee

English 101    

September 27, 2017

Leather Chairs and Charity

        My grandparents had always loved each other. They were married for years like any typical couple who got married in the 60’s. They slept in the same bed ever since the day they said, “I do”. Something had suddenly changed though. They no longer slept in the same bed, although not because they didn’t love each other anymore. Fortunately they were still able to sleep in the same room. Their cream-colored bedroom had great architecture to it, like a princess’s bedroom in the highest tower of her palace. At least that’s how I had always pictured it. As majestic and great of a pretend castle the corners made when my cousins and I would dress up and play Princess in the room, the corners didn’t quite do the hospice bed justice.

        April 19, 2000 was the day my family’s lives would never be the same. My grandma walks down the rubbing alcohol doused hallway while hand in hand with my grandpa. The doctor escorts them back into the exam room with glass jars full of cotton swabs, tongue depressors, and Band-Aids.  He sits them in the cushioned chairs pushed up against the wall next to the small wooden table with a stack of People, National Geographic, and Cosmopolitan magazines. Only a few moments ago the doctor had the biggest grin almost as if he had just been informed he had won a seven-day trip to the Bahamas for two, yet now his face is dripping and drenched with somberness. The dreaded words poured out of his mouth like cement; heavy and thick. “Mr. and Mrs. Maughan”, he says ringing his hands like a wet wash cloth. He tilts his head towards my grandpa and avoids eye contact for the first few seconds then looks up at him with a face full of concern and says, “I’m so sorry to inform you but you’ve been diagnosed with stage four cancer.” My grandmother’s world shrunk right before her eyes. When reality struck, they began interrogating the doctor with question after question.

        Although I was only two years old when this event took place but it changed my life forever. My grandpa was a kind, loving, and empathetic man. All those qualities stayed after he had undergone treatment but were far less prominent. The less desirable qualities in him came out, such as impatience, OCD, and irritability. I grew up not truly knowing the real man behind the chemo who I called Grandpa. I grew up running through the living room but abruptly coming to a halt, getting carpet burns on the arches of our feet as we approached Grandpa’s brown, worn, leather recliner. As he sat and watched baseball on Sunday afternoons, and we stuck our hands deep in our pockets and hung our heads low as we walked slowly past him. Once we made it out of No Man’s Land, we picked up speed immediately and ran another lap around the house.

        While Grandpa was running thin on patience, Grandma stuck by his side through it all. Not to be misinterpreted, my Grandpa was one of the best men I have ever known in my life and never would have caused us pain even if he wanted to. He was still kind, loving, and empathetic, but the chemo took an almost unbearable toll on his body.

Feeling like we were walking on Legos around grandma’s house finally paused. We could finally behave like kids again! The disease that took away our fun Grandpa was gone! He was better, cured, and made whole again. He was no longer yelling at us as we raced past his leather chair. He went outside and watched us play. He made jokes again. His cancer was gone and as far as I knew (since I was too young to remember him before the cancer) everything was back to the way it was. I didn’t have to worry any longer if now was a good time to try and show my five-year-old affection. That affection consisting of wet cheek kisses, messily drawn pictures drawn with crayon. The kind that I believed belonged in an art museum somewhere cool to me at the time, like Boise, Idaho. Tight neck hugs with warm, heavy, breathing right in his ear were received with my drawings. It was always a good time for that now.

Life was good. I grew up with a great, loving grandfather for 5 whole years (which is 8 years in kid years). I’ve discovered though, that happy endings don’t typically happen or at least last long. October 2010 my sweet grandpa whom I had a newfound love for was diagnosed with cancer for a second time. This time his worn-out brain wasn’t the victim of this merciless crime, but his prostate. This time I was 11 and had a more concrete understanding of what was causing his deterioration.  Although I was older, I couldn’t completely grasp the fact that my grandpa was sick again. He had just gotten better and I had just barely learned to love him for who he was and not who the cancer made him be. I wasn’t ready to lose the one grandfather who pushed me to reach my goals and inspired me to be a better person.

Just like the first time he was diagnosed with cancer, my grandpa’s health went downhill quickly. This time he ended up not being in the right mind. He would say the funniest things and get frustrated with us when we couldn’t do something for him perfectly. Once I remember I was sitting by his bedside trying to spend the last few days I had left with him and he asked me to go get him a drink of water. Wanting him to be as comfortable as possible, I obediently walked into the kitchen and got a plastic purple cup with scratches all up the sides of it because all the grandkids would drop it on the concrete patio outside as we would get distracted by the big kids playing capture the flag. He always wanted us to give him the glass cups because he wanted to be treated like he was capable of doing things on his own but he would always drop and break them. I threw a straw in and brought the cup over to him. I slowly lifted the cup to his face and maneuvered the straw over to his mouth. He had a skinny face and the skin drooped from his jaw. When he tried to drink out of the straw he looked like an ancient tortoise. His muscles were so weak that he couldn’t keep the straw in his mouth but he kept sucking the water up so it would spill on him and he felt the need to give me a nice little “how to” tutorial.

  There are multiple accounts where he would offend leaders in the church and my sweet grandma would have to go back and apologize for him. He yelled at me and the other grandkids and Grandma would have to kneel by his side and talk him through his emotions and comfort him until he would fall back asleep in his leather recliner. She put down everything she had been doing to take care of the love of her life while still being the best grandma I could ever ask for. This cycle of emotional tranquilization, giving medication, and essentially being his free nurse lasted for years. She dedicated her life to caring for my sickly grandpa, not because she got anything out of it, but because she had promised him and the Lord that she would.