My grandfather's hands for many years were the only part of him
that seemed unaffected by the weaknesses and disease that were
taking his life. Callused, capable, with broad, tough nails, they
only suffered from age spots, but were still competent. He carved
canes with them, could fix anything mechanical, it seemed.

Finally even his hands have succumbed to the wasting that will be
the end of him before too much more time has passed. Before enough
time has passed. He clings to life now with only his will and those
thickened fingernails, confined to two rooms of the house he built
with his own hands.

He has always said he wanted to die in that house, and it looks as
though the minute his stubborn soul relaxes, he will have his wish.
Emphysema has stolen his air from him, an artificial valve in his
heart mangles the red blood cells that could carry what oxygen he
can still claim to his cells. When he goes to the hospital,
student doctors are brought to marvel at the fact that he is still
alive.

I do not want my grandfather to die. All my life he has taught me
things I will never need to know but nonetheless treasure. Thanks to
him I can find a meal in an overgrown section of someone's yard,
name birds and cows by the old, backwoods Kentucky names. He told
me how to scrub the deck on a battleship, and how to bootleg liquor
up and down the Ohio River.

But nothing can save him now, not even the will that rages inside him,
swearing at the infirmities that are killing his body in a voice much
stronger than the one he can use to speak to us. He does not want to
die, he wants to get better, but nothing will save his body now. And
God in His infinite wisdom counts death as a healing, removing a soul
still young and alive from a body that is failing with every minute.

It is still too hard to watch, but the family watches it all the same,
waiting for the morning he won't wake up anymore. Yet still his
drowning lungs manage to keep snatching oxygen from the tubes that
rest in his nose, still his beaten down, swollen, and weary heart
drags out another beat, and still another, and he crawls painfully
out of bed, and drags himself into the kitchen for a cigarette.

Why make him stop smoking now? It wouldn't help, it might hurt, his
body is so old and tired, perhaps the strain of fighting the physical
addiction of nicotine would finally jar his heart into stopping.
Besides, those cigarettes are one of the only pleasures left to him.
He can no longer manage the finesse needed to carve his canes, can't
get out to the yard anymore to tinker on the car, or the lawnmower,
or the old motorcycle he has sworn for years will someday become
a go-cart for whatever grandchildren are young enough to use it.

I never held the go-cart against him. As a kid, I recognized a dream
when I saw it, and he has always wanted to be able to give his family
luxuries. It is a bitterness for him that he never could afford to,
I think. The last time I saw him, he asked me to look for a used snow
mobile for him, so he could use the engine from it to make a go-cart.
Maybe partly it's the dream of the go-cart still keeping him alive.

But he's dying. There's only so much his will can do, and even less
that the doctors can do, they only look at him and shake their heads,
and give him another blood transfusion to replace the cells mangled by
his artificial valve. The only thing his family can do now is
pray for him, try to listen, try to hold his hand. It's hard. I don't
want to have to watch him dying by inches, struggling against it so
hard but still managing only to slip toward the final dark more
slowly, never getting ahead, never winning.

He tells us he loves us more often now. He tries to set right a
silence trained into him by the time he grew up in, by talking to
us on the telephone, telling us he loves us, trying to get through
to us. Maybe part of the reason he's still alive is that we will all
miss him so much. He has been there all of our lives.