Music to Write To….

I have been searching for something to motivate my blogging efforts. As I was looking up ways to transfer my vinyl to digital format, I started to look through my music collection (in all its forms) and realized I have not listened to many of my albums for quite some time. I spend most of my time listening to music in digital form. This means I almost exclusively listen to the albums I have put into my itunes collection. Blowing off the dust that was settling on some of my albums, I realized how much I needed to revisit each one. I want to remind myself how they came into my collection. What they mean to me. So many of my albums desperately need to be heard. So, I decided that I will write my music collection. Trace the artists, the gaps, the outliers. Everything. And I will do it in my living room. Not on my ipod. Not in the gym. Not while driving my car or riding my bike. The music will fill the spaces of my apartment. And I will write. I will listen and write.

I counted (roughly) 400 cds, vinyl, tapes, music videos, and downloads in my collection. I will delve into each of these for the remainder of this calendar year. That gives me about 137 days to complete this task. And it is my goal to do this each and every day. By December 31, 2009, I will have heard my whole collection and written about each item. And I will have proven to myself that I can write this blog every day for 137 days.

Joseph Weber: Scattered Memories of My Grandpa

I so often construct narratives of my life around movies and music. A child of popular culture, these things mark everything. My grandpa, Joseph Weber, died a little after midnight at the start of Saturday, August 1st. He was 94 years old. I missed the initial call because in my typical fashion, I forgot to turn my cell phone back on after being at a movie theater earlier that night. Instead of hearing my phone and learning the news, I was finishing watching The Savages.

Now if you do not know what this movie is about, I should give a little insight because for me it conveys some of the issues threading through my grief for my grandpa. Roughly, without embellishment, it is a movie about a brother and sister who must deal with putting their father in a nursing home. The children are estranged from their father due to a painful past—a past that includes abuse. Yet they are alone, together, and must deal with the reality of their father’s dementia and his inevitable death. The movie is more about characters than plots, so it’s impossible to explain the subtleties at work in the film. It has to be watched. So as I laid on my couch watching, my mind wandered off to thoughts about how my sister and I would handle the inevitabilities of our aging parents.

As I was watching the movie and thinking my thoughts, my grandfather was struggling with his last few breaths of life. And then he passed away. What does that really mean? Passed away?

I had a major existential crisis when my other grandpa died nine years ago. Passed away became an expression that haunted me. All the yoga spirituality I embrace does not make the meaning any less jagged in my mind. Although, I am better able to handle death, I am no less better able to understand what happens. I can’t believe we just evaporate into nothing, but nor can I believe that we spend eternity some kind of heaven or hell. I am dreading going to the wake because I know I will again stand there, staring at the body, wondering what happened to that life force that made my grandpa, my grandpa. The body is just an artifact of him. So I need to provide a pastiche of memories to grasp what it was that made my grandpa who he was—is. A fallible human being.

The Importance of Being Outdoors

It's a brisk autumn day. The smell of dried leaves and wood chips permeate the air. My cousins are there, so is my sister, my dad, and my grandpa. I think there are some others but I can’t remember. It's some time in the early 1970s. The frame of the house my grandparents will live in when they retire is just taking form. It’s in a place called Bonne Terre--beautiful earth. A small resort type of town in eastern Missouri—sort of mid-way between St. Louis and the boot heel. The town is filled with man-made lakes and golf courses. My memory is a bit fuzzy. I was still pretty young, but I vividly remember the cool fall air and goofing around with my sister and cousins as my grandpa and dad sorta surveyed the area, visualizing the finished house. My grandparents had a trailer there already in another part of the town and we were living in it. They bought it years ago to have a place to get away from the city (St. Louis) on the weekends. We lived in that trailer off and on in my early years when we had no other living options.

This scene comes to me as I ride my bike along the Paul Bunyan trail near Bemidji, Minnesota. It's cool out for August 1st. I got the news of my grandpa’s death that morning. I missed my mom’s call at midnight and then my aunt’s call later that morning. I was on my way to the trail when I found out. I decided to still go on my bike trip. I needed to be outside, because I think better when I’m outside and active.

I thought it was a fitting way to remember my grandpa because he was always active and always enjoyed being outdoors. I remember him being strong and quiet. I remember how hard he worked on that house and how proud he was of it. He sold it in 2001 after my grandma died. It had to be hard leaving a home he built and that held memories of the life he had.

Hearing Aids and other Memories

My grandma was the one who talked; my grandpa was the one who did. My grandma always called my grandpa, Weber when she was frustrated with him or wanted something. That is how I knew him for a long time. It was affectionate but she would yell the name. My grandma yelled often. “Weber, you need to get me this!” or “Weber, let the dogs out!” She called him Joe in calmer moments.

My grandpa hummed this little tune whenever he was working. It wasn’t anything I recognized. Doo-dee-doo type of thing. I heard it often because he was always working on something. He was raking the backyard or fixing the patio or vacuuming or mowing the lawn. The man was in his 70s and not only mowing his lawn but he would mow his neighbors’ yards.

When I was little I would often follow him in his work and try to help. One time I remember sweeping the garage for him. I was excited to help him with something. When I had it all in a neat little pile, I searched all over for a dustpan. I couldn’t find one. And my grandpa was somewhere, but I was afraid to leave the pile and somewhat afraid to seek him out and ask for a dustpan. His silence always intimidated me. So, I just shuffled the dust pile around, not sure what to do. I wanted to look busy. When he returned and saw what I was doing, he chastised me for making a bigger mess and wasting my time (playing, as he called it). This is the first real conversation I remember having with my grandpa that wasn’t mediated by my grandma. I remember it well because it made me realize he not only worked hard, but worked smart too. There was more to him that just the quiet man who was dominated by my grandma.

My grandpa also had a hearing problem. His hearing started to go pretty early and he never heard anything I said. My voice was small and quiet and I wasn’t a yeller. So, oftentimes, I would try to say something to him and he would just keep staring at the television or continue doing whatever he was doing. That was one reason why I was afraid to seek him out for a dustpan. I worried he wouldn’t hear me. So, normally, our conversations were mediated by my grandma yelling at him. “Weber! Crissy’s asking you something!”

One of the more amusing memories of my grandpa’s hearing was the ongoing saga of his hearing aids. His hearing aids never seemed to work very well and I remember on one occasion my grandma found all his batteries buried in one of his drawers. My sister, cousins, and I were sure my grandpa sabotaged the effectiveness of his hearing aids in order to mute the screams of my grandma. It continued over the years. I think the more my grandma screamed the more often his batteries wouldn’t work, so the higher her screams would go, and so on and so forth.

Not Just a Grandpa

Fast forward (or maybe rewind) to the early 1990s. I visited my grandparents for the first time since my parents, sister, and I left Missouri for California in 1986 (I was about 15 at the time). During that visit I started to see my grandpa outside his role as grandpa. Entering my early 20s, the fuzziness of my childhood lens was burning off and suddenly my grandpa took on a different hue.

My grandpa and I would sit up late watching television after my grandma would go to bed. One night on the news there was a story about the crime or something in St. Louis. After the story ended, he got up and looked at the TV and made a comment about how the city was going to waste because of the…. Well, I can’t even say the word he used. It was the derogatory word for African-Americans.

I couldn’t believe my sweet, quiet grandpa used the ‘n’ word. I was horrified and unable to respond. Not only because he wouldn’t really hear me but also because I wouldn’t know how to approach the topic with him. I was still young and just coming to consciousness about many things. At that moment, I started to understand that my grandpa wasn’t just this creation in my head, but he was fallible with prejudices, biases, and all the experiences that make him a living breathing human.

Growing up in the shadows of the first wave of immigrants in St. Louis (he was born in 1915), my grandpa lived in a German enclave and it was a city largely filled with European immigrants. The city would change over the years with the northern migration of African-Americans from the south. My grandpa was a working-class man. His father was born in Austria, his mother in Hungary. His father owned a tailor shop. My grandpa served in World War II and he would go on to work in a blue-collar job until he retired. He watched the changes in his city, and I’m sure that created a variety of prejudices. Not to excuse his comments, but after I heard my grandpa say that to me, I wanted to understand him better. He became a more complicated figure in my mind and I thought knowing him better would help me better understand my father, and by extension, myself.

During that visit, I learned a lot about him in our quiet way. One night after my grandma had gone to bed, I was in the guest room, reading. I came out to join my grandpa in the living room. He was sitting as he always sat on the couch. He was leaning back and had his fingers cupped around the back of his head. That image is burned in my brain. In fact, he leaned back so often on that green couch that my grandma yelled at him that his hair oil was ruining it.

Anyway, when I came out and sat down to join him, I realized he was watching one of those beach movies. You know those B movies with all the T & A? Cable had changed the face of my grandpa’s television viewing! He seemed unconcerned that I came out to watch it with him. It was an odd moment. He would occasionally laugh and tell me how crazy the stuff on TV was these days. I didn’t realize that my grandpa could have a sense of humor—and a raunchy one at that!

Late January 2001

My maternal grandpa—Grandpa Pribbenow—died in July of 2000. Six months later I found myself driving from Buffalo to St. Louis to go to my paternal grandma’s funeral. It was a different funeral for me. I was distraught when Grandpa Pribbenow had died. Part of my distress was that I knew things were about to change. Since then I have watched the way grief and depression indelibly mark an entire family. Growing up, my maternal grandparents were the ones we were closest to. Mainly because they more often helped when my parents were in crisis—and that was often. Not that I loved my paternal grandparents less, it’s just that my relationship with them was different. My life was less visibly tangled into theirs. There was more space and distance.

After Grandpa Pribbenow died, I also started to realize that I was growing up and life was changing. I was no longer a kid and soon I would be the one others would look to for stability, rather than me seeking out others for stability. It also forced me to come to terms with death in a way that I hadn’t had to until that point. So, when my paternal grandma died, those blows were already moving through me and I was better able to handle her death.

As a result, I was more aware of what was going on around me at Grandma Weber’s funeral. I watched my grandpa and for the first time ever, I saw him interacting with his friends and family in a communicative way. He was talking—really talking. It was amazing to see.

You have to understand, my grandpa took care of grandma. And before he took care of my grandma, he took care of my grandma’s sister and my grandma’s mother when they were ailing. My grandma came from a woman-dominated family and home and that continued into her own family. My grandpa did so much. I think when she died, his life changed dramatically. He loved her dearly, but the years of caretaking could not have been easy on him. When I listened to him talk at her funeral, there was an ease in the interaction. My grandma was no longer there to mediate. His hearing no longer was an issue. His hearing aids seemed to be doing their job.

I remember him talking about his war experiences, saying what a waste war was. That statement is vivid in my memory. Up until then, I never heard him talk about the war. Later, I learned that his job in the war was difficult. I believe he spent a lot of time on the ground, cleaning up the messes after bombs. He spoke German, so I also think he served on the frontlines. It was an interesting moment, because I could already see him changing.

After that, he moved in with my aunt and over the years they built a great life together. They went on a couple of cruises and he was able to go to a reunion with his war buddies. He would still go out and mow lawns until he physically could not. He stayed active and was able to thrive for over eight years after his love left this world.

March 2008—One Last Time

The last time I saw my grandpa was when I attended a conference in St. Louis in March 2008. I spent an evening and day with both him and my aunt. On our evening trip, we went to Union Station and we had dinner and walked around the stores that now inhabit this old train station. My grandpa looked frail. The most frail I had ever seen him. His big glasses seemed to take over his gaunt face. His shoulder bones pressed through his sweatshirt. He had to be pushed in a wheelchair. It was a startling sight for me to see. He was always so active. It was hard to see him so dependent. But he was alert—as alert as ever. In fact, we talked about how when he returned from the war, this was where he arrived. In this train station that is now a mall.

The next day, we went to lunch and I spent time with them at my aunt’s house. At least I had those moments. As we sat in the living room, my grandpa was surrounded by their dogs. The little Chihuahua owned his lap. My aunt and I talked about family and she caught me up on my cousins. I’m not sure what he heard, but my aunt would occasionally yell to him about something they had done and he would nod and giggle.

Most of all I remember the hug I got from him. It was a good hug. Not superficial or hurried as so often has passed in our family. I could feel his thin body and I told him I loved him right in his ear. I think he heard me.

We would talk again later in the year—well I would try to talk to him as I screamed into the phone. It was a typical conversation and went something like this:

Aunt Carol: Dad! This is Christina, she wants to say hi!
Me: HI GRANDPA!!!!!
Grandpa: Hi there. How’s it going?
Me: GOOD!!! HOW ARE THINGS GOING FOR YOU??!!!!
Grandpa: Good.
Me: SO THE WEATHER IS CRAZY THERE?!!???
Grandpa: Good, good.
Aunt Carol [in background]: She asked about the storm!!!!!
Grandpa: Oh, oh, yeah. It’s a big storm. The electricity went out.
Me: I HOPE YOU’RE STAYING WARM!!!
Grandpa: Yeah. So, I better get going.
Me: BYE. LOVE YOU!!
Grandpa: Good, good. Bye.

I had hoped to visit them this spring, but that never worked out. Flooding and life got in the way. I do regret not getting there now. Instead, I’m making the trip tomorrow. I drove 12 hours southwest to go to my grandma’s funeral and now I will drive 12 hours southeast to go to my grandpa’s funeral. I’m a bit older now and no longer in grad school. Life is so very different, yet I feel the journeys parallel one another. With every death I seem to mourn not only the loss of my loved one, but also the shifts and changes taking place within my own life. The ripples of life take us on many journeys—mental and geographical. I feel this trip rounds out a summer of transitions within my emotional landscape. I just hope I can face the transitions directly and not turn my head and look away out of fear.

In that way, I hope to live up to the Weber name. Weaving a life out of tattered and scarred memories and dreams.