Things My Grandfather Told Me

I just turned 50. For my birthday, in addition to the black balloons and black icing on the cake, I got a cancer diagnosis.   I should be ok—we caught it early—but cancer has a way of making you take stock.

When you are confronted with your own mortality, you begin to wonder what it’s all about.  Have I made a difference or just wasted time?  When I think about this, I think about my Grampa. 

I always admired my Grampa.  He was a towering figure in our family, successful in business, active in his community. I looked up to him—we all did.

When I was in high school, the Mississippi River flooded across the Midwest.  Homes and businesses were destroyed.  My Grampa took food, water, and sandbags to some communities in Iowa.  I asked him why he was doing that.

Grampa told me about landing on Omaha Beach.  He’d never talked about the war much.  As they approached the beach, he and his buddies had gone silent with fear.  When their landing craft door opened, they were engulfed in sound—shells exploding; bullets buzzing past and hitting bodies with thuds; soldiers yelling directions or screaming in pain.

“I survived Omaha Beach, but a lot of other guys in that landing craft didn't. I always felt that I had to live in a way that made their deaths meaningful, to honor their sacrifice. That’s why I’m going to Iowa—to make a difference.”

I remember the story he told about how he met my grandmother.  While transferring back after the war, he spent some time in New York.  Some of his buddies were going to a USO dance.  He was still feeling the effects of fighting; he was sullen, shaken, all he really wanted to do was sleep. But his buddies were insistent so he went just to shut them up.  While his buddies cased the room, he found a seat at the bar, planning to drink out his crabbiness.  A woman sitting next to him asked where he’d served.  Time stopped as they talked out the night. They never even danced.  “Brent,” he said, “sometimes you find the best things in life even when you aren’t looking.”

Another chance encounter in New York led to his career. Still drifting in the city, he struck up a conversation with a guy sitting next to him in a diner one night.  They talked about the war, about where they were from, about their plans—of which Grampa had none.  The guy was working for a company downtown.  They’d just opened up a job in the mailroom—would Grampa be interested? “Sometimes, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.”

I never met my grandmother.  She died before I was born.  Breast cancer—like her mother before her and my mom after.  Grampa told me how unfair it had been, how young and happy they were.  “I was angry for a long time.  You never really accept something like that; over time, you just learn to acknowledge it. They didn’t really know why it ran in families back then. Now the doctors say it’s a genetic mutation.  Just some random thing that happened sometime ago.”

Grampa died of complications from hepatitis C, which he’d gotten from a blood transfusion for a minor surgery.  They didn’t know what hepatitis C was back then and they weren’t testing for it in blood supplies.  Ten years later they wouldn’t have done the surgery at all. While his health was declining, he told me, “Brent, of course I’m scared of dying.  But I’ve been fortunate and I’ve tried to live my life to deserve it.  When I die, I will do so without regret.”

There doesn’t seem to be any “grand plan.”  None of those boys on Omaha Beach deserved to die in any way that Grampa deserved to live. Life seems to be just a game of inches, of chance and consequences.   Sometimes, the best things in life come from being in the right place at the right time, and sometimes the worst do.  

I’ve gotten a sharp reminder that life is short.   Cancer is not fair—but then neither is anything else. Perhaps the only meaning my life is going to have is the meaning I create: the relationships I build, the difference I make. I won’t let cancer keep me from that.