Meeting Frank

At the end of last year, I had an ah-ha moment. For whatever reason, it hit me that my grandparents are 86 years old, I live 20 minutes down the road and I only saw them about once per 6 weeks. Not many grandparents make it this far and here I've been wasting time I could be having with them. So at our family Christmas exchange, I asked if I could start coming to have dinner with them once a week. It is mid-February and we are still having dinner every Wednesday.

My grandma has one of the most amazing lives I have ever heard about. She would share a little here and there so I feel like I know about her pretty well. As she has gotten older, she has grown to fear dementia since there is a history of it in her family. To keep her mind sharp, she reads a lot and shares everything about her reading and her life. I don't blame her at all but sometimes that means Grandpa does considerably more listening than visiting. I know there is still stuff to learn but of the two, I have known her story much better. Until recently....

One of my favorite things about Wednesday evenings is getting to visit with Grandpa. He just tells you exactly what he thinks whether you ask for it or not. Sometimes it can be funny, sometimes it makes you roll your eyes, and other times it can be downright shocking. However, in between opinions, he has been slowly getting to share parts of his story along the way. Nothing big and earth shattering but little details that make a person who they are. Things like when they started drinking coffee, or what life was like on a submarine, or helping a favorite aunt study for her master's degree, or how they got their nicknames. Somewhere between the unsolicited advice and listening to his wife retell a story, my grandpa sits waiting his turn - sometimes patiently and sometimes not. And when we get the chance, he tells me things about him that I did not know before. In those moments, it feels like for the first time, I am meeting Frank.