forgetting me, remember me
Understanding my late grandfather’s gift
In a strange twist of fortunate genetics and unfortunate first marriages, I grew up with six grandparents. In my second year of college, my maternal grandfather was the first to pass away. It wasn’t particularly unexpected; he’d suffered from cancer for quite a few years. In all honesty, I hadn’t expected him to hold on for quite so long.
I had grown used to hearing updates from my mom about my grandfather’s health every few months, whenever he doing particularly or newly unwell — that this new part of his body was failing, that that problem had relapsed, that whatever latest treatment hadn’t worked, and that I should probably give him a call. I called him, because I loved him. As each phone call grew shorter over the years with his decreasing stamina, the relief that came from hanging up came sooner. I struggled to connect to the man for whom I once cared immensely — and still did, in many ways — but whose problems and struggles were now so distant from my own in terms of magnitude and realm that they were difficult for me to conceptualize. At some point, it became hard to relate. In my brain, I think, he slowly became one with his illness, and it became increasingly difficult to tell him I loved him at the end of phone calls; how could I express such care for the insidious disease that now characterized him so entirely?
My grandpa’s death was inevitable and unsurprising. My most recent status update phone call from my mother had been graver than those previous; her announcement that he been moved into hospice care let me know that this time, it truly was the end. I immediately had one other final phone call with him, in which I’d hoped for a perfectly, cinematically impactful goodbye but found that in reality, it was hard for me to understand what he was saying through the drugs and the phone. When we hung up, I cried alone in my dorm room, in part because my grandfather was dying, in part because this was my first real contact with human mortality, and in part because I felt a strange sense of relief in knowing that there would be an end to those every-few-months calls with my grandfather that now formed the basis of our relationship, in which I consistently struggled in knowing what to say. I cried mostly because I felt so terribly awful for failing to find the right words in those calls and for feeling anything other than the pure sorrow and grief that normal people — with more of a heart than I, I suppose — felt at a loved one’s death.
My grandfather passed away on October 14, 2018, around 5 PM.
A few weeks later, my brothers, my mother and I flew to California for my grandfather’s memorial service. I hadn’t been to his apartment in a few years. In some ways, his death still had yet to hit me, but it was strange to walk around his apartment he’d shared with my grandmother. The abundant artwork he’d curated and cherished remained exactly as it had before, still hard for me to fully appreciate as someone without the same knowledge about the nuance in nonrepresentational modern art. The consistent, reliable Los Angeles sun peering through the windows neglected to acknowledge the solemnity of my grandfather’s absence.
My brothers, my cousin, my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, and I sat down to dinner the night before the service, an intimate enough group that I feared they could smell what a poor granddaughter I was, with how I had felt at the news of my grandfather’s passing. As we finished eating, the small talk waned with the incongruous sunlight. My grandmother stood abruptly, disappeared for a few moments, and came back with four legal envelopes, each plain except for the scribbled name of each of us grandchildren in a script I recognized as my grandfather’s. My grandmother first grasped my hand with her own, before placing an envelope in my palm and pressing my fingers around it. In doing so, she assigned a weight to the otherwise rather light piece of paper I now held. As she passed the others out, she spoke what I’m sure were meaningful words of my grandfather and how much he cared for us, which promptly floated around and past me; my attention was focused fully on the tangible mystery in my hands. What secrets could it hold? I suppose it wasn’t incredibly strange to receive something from a grandfather to his grandchildren, but I still wasn’t expecting it.
Despite my curiosity as to what it held, I realized immediately I wouldn’t be able to open the envelope at all until my journey home. I would be surrounded by family and strangers for virtually every second of the next few days, and either way it seemed like letter is such importance deserved — required — significant time and space alone devoted to its opening in order to properly contemplate its contents.
The next few days were a blur. At the memorial service, I listened to fond and emotional speeches from so many important members of my grandfather’s life, most of whom I’d never even heard of, let alone met. I learned my grandfather was a vicious bridge player, and he loved learning anything he could about history. I learned that he’d adored and nurtured several amaryllis bulbs into ten or twenty potted plants that were available for adoption at the service. I learned of his immense devotion and appreciation of e.e. cummings, who — pardon the cliché — my grandpa adored even before he was popular. I learned how little I’d actually known of my grandfather, who had been sick and tired for most of my life that I could remember well, and I learned how much of my grandfather there had been to know.
What other surprises might there be to know about my grandfather, and might they be concealed in that envelope? My conception of my grandfather grew less and less familiar as the weekend progressed, and I grew increasingly desperate in my hopes that the envelope could explain something — anything — that reconciled the two grandfathers in my brain: the sick one I’d known, and the vibrant man who seemed to be so close to so many others. So close to so many others, just seemingly not to me.
Throughout the service, the letter burned a hole in my pocket. I hoped — I prayed — that the slim envelope contained the secret to help two people could care for each other without relating, or ideally some answers to how I could relate to him now, even if I couldn’t fully do so when he was alive.
I planned to open the letter on my plane ride home. I’d be flying back to school in Vermont while the rest of my family would fly to New York, so I would be able to open the letter with the full focus of someone whose phone was on airplane mode for two flights and nine hours, in the type of solitude that arises only from being surrounded by hundreds of people in packed quarters who know nothing of each other at all. Blame the movies, or my romantic streak, but to me, airports and airplanes have always felt like the appropriate setting for emotional moments.
Yet, when the plane ride actually came, despite my previous curiosity about the letter, I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I pinned such high hopes on the letter; what if its contents didn’t deliver? No, no, that was ridiculous — of course it would hold something meaningful, and important, and beautiful, something that would give me the sense of closure with my grandfather that I craved so dearly, that my final phone calls with him never had. It had to.
It still took me till after my layover and several hours of staring through the double paned window beside me to gather the courage to open the letter. I turned the envelope over in my hands. It seemed so light, so flimsy, for something of such importance — practically empty. The oblivion of the passenger to my left as to this moment’s significance turned me closer to the window.
I took a deep breath. I opened the letter.
I pulled out a piece of paper, one of two in the envelope, hoping, hoping for answers. I unfolded the paper to find typed writing that took up a mere sliver of the page, despite what was clearly larger than size-twelve font. My heart sank. How could something so important to be contained in such a short amount of text?
Dear Tia, it read.
Enclosed is all I could ever hope to tell you.
Love,
Grandpa Dan
That was…strangely brief, but still, my hope returned. The other paper! The answers I desired were in here yet. I would get the emotional moment I yearned for after all.
I felt the other paper in my fingers and tried to ignore my question of how my grandpa could tell me everything I needed to know on one single side of your standard 8.5 by 11 piece of paper.
I unfolded the second sheet. in time of daffodils, it read at the top. Huh? By e.e. cummings.
He left me… A poem? A poem. I couldn’t believe he’d left me a poem. What was that possibly supposed to mean?
I lowered my hands without reading the body of text, which was printed modestly in unadorned, black Times New Roman. Some part of me did appreciate the relative…erm…. poetic beauty of it (pardon the pun) — leaving a poem as one’s final remark. I could also understand how, in his final days, weeks, or even months, my grandpa might even have been too weak to write any more than he already had. Still, though, I was undeniably a little…frustrated. Angry. At him, at myself. Ashamed for hoping this single piece of paper would give me the answers that I hadn’t bothered or managed to get from him before he passed, and for wanting those answers, such closure.
I read the poem. It was nice enough, as far as poems go, but it still felt like a letdown. I felt guilty at my disappointment that I couldn’t shield, even from myself. I felt guilty for always having thought that e.e. cummings’ lack of capitalization is, like, totally pretentious. I felt guilty for wanting something different from what I assumed my brothers had also received, although I still don’t know for sure. I felt guilty that I didn’t understand the poem, but even more that I didn’t know my grandpa well enough to understand this poem’s significance to him or to me. I read it again, whispering its lyrical words silently to myself, as though feeling them on my tongue would cause them to make more sense.
in time of daffodils, the paper still read. By e.e. cummings.
in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)
in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me
I read it again, and again. The paper contained no explanation, no context, just the text. What could this mean?
In the moment, I still didn’t see any relevance of the poem. I kept repeating the words to myself, throughout the flight, as I debarked and grabbed my luggage, as I drove the lonely midnight drive back to Middlebury from Burlington and soft snow obscured the empty streets. in time of daffodils, in time of daffodils, in time of daffodils.
Was this a divine message from the universe telling me that in life’s finiteness, one should make time for daffodils, roses, and lilacs? Was my grandfather personally telling me from his grave that I, in particular, needed to stop and smell the daffodils, so to speak? Or that I should have made more time for him? I wasn’t sure. That didn’t seem quite right, but it was all I could do in the moment. I wasn’t the best analyzing poetry on the best of days, and right then I couldn’t focus enough to do even that, let alone also determine its place in my relationship with my grandfather.
In some ways, I hate the instinct to make meaning of something, to assign cosmic significance where could very well be none. I hate the continued urge to find that missing closure in this poem. And yet, each time I’ve returned to the poem, I’ve puzzled over it more, and its various lines’ connections to my life have presented themselves in new and newly applicable ways. It’s only a year later when I return to the poem once again that the direct relevance of the last two stanzas rings clear.
Though I wondered and wondered some more at my grandfather’s actions in the aftermath of the letter, I now suspect that perhaps my grandpa left me this poem, with no context, as his last message to me simply because he deeply and wholly appreciated its beauty and face message. Maybe he wanted to give someone he cared about some thing he cared about, just because he found it beautiful and he thought I might like it.
Perhaps my grandfather and I didn’t know everything about each other. But I did know something. I knew he loved the color yellow. I know he had an easy laugh and a warm smile. I knew he deeply loved reading; he would send me and my brothers his favorite books each Christmas. I knew he loved making French toast with orange zest and trying new recipes. Maybe the details don’t matter — but we each knew enough to care, and that does matter.
I don’t want to be trite, or overly saccharine, or force meaning where there is none; I don’t want to read too much into it. And yet, regardless of what my grandfather, or e.e. cummings, or the universe might have meant with this poem, maybe I should look for my own meaning in each verse, remembering that what’s important is not what I did or didn’t do when my grandfather was alive, but how I’ve grown from my his life and death, and that we did care for each other, and that yes, we did connect, even if it didn’t always seem like it.
Who knows if this poem will give me all of answers I have sought. Maybe continuing to try and decipher it is, in a sense, missing the point. Perhaps, instead, I should simply take this poem for all that it might be — just something small and sweet from my grandfather, beyond what my own mind can fully comprehend. Perhaps, as the poem suggests, it doesn’t actually matter if I find all the answers, as long as I keep seeking.
