In his working life, he’d been employed at the mill, turning logs into usable lumber. Like me, he finished his life with fewer fingers than when he started; unlike me, it didn’t cause his career to come crashing to an end. He used to tell me that unless a man has lost a finger on the job, it wasn’t a real job, which makes the idea that he raised my mother—a sophisticated, ambitious, cerebral woman if there ever was one—rather astounding. When I was younger, I used to suspect my mother had been adopted, but as I matured I eventually came to recognize that they shared an innate optimism and decency that informed everything they did.
My grandfather hadn’t had an easy time after my grandmother had died. I don’t remember her at all, as I was still toddling around in diapers the only time we met. But I can recall my mom emphasizing that it was important to visit him, so that he wasn’t always alone. For my grandfather, there was only one woman; he’d loved once and for all, right up until an epileptic seizure took her life. There’s still a photograph of her on the wall of the bedroom, and after moving in, I couldn’t imagine taking it down, even though I never knew her. That she was my grandfather’s North Star was more than enough reason to keep it hanging exactly where it was
But it was odd being at the house. It felt empty without my grandfather and wandering into the barn deepened the feeling of loss. It had the same cluttered atmosphere as the house I’d inherited. Inside were not only mothballs and a wide assortment of tools, but an old tractor, numerous engine parts, bags of sand, pickaxes, shovels, a rusting bicycle, an Army helmet, a cot and blanket that looked as though someone had actually slept there, and countless remnants of a lifetime of collecting things. I sometimes wondered whether my grandfather had ever thrown anything away, but close inspection revealed no trash, ancient magazines, newspapers, or debris that belonged in a garbage can; there were only items that he felt he might one day need for whatever project he was working on.
On the night I received the call from the hospital, I wasn’t doing much of anything. There was no reason I couldn’t have visited him that week, or a month or even a year earlier. Or even, I knew, when I’d been at my very worst. He’d never been a man to judge, and even less likely when it came to the effects of war on a person. At twenty he’d been shipped to North Africa; in the years that followed he’d fought in Italy, France, and then Germany. He’d been wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, only to return to his unit not long after the Army crossed the Rhine. I knew nothing about any of it from him, since he never spoke about the war. My mom mentioned it, though, and a few days after my arrival here, I discovered the records, along with his Purple Heart and various service medals.
According to my mom, he got interested in bees not long after he built the house. Back then, there’d been a farm up the road and my grandfather had worked there, before getting a job at the mill. The farmer had beehives but didn’t like tending to them. My grandfather was put on the task. Since he knew nothing about beekeeping, he checked out a book from the library and eventually learned the rest on his own. To him, they represented an almost perfect species, and he’d hold forth on the subject to anyone who would listen.
I’m sure he would have told the doctors and nurses at the hospital in Easley about them if he’d had the chance. But he didn’t. As soon as I got the call, I booked a flight to Greenville, South Carolina, via Charlotte. There, I rented a car and sped down the highway; despite all that, I arrived nearly eighteen hours after I’d heard what happened. By then, he’d been in the ICU for more than three days. It had taken that long to learn my name; the stroke first left him unconscious, and then largely unable to speak. The entire right side of his body was paralyzed, the left side only slightly better. As soon as I entered the ICU, I took note of the readings on the various monitors and after scanning the chart, I knew he didn’t have much longer to live.
The bed seemed to dwarf him. I know it’s a cliché—that this is something that practically everyone says—but in his case, it was true. He’d lost a lot of weight since I’d seen him last, and the slack, lopsided expression on his face, even as he slept, nearly broke my heart. I took a seat near the bed and reached for his hand; it felt bony and brittle, birdlike, and I felt my throat lock up. All at once, I hated myself for not getting there sooner; I hated myself for staying away for so long. For a long time, the only movement I saw was the labored rise and fall of his chest.