My Short Stories

     I don’t remember a day when my grandfather and I didn’t see each other or talked on the phone. It just seemed like he was always there. I was only a few weeks old when my mom and dad died in a car crash. My grandfather was a widower and living by himself. My mom was his only child and I think he had resigned himself to living alone, until I came to live with him.

    My first memories of him are so clear. He would sing to me a lullaby every night before I would go to sleep. It was our time. His voice was not strong and could never be confused with celebrity singers but the power of his tenor seemed to put me at ease and drift me into sleep. I think I was three when he started to ask me what song I wanted to hear. I asked him to sing a Disney song from when Woody and Andy learned about friendship. It became our song.

   Night after night he would sit beside my bed and ask me what song I wanted to hear. Without hesitation I would say ‘The Friend Song’ and he sing. It would be years later that I realized the name of the song was wrong but he never corrected the mistake. He added other songs. It made it fun wondering which one he would sing. My favorite was an old Buffett tune. I named it, ‘Mother Mother Ocean’.

    I was eight when I think he decided I was getting too old for our nightly songs. I wonder if he thought I had grown bored. He sat on the side of my bed, tucked me in and gave me a peck on the forehead then stood and walked to the door.

“Night, night,” he said in his low voice.

My world was shattered. What happened to my song?

“Wait,” I blurted, “sing me a song.”

He gave me a curious look and made a small smile. “Of course, which one?”

“’You Got a Friend’ and ‘Mother Mother Ocean’”

    He nodded in appreciation and began to sing our song finishing up with the song of a pirate reaching forty. I was almost an adult when I heard the actual song on the radio and realized that he changed some of the lyrics for my young ears. It didn’t matter then and it didn’t matter later.

I drifted to sleep. Our nightly ritual had now changed. He would tuck me into bed and I would softly ask him to sing me a song. It would remain our ritual until I left for college. Maybe not every night but if I was having a bad day he would always know. Yes, I was seventeen years old and my grandfather sat on the side of my bed and sang me a song. For any teenager, after getting dumped by the love of your life, his melodic tune of friendship put sanity back into my world.

When I left for college I would call him at night. He seemed a little lost without me there. He kept himself busy in the garden and tinkered on his vintage cars. When I came home on holidays he would sing me a tune. I think in some ways it was just his way of keeping us close and letting me know that he remembered our song.

    I graduated from college and took a job a couple of states away. It killed me to not see him very often but I did manage to still see him on the holidays. I wasn’t at my job but a year when I met my wonderful wife. We were married the following year. Grandpa was my best man.

    My world grew and expanded. We had two girls and moved to the suburbs. I loved having a family of my own but missed not seeing him as often. That changed on one autumn evening when we got a call from the hospital that he had a stroke. He recovered well but his doctored wanted him to move into a home. I knew after years of independence he was not going to live in a home willingly. My wife and I talked about it and I went to him and asked if he would live with us.

“Is that what you want?” He said in a monotone voice.

“You know it is,” I replied.

    He took the spare room in the house. I worried he would be stressed with two little kids in the house. I was wrong. He loved the attention. It seemed that it was what had been missing in his life the last few years. He had been there a few weeks when I went past the girl’s room. I slowly glance through the open door and there he was sitting on the side of their bed.

Although their eyes were droopy, their words were clear, “Grandpa, sing us a song.” 

    I did sing to the girls but this was special, so magical, watching him sing to them. My mind flooded with the memories of the years he would sing to me. Just as we did when I was young, so began his nightly song to the girls. In poetic fashion he would start with our song.

    The years moved on and his voice grew weaker. Even with his frail frame and weak voice he would still try and sing to the girls. We eventually hired a nurse to come help with him. I knew he did not want to spend his last days in a hospital or hospice and I vowed we would do everything possible to keep him home.

It was late on a Tuesday evening when I went to his room. I could see he was awake and looking out the window. I sat on the side of the bed.

“What are you doing up?” I said in a quiet voice.

His continued to stare out the window and looked up to me. His words were almost a whisper, “sing me a song.”

    As my emotions welled up the words were harder to bring out than I thought. I cleared my throat and began our song. I went to the second verse and could feel his hand take mine. I gave him a smile and held his hand as I sung the third verse. Then with the words that our friendship would never die I felt his hand grew limp. I gave him a kiss on his head and told him ‘night night’ for the last time.

In the immortal words or Walter Becker and Donald Fagen,

" I cried when I wrote this song;

Sue me if I play too long."

RK