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Grandpa gets going - The Thin Edge of Dignity

 

Dick and grandson



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Dick Weinman, AARP Volunteer and ALF Living Guru

I lay on the examining table, an IV needle stuck into and taped to my wrist. The ER nurse hovered over me while glancing at the slowly decreasing numbers exhibited on the automatic blood pressure monitor. Had I suffered a stroke?

“Not bad,” I thought, as I turned my neck to peek at the screen she was watching.

Meanwhile, two floors above in the Birthing Suite, my daughter-in-law, Maureen, labored to bring forth my nineteenth grandchild.

I didn’t know she was up there. She didn’t know I was down here.

We both found out right after I was released from the ER. My son, Joel, whom had been watching over me during my stay – and had just become Uncle Joel - pushed me in my wheel chair into the elevator to greet my new grandson: my first look at the two hours old Emmett.

Ours was an easy meet – a ride up the hospital elevator for me, and a cuddle on his mother’s breast for him. But after that: how will gramps see Emmett again?

As those of you who have read my blogs know, I am disabled, bound to my wheelchair, and live in an ALF, a Long Term Care facility for elders.

When a caregiver brings her child to the ALF for residents to see, there’s lots of coo- cooing, eye brow lifting, wide-eyed staring, lifted lips, and other facial grimacing. Old folks love to see kids, the younger the better.

But Emmett and me – we have a special relationship. Not only have we shared the hospital together – we had both been on our backs a few floors apart. Our vitals had been measured simultaneously. We had looked into each other’s eyes, a few hours after his birth.

If I were to claim my grandfatherness, I had to get going – to get away from the ALF.

As you can see by the photograph above, I managed that feat.

How I did it, is between grandfather and grandson. But he sure looks content with the result.

[Photo: Maureen Weinman]

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