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My grandfather died yesterday morning.

That sentence can mean a lot of different things, depending on who says it. My saying it, I should note, isn't at the high-pain end of the spectrum. (Though I very much appreciate the notes of sympathy various of you have sent.) I was never all that close to Grandpa, though I certainly cared about him. (. . . I feel a little weird saying I wasn't that close to him; it feels a little like I'm saying it doesn't matter that he died, and a little like I'm trying too hard to justify to myself how I feel. But the main reason I'm saying it is to let y'all know that I'm doing okay, that I'm not in need of the extra care and attention that someone in these circumstances would need if they had been very close to their grandfather.) And the circumstances of his death were probably about what he'd have wanted: surrounded by family (there were about 15 members of the Hartman clan (mostly Grandma & Grandpa's direct descendants and their spouses and ex-spouses) in attendance, on and off, over the weekend), with his wife nearby (their 65th wedding anniversary would've been this coming Halloween), peacefully in his sleep. And without pain—they'd had him on morphine for a couple days, and on a steady morphine drip for about twelve hours. Morphine's good stuff, when used appropriately. So I can't say the weekend was easy by any means, but it wasn't nearly as painful or difficult as it might have been.

There were, by the way, differences of opinion among the medical staff over whether morphine would make it easier for him to breathe or harder. Given that Grandpa had pneumonia, you'd think this might be something important to resolve. But it did seem to make it a little easier on him, and the hospital staff were uniformly kind and helpful and friendly and flexible and really just marvelous all around; really great people. A year ago, on a previous visit to this hospital (right across the street from the retirement home where Grandma and Grandpa have been living these past few years), Grandpa lost his wedding ring; one of the hospital staff went and searched the room and found it and brought it back to him. I think this staff person even went through the trash looking for the ring, though I may be confusing two different lost-ring stories.

There were a lot of stories this weekend. Despite earlier reports, when I arrived at the hospital on Friday evening Grandpa was lucid and coherent. I had observed over the past few years that some of the reports of his failing mental faculties had been based on the simple fact that he didn't hear very well, and if you didn't talk loudly enough he wouldn't hear you. Sometimes he would guess what you'd said, which sometimes resulted in the impression that his mind was wandering, but usually if you understood what he'd mis-heard, the connection with how he responded was clear.

Anyway, my brother and I sat and talked with him for a while on Friday. Grandpa told us a few stories, including the story of how he and Grandma met, which I'd never heard. The differences between his version of the story and Grandma's (which she told us later in the weekend) were kind of interesting, but since I'm relying on my own fallible memory to re-tell them and I've already lost a couple of details, I won't bother trying to recite both versions exactly. But a rough approximation:

Grandpa's version was that he was in the hospital, for reasons he couldn't remember (but he said Grandma had always claimed he was recovering from a drinking spree; which he doubted, because he didn't drink much). In Grandma's version, Grandpa had been in the hospital recovering from some illness (she said what it was, but I've forgotten already) and was sitting up and smoking in bed. Either way, Grandma came to the hospital to visit an acquaintance who was in the next room from Grandpa; afterward, Grandma stopped to weigh herself on the scale outside Grandpa's room. To do so, she removed her fur coat and, not seeing anywhere to set it down, dropped it on the floor. Grandpa called out, "That's a hell of a way to treat a nice coat!", to which Grandma replied either "That's a hell of a way to talk to a nice lady!" (Grandpa knew that hadn't been exactly what she'd said, but said it was something like that) or, alternatively, something like "That's a hell of a way to get better, smoking like that!"

Either way, you'd think this didn't sound like the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Grandma mentioned to her mother that she'd met this man in the hospital, and her mother told her that Grandpa was no doubt bad news. But it turned out they had friends in common, and each of them had relatives who took music lessons from the other's relatives, or something like that, and things proceeded.

(And they dearly loved each other. Grandpa once said something like "Even after the fire has faded from a marriage, you're still left sharing the rest of your life with your best friend." Making sure his wedding ring didn't fall off of his finger was high on his list of concerns on Friday. On Saturday, one of the nurses asked him if there was anything he wanted, and he said he wanted to kiss his wife. And on Saturday night, the hospital staff made room in his bed for Grandma to sleep there too.)

One thing that I like about my family is the storytelling. Any Hartman family gathering is filled with anecdotes and stories. Sometimes you get to hear the same story five or six times in a weekend from the same person, because I'm not the only one in my family who can't remember who he's told a given story to, but y'know, repetition isn't the worst thing in the world.

And hand in hand with the stories are the jokes. Any Hartman family gathering is also filled with a steady stream of funny comments, funny (and some not-so-funny) jokes, puns, riddles, conundrums, comments on the jokes, what-have-you. Even Grandpa, who's always in my memory been kind of quiet (he and Grandma were, I realized last night, the first of the many couples I've known consisting of a quiet man and a social and talkative woman), has always thrown in jokes now and then. He certainly made several this weekend. And he was apparently a notorious practical joker in his younger days.

Even on Sunday, after Grandpa died, as most of the Hartman clan sat in the retirement home's library over the course of the afternoon, there was as much laughter as crying. It helped, no doubt, that Grandpa and many of the others present this weekend were pretty religious—most of my family's never been much for churchgoing, but that never kept them from being firm believers (mostly Lutheran)—so there was a fair bit of the sentiment that Grandpa had gone to a better place.

There had been a sort of impromptu miniature service in the hospital room on Saturday afternoon, one of my uncles presiding; Grandpa asked for a particular hymn, which most people sang, and there was reading from the Bible, and so on. (But even the Bible is not, um, sacrosanct when it comes to humor. One of my uncles was originally named John, but changed his name to Dobe some years back; the uncle who was reading from the Bible said, "Now, this is from the book of John. Dad, you know the name John, right? You named a son that. —Oh, wait, he's Dobe now. All right, this is from the book of Dobe.") The service (not really the right word for it, but the best I can come up with) was a little bit odd, because there was a feeling of finality to it, of saying goodbye and letting go, but Grandpa continued to be conscious and even able to respond to questions for the rest of the evening. But I think it helped all of us, even those of us who aren't religious, by giving a little closure; it made things easier on Sunday morning when he did die.

It also helped that Grandma is a pillar of strength. She's turning 95 in a few months, but she's still sharp and fairly spry. Hardy Norwegian blood. We're hoping to get her to travel a little, stay with various relatives and let them each take care of her for a while, but that may be a struggle; she's still pretty fiercely independent. Anyway, she's got plenty of people around to help out if she needs them. I'm gonna try to get up there more often.

It was kind of a weird weekend. Part family reunion, part saying goodbye, part mourning. (And of course there were occasional undercurrents of family politics and conflicting agendas mixed in.) I imagine there'll be similar weirdness in a couple weeks when I fly back up for the memorial service.

. . . I dunno. I had hoped to say something Deep and Wise here, to provide some sort of pithy and insightful commentary that would make something meaningful out of death. Turning pain into art and all that. But I don't have the words or the wisdom for it. So this sort of stream-of-consciousness stuff will have to do.

Time to go read some stories. And do some editing. And today at work, I get to try to meet a Tuesday morning deadline. May be doable. We'll see. This evening I may even get to see my friend PJ, who's visiting California.