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But I couldn't tell him. I couldn't because he had Alzeihmer's disease and his
mind had been taken over in a different way. I remember standing beside his bed
in the nursing home holding his hand, thinking back to when I was younger;
suddenly all the things I seemed to have forgotten or blocked out of my conscious
rushed at me.

I saw Grandpa and I fitting puzzle pieces together on the card table and
building fires in the fire place to cook hot dogs over the coals, the sizzling and
spitting of the meat's dripping juices lingered in my ears. I remembered how, with
pride, he put up the American flag on the right side of the porch every Sunday and
Fourth of July. And we fed the squirrels under the hickory tree when the snow
covered all their other sources of food. And we watched red velvet ants that had
found their way into my sand box.

Summer nights we sat on the porch listening for the great homed owl or the
distinct whistle of a whlppoorwjj], If the night was good and the sky clear, we
would stand on the zlosha grass out front and Grandpa showed me the
constellations - Taurus' hom and Orion's belt. Or, if it was too cold outside when
winter came around, we would peer through his telescope at Jupiter and Saturn.
Grandpa calculating their distance from earth, while I counted their many moons.

All these things I ha'd failed to see when I was little. As I look back now to the
photographs of Grandpa, I recall how I had thought of all these things while
standing in the nursing home holding his hand. And I remember how he had d
squeezed my hand and I Criedas it became clear to me that I loved him, but I erie
because it was too late to tell him for now it was he who wouldn't understand.
And I cry now, too, looking at his photographs and understanding that my
grandpa was really a story book grandpa in his own way.

-Beth Clark

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