Prompt: What literary fictional character do you identify with?
Beams of moonlight topple in through the open window, carrying along a sweet scent of honeysuckle that swirls with the fresh-washed perfume of my sleeping toddler niece. After a warm bubble bath and several just-one-more bedtime stories, she has finally drifted off to sleep, entering a world where knights rescue damsels-in-distress and the fluffy white clouds are made of marshmallows. Just a few short years ago, I was her, an innocent child whose greatest pleasure was found in a hefty crisp-paged book. Though I left behind the baby dolls and jump ropes when I entered by teen years, I have never given up that joy that comes from opening up a good book. And now, as I am beginning to open a new chapter in my life, college, I have been asked a seemingly simple, yet infinitely challenging question: With which literary character do I identify?. To find a character whose life exactly echoes my own would be nearly impossible. But when I was a freshman, I did find a girl whose plight I could truly understand. Her name was Francie Nolan and she came from a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn written by Betty Smith.
Growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the century, Francie faces many challenges that I could never truly understand: what it is like to go hungry, almost being raped, being kept from going to school. These are events and circumstances that I could never begin to fathom. But there is one thing that I could understand in Francie?s life: what it was like to watch her alcoholic father drown himself in booze and neglect his family?s needs. No, my father is most definitely not an alcoholic, and he does everything that he can to make sure that we are taken care of. What I could relate to with Francie was what it is like to grow up watching a person that you love be taken away by a disease that can not be cured. Roy Kenneth Jones, the kindest, most tender-hearted man you could know, was my grandpa and he suffered from Alzheimer?s disease. He was not an alcoholic and the choice was not his own, but as I grew up, I was witness to what happened when Alzheimer?s tore him away from every thing that mattered and every one who cared.
One of my earliest memories is of my grandpa walking me to school on the first day of kindergarten. Even though E.W. Griffith Elementary could be seen from our house and even though there were gaggles of other children walking to school, Grandpa always insisted upon holding my hand in his and taking that short walk. For years, we followed the same routine every morning: we would wake up, get dressed, watch a Gaither gospel tape while eating breakfast, and then at eight o? clock he would grab my backpack and my hand and we would head across the street to school. He would walk me to the front gate then head back to our house. When he got to the corner next to our house, he would turn around, wave to me one last time and blow me a kiss.
Year after year after year, it was exactly the same, until one day when he turned around, instead of his bright smile, there was a look of utter confusion. I was only in third grade at the time, so even though I knew that something was wrong, I did not know what. Concerned, I ran over too him and asked him what was the matter. And with a scared, child-like look in his eye, he told me that he couldn?t remember the way home. Papa had been walking me to school for four years and before me, he had taken the same route with my older sister. He knew that walk by heart, and even if he?d somehow forgotten, you could see our house from the school, plain as day. But still, he couldn?t find his way. Alzheimer?s hit me for the first time that day, because that day was the first day that I held my grandpa?s had and walked him home, and the last day that he held mine to walk me to school.
By this time, we all knew that there was nothing to be done for Papa. This was before there were any medicines to stop or even slow the progression of his disease, so it was before the families of people with Alzheimer?s had any hope of getting better. But we didn?t think about what would happen, we simply tried to enjoy each day, tried to make things as simple as possible for Papa, all the while watching him slowly slip away. Alzheimer?s is a terribly wicked disease. The person doesn?t just become absent-minded, forgetting where he left his keys or how to get somewhere, he starts to lose the ability to take care of himself, to lose his memories, to lose everything that ever mattered.
By the time I was in the fifth grade, Papa had moved into the stage of Alzheimer?s where the person begins to forget the people in his life. Papa ended up forgetting who I was, who my mother was, even who his wife of almost sixty years was. I?ll never forget the look in my grandma?s eyes the first time that Papa asked her who she was. The sadness that overtook them, it was like some icy hand reached into her chest and stole everything that ever mattered to her. She lived through a world war, Korea, Vietnam, three children, nine grandchildren, countless Thanksgivings and Christmases, all of the ups and downs that come with life, and in that moment, it was like she lost it all. For her, it was like losing her best friend. He was the only other person in the world who could possibly understand what she had been through in her life, and now it was like he was both still here, while at the same time gone. Like a thief in the night, Alzheimer?s sneaked into our lives and stole away a person so good, it was like losing an angel.
As I write this, I am realizing how little I really know about my grandpa. I was never able to ask him about his childhood in Robbins, Tennessee during the Great Depression, why he fell in love with my grandma, what it was like in France on D-day. All of these things, all of these precious bits that made him, were stolen from me, from my family. I guess that what I remember of my papa is the shell of a man that I won?t get to meet until I die. Sure, I have snapshots from when I was younger, and if I wade through the fog that was just disease, I can see bits and pieces of who he really was. I can see the kindness and goodness and love that permeated from his very soul.
Francie and I may be very different people with very different pasts, but the one thing that we have in common is knowing what its like to have a person you love stolen away. Her father was taken by alcohol, my grandpa by Alzheimer?s. I could become disheartened, and could become angry that Alzheimer?s took my grandfather, but that would just be letting the disease win one more time. What is important, for both France and for me, is to remember the good times that I did have with my grandpa. He may not be with me now, but I know that one day I will see him again. And like Francie, even though I wasn?t given the chance to have an idyllic relationship with my grandpa, I appreciate what I did have, and I will cherish those few memories that I do have.
