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Thread to reminisce about our parents and grandparents who are stuck in quarantine


aggie08

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Forgive the shitty thread title.

I posted about my grandfather in the "I think I have Covid" thread because I didn't know where else to put it.  It's looking like he'll be an indirect casualty of this whole mess (possibly dying alone in a nursing home).  Really hoping that I'll be able to see him again before the end.  I get the feeling that there are many others in my shoes, unable to visit loved ones.  bluto gave me the idea to create a thread for those people to share stories and memories to hopefully lessen the anxiety of not being able to see them in person.  I'll start it by re-posting what I posted there (and because I'm lazy):

 

My grandpa is probably going to die while we're still sheltering in place. Not from COVID, just starting to look like his time. Royally sucks. Before this, he rarely went more than a couple of days without seeing a member of his family. His short term memory is shot, so he probably feels like it's been years since anyone has come to see him. The phone in his room went out, but no one on the care staff that's still allowed to see him seems capable of setting up a new modem.

Dude flew planes off aircraft carriers in WWII, lived on one of his dozen or so boats for months at a time commercial fishing in Alaska, and spent his retirement years driving all the way down Mexico's coast to spend 6 months in a small fishing village near Puerto Vallarta...every winter, just he and my grandma, into their late 80's. But now he's likely going to die alone and confused. I guess a similar fate awaits a lot of us, but this quarantine stuff really exaggerates that reality.

He was pretty much the classic greatest generation bad ass story.  Was a home builder when he wasn't fishing.  Built every home that he ever owned with his bare hands.  Would build a home, live in it while he was building another one, move into the new one, sell the old, rinse and repeat.  Owned a shit ton of property in Laguna Beach before Orange County became a crowded zoo for the rich (in retrospect, probably should have held onto that land a little longer before selling haha).  When he and my grandma would go on their Alaskan fishing trips (out of Washington State), their 4 teenage kids could either come with or fend for themselves for a few months.  I went to visit him one Christmas in the Mexican fishing village and was in the boat when he spent 5 hours pulling in a 225 lbs. marlin...just me (a scrawny 10 year old), him, and another 70+ year old fishing buddy in a 17' Boston Whaler with no shore in sight.  Everyone calls him Whitey because of his bleach blonde hair...visits the barber once a week and has had the exact same hair cut since he left the Navy.  Has the most electric blue eyes that I've ever seen and had girls chasing him up and down SoCal beaches when he was growing up (had to pry that out of grandma because he'd never boast about anything).  I've never seen him get visibly angry once, but he very recently told me a story about how he once stopped at a port in northern Washington and saw a large fishing trawler for sale in the slip next to his that he decided to buy on a whim.  Came to an agreement with the selling agent, and they shook hands on it.  The agent reneged when he got a better offer before the papers were signed.  My grandpa walked into his office, backed him against a wall, and simply, calmly told him that he was going to honor his word.  Walked out a few minutes later, title in hand.

I usually cringe when people start bashing the newer generations--the world's a different place--but I'll just say this: they don't make 'em like him anymore.

Edited by aggie08
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