CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | JOSH
I raised my fist and knocked, for the third time, on the heavy wooden door. My heart was racing, and my head was already filling with reasons why the door hadn’t opened yet.
What if something happened? What if there were complications? What if there was another collapse--
Then I heard the sharp clicking sound of a lock being turned, and the door flung open.
“Colonel!” I gasped, jerking my shoulders back. My grandfather expected perfect posture.
“I heard you knock the first time,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure--”
“What’s that?” he nodded to the paper bag that I was holding in one arm.
“I brought you lunch,” I explained. “I figured that now that you’re back home, you’d want some real food. You know, after all that crap they had you eating at the hospital…”
My grandfather eyed me skeptically, then he stepped aside and motioned for me to step into the house.
Besides speaking with a slight slur and requiring a cane to help him walk, my grandfather had made an otherwise miraculous recovery. He had spent a few days at the hospital recovering from surgery, then the doctors had agreed to send him home…on the condition that I arrange for a home-care nurse to check up on him daily.
The poor home-care nurse hadn’t even lasted a week. I still wasn’t sure what exactly went down: either my grandfather got fed up and fired her, or he made her job so miserable that she just up and quit. Either way, one thing was clear: the Colonel didn’t like being looked after. He was the kind of man who dealt with orders and commands…not sympathy and small-talk.
So instead of hiring another home-care nurse, I had taken the job on myself.
“Have you taken your medication yet?” I asked as I made my way towards the kitchen with the bag of hot food.
“You don’t need to yell,” my grandfather said as he followed behind me, moving slowly with his cane. “I had a stroke, I didn’t go deaf!”
“Sorry, Sir,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“Here,” my grandfather grunted stubbornly, pointing to a plastic pill organizer that had a separate section for each day of the week. Today’s compartment was empty.
“That’s good,” I said. “Doctor Jurgen will be proud.”
The Colonel grumbled something under his breath about how Doctor Jurgen was a child who didn’t understand the meaning of pride, and I stifled a laugh.
I couldn’t say that the stroke had softened the old man…but it had seemed to have given him a better sense of humor.
“Why don’t you sit down while I get your lunch on a plate?”
“I can do it myself,” the Colonel insisted. He nudged me out of the way as he reached for a cabinet of dinner plates, then he suddenly winced in pain and recoiled.
“Sit down,” I said, sternly this time. He muttered something else under his breath, then he hobbled towards the kitchen table.
I grabbed a set of plates out of the cabinet, then I ripped open the paper bag and began spilling the contents of styrofoam take-out containers onto the plates.
“You keep coming alone,” my grandfather snapped. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him staring back at me from the kitchen table.
“I don’t understand what you mean by that, Sir,” I said slowly. I knew better than to say “huh?” or “what do you mean?” to my grandfather.
“Everyday when you come to see me, you come alone,” he said. “When am I going to meet this mystery woman, if you keep coming to see me alone?”
My body went stiff. I carefully set down the Styrofoam container that I had been scooping food out of, then I turned slowly to face my grandfather.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir,” I said slowly.
“Of course you do,” he grunted back impatiently. “Vanessa. You told me all about her. You remember: that morning in my hospital room.”
My eyebrows flung up in shock, and I felt my jaw drop.
I had told the Colonel about Vanessa that morning after his surgery. But how could he possibly know about that?! The doctor had told me that he wasn’t even awake yet…
“But…I thought you were still asleep...” I stammered.
“I was wide awake,” he said. “I was just resting my eyes.”
I felt my jaw drop again, and my mind raced as I tried to remember everything that I had said…
“Colonel, I had no idea…”
“Joshua, you’re a man. Men never apologize for saying things that they mean.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Frankly, that was the best conversation I’ve ever had with you,” he said. Then: “Sit down.”
I abandoned the Styrofoam containers of food and dinner plates, and I crossed the kitchen to take a seat at the table across from him.
“Your father used to worry about you, Joshua,” the Colonel said. “He thought you lacked ambition, and he worried that you wouldn’t make anything of yourself.”
I know, I said silently. I swallowed heavily. Even though it had been years since I had last seen the disappointment in my father’s eyes, those words still hurt to hear.
“But I saw something your father couldn’t see,” the Colonel continued. “Your father saw your stubbornness and sensitivity as weaknesses, but I knew that they were your greatest strengths. Your stubbornness meant that you would always do what you believed was right, and your sensitivity meant that you would always have compassion and empathy for others.”
I blinked at the Colonel silently, unsure of what to say. He had never said anything like that to me before…
“During my time in the Army, I learned a lot of things about the men who served alongside me,” he continued. “I learned that the strongest men aren’t the ones who follow orders or fall into line. The strongest men are the ones just like you, Joshua: the men who are willing to dig their feet into the ground and fight for what they believe in, even if there’s no one standing behind them.”
“I told your father to kick you out of the house, Joshua,” the Colonel confessed. His cold grey eyes watched me closely, waiting for a reaction. I didn’t have one to give him.
“I told him that cutting you loose was the only way that you could learn your own strength.”
I felt my throat swell and my mouth go dry.
“I knew that you’d find your own way eventually,” the Colonel continued. “And I knew that you’d come home, and finally mend the broken relationship with your father.”
“But that never happened,” I said with a hollow voice.
“No,” the Colonel shook his head. “Your father died without getting a chance to see the man that you turned into.”
I stared at my grandfather’s tired face, and for a fleeting second I felt a flash of rage. Things could have been different…things could have been salvaged.
Then I pushed out an exhale of breath, and I felt a sense of calm weigh on my shoulders.
Things couldn’t have been different, I realized. I had to leave. I had to learn the hard way that running away doesn’t solve anything…
“I am deeply sorry that your father couldn’t be here to see it for himself,” the Colonel said slowly. “But Joshua, I can promise you that he would have been so proud of the man that you’ve become.”
“Thank you,” I swallowed heavily.
The Colonel hesitated, then he took a deep breath and continued:
“I know you probably don’t want any advice from me, but I do want to tell you one more thing…”
“What is it, Sir?”
“Vanessa,” the Colonel said. “You love her?”
I gulped. I knew the answer to that question, even though I had never admitted it before.
“I do,” I told him.
“Then do yourself a favor, Joshua. Put her first.”
I blinked at the Colonel, waiting for him to continue.
“Every man that has lived as long as I have, has his fair share of regrets,” the Colonel said wearily. He was getting tired, and I couldn’t blame him; this conversation had already gone on longer than any other conversation we had had before.
“My biggest regret,” he continued, “Is that I never truly loved my wife. I was good to her, I suppose. I honored our vows, and I never strayed. I always made sure that she was looked after. But the truth was, I always treated the Army like my true love. I put my career first, ahead of everything else. And my wife -- your great-grandmother -- paid the price for that.”
“When we were married, she had dreams of finishing school and becoming a nurse. But then the baby came along, and I was deported…and suddenly her dreams didn’t matter, because she had to look after the house and our son while I was away following my own dream.”
“I’m telling you this because it’s easy to lose sight of the sacrifices that we ask the people we love to make for us,” he said. His eyes flashed up, meeting mine. “You’re a much more compassionate man than I was, Joshua. I hope that you can use that compassion, so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes that I made, and that your father made…”
I thought about everything that Vanessa had willingly sacrificed to become a mother. Her life would never be the same, but she had risen to the occasion anyway. And, just like she predicted, I had been unable to do the same.
She had been right, when she said that mothers didn’t get a choice about being parents, but fathers did. What had I given up? What had I sacrificed for this baby? I still had my job, I still worked the same hours, I still lived in a bachelor pad apartment. Besides the crib in the corner of my bedroom, you wouldn’t even know that I was a father.
How was that fair? Why should Vanessa have to give up so much to become a mother, when I had given up so little?
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Joshua?” the Colonel asked.
“I do,” I said as I pushed myself up from the table. “And…I think there’s something I need to do.”
He smiled, understanding right away.
“Joshua?” he said. “There’s one more thing I want to say, before you go.”
“What’s that?”
“When we were in the hospital room, you called me ‘Grandpa.’”
I froze, and my stomach somersaulted. I felt embarrassed, remembering how the word had slipped out in that emotional moment…
“I think I like the sound of that better than ‘Colonel,’” he said. “If that’s too uncomfortable for you, I understand. But I was thinking that maybe, once the baby is born, he or she could know me as ‘Grandpa’?”
“I like that idea,” I said, smiling back at my grandfather. “I like that idea a lot.”