About a year ago I was lounging about on a lazy evening at my grandparents house, absently scrolling up and down vscode while talking to my grandfather about everything and nothing. He had long since been diagnosed with dementia, and the obvious degradation of his identity was clear, as he had collected a veritable library worth of scrapbooks, old documents, and transcribed conversations representing the 80 plus years of his conscious awareness. One area of fascination which had gripped him was his time in the United States Navy, which he now only remembered as reflections on water where true memory and images of movies and books were all the same among the ripples. I tried my best to listen, to hold everything he said to memory knowing that he wouldn't be around much longer, but I wasn't able to separate the novel from the mundane, or the important from the vapid. For brief moments profoundity would slip through the cracks of demented awareness, and in those moments I would try to hold onto whatever he had to say, and in one such moment he became suddenly aware of the object which had been sitting in my lap since we started talking: my laptop. In the past he knew what a laptop was, my aunt Teresa who never moved out, has had a laptop since laptops were small enough to fit in a backpack, and I've had an obsession with computers and technology since I was a child, yet in that moment all recollection of computers of which he was one of the first to make use of (being an engineer at the advent of the military adoption of computers) seemed to slip away, leaving only the kind of curiosity only found in children and mid-stage dementia patients. He asked me what it was, what it did, and how it was able to do it. His flurry of questions were more alert than he'd been in days, and with each reply, I found myself excited to be talking to a grandpa I hadn't seen in so long, one who was intimately aware of his surroundings. I wish I had savored that moment, as it was one of the last I would have with him.
On January 8th, 2026, my grandpa died, a sudden stroke interrupting the slow decline of Alzheimer's. Ever since that day, I've been in a daze of grief, terror, and blind wondering from place to place. Grandpa was like a father to me, as both my parents had to work throughout the day, and on the days he wasn't working, my dad regularly traveled out of state. Because of this, the image of "father" in my earliest of memories returns to grandpa. To his idiosyncratic humor which I inherited, to the way he loomed over the world with a warm smile and a hug which was one of the few things which could pull me out of a sensory melt down. He was the only one who knew what to do when the sounds, sights, and smells of the world were too much for me to handle, and he was the only one who never stopped loving and supporting me through whatever may come. And then, on that Thursday morning surrounded by my aunts, uncles, and mom, I was left in emotional isolation as I stared at his rigid body. It was so cold, yet on his face it seemed like he was just sleeping. I'll never forget when the nurses came and lifted him away, his stiff neck holding his head in position, destroying the illusion that he may have just been sleeping. He was gone and what remained was a corpse that stole his face. Every day since I have sobbed in as close to silence as I can muster. I don't like crying in front of people. A defense learned from my real father who responded to tears with screaming and hitting. I miss him with an intensity that has scarcely changed since I looked down at that corpse, and I don't think it'll ever change. I've lost so many people, yet none so important to me as grandpa. None who was there the way grandpa was.
As I answered his questions, my grandpa was overjoyed to listen, and eventually, as I offered him to take a closer look at the computer, he did so without a second thought. Taking a look as well as his aging eyes could, he was dazzled by the sights and sounds of whatever indie game I happened to have installed at the time. I'm ashamed that I can't remember what I showed him. Whatever it was, it seemed it that moment like it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. In an instant, flashes of his past returned to him with a clarity of calmed waters, as he described the huge computer rooms which lived on the ship that he served on before he switched his career to teaching for the Navy. He told me about the radio, and his work, but as quickly as the clarity came, it went, and his memories switched again to movies mistaken as reality. I recognized the description of a scene from the Hunt for Red October, and I realized truth was gone and in its place was a cruel misattribution.
The days following his death, I existed in a state of non-existence; the world a simulacrum of reality. Nothing was real, not me, my thoughts, not Isaac my fiancé, not the work I had to focus on in grad school. I was a shade stumbling through a desolate place where geometry blurred. In times of doubt, I used to rely on my grandpa. He was an immovable object which I could always rely upon, a sign over the horizon that the world had some semblance of stasis, yet he was gone. Even though I had not relied on him since I was a kid, I was always aware that, no matter what, I could if I had to, but then he was gone. Even the thought of his voice pulled my legs from under me and dropped me to the earth.
After a while, the sun started to go down, and I knew I had to go home. So I said my goodbyes, hugged my grandpa, and left, making note that computers were something that could bring his attention back to the world, at least for a time. So, I started thinking about what computers I should bring next, thinking that a phone might be too different, but a desktop too cumbersome. I had a glib thought that I could just bring the same computer, as chances are he wouldn't remember. I didn't like that thought, and stubbornly decided it had to be a different computer, one smaller, but not so small that he would have no point to compare it to. The next day, I forgot about my desire to bring him another computer. A few months later, he fell in the bathroom, a stroke sending him to the hospital. Once he returned home, he was placed on hospice. Only a week before the stroke, I had bought him a Christmas present of the complete series of Band of Brothers on DvD. I was excited to bring it to him, even if I couldn't make it to Christmas itself. I knew he'd love it. The day before he died, he had a night of clarity, where it was like dementia had never taken him from me. He remebered conversations we had years back, and through a strained voice and even more strained breaths he told me he loved me as I handed him his present. The next day he died, and that corpse stole his face.
All I have left of him are pictures, and videos, and memories. I still have the laptop that brought him back if for only a moment. But now its just another laptop, the thing that made it special died with him. Just another computer with grandpa.
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