Defining the Dead

By Lou Foust

“How many of you grew up with your grandparents?” My psychology professor asked.
I watched several students’ hands fly into the air before raising my own. I hadn’t considered my grandfather’s life with us in years, in fact, I almost forgot about that time altogether. My sisters and I wereyoung, so we didn’t have much understanding of our parents, or our grandfather’s suffering, but we knew both our parents loved my grandfather - they still talk about the wisdom he shared and his quirky habits. I know he loved walking us to the end of the driveway for the school bus every day, and that he loved having his grandchildren around him. I’ve seen his pictures, and I remember being with him, but I don’t remember any of the conversations we might’ve had.
One evening, years before, sitting with my feet up in a la-Z-boy, my father approached me and dropped a stack of papers in my lap. I could tell he’d been rummaging around in the attic because he smelled like mothballs and moldy wood. I had asked him for my grandfather’s essays, and he told me that stack of papers was all he could find, and walked into the kitchen to help my mother with dinner. The name at the top left of the page, in shaky black ink was my grandfather’s: E. Earnest Foust.
It was my senior year of high school. I was starting to put in applications with the guidance office for scholarships, and it quickly became apparent that one of the few scholarships I could apply to was for $500 from the Americal Legion Auxiliary Unit. The essay prompt was simple: What makes the veteran(s) in your family a hero? The prompt itself made me cringe. I knew my Pop Pop had no words for the feeling of hatred he felt for his time at war. He was a veteran who stood against war to his dying breath, and who paid his own money for speakers to visit his university’s campus to lecture on that very topic. He was a veteran who converted to Quakerism after his time was served, a fact that, intentional or otherwise, would later save his children from the draft. As I read his essays, and typed away on my computer to write my own, my stomach twisted itself in knots. I didn’t feel right about it.
I was reminded of a conversation I’d had years earlier. I can’t remember exactly, but I imagine it was a cold fall day, and my mother was zipping my jacket so I could go outside and jump in the leaves.
“Why don’t we have school today?” I asked.
“It’s Veterans Day,” she answered.
“What’s that?” I asked, the smell of Nana’s molasses cookies wafting into my nose.
“A veteran is someone who served in a war, or spent time in the military.”
“But we don’t have any of those in our family, do we?”
“Unfortunately, we do,” she says as Pop Pop zips his jacket to follow me outside. He hadn’t heard my mother, but she turned and rested her eyes on his wrinkled, smiling face. I understood she was talking about him.
“Just be grateful you have the day off,” she told me. “And remember, like Pop Pop says, ‘Any day you’re not being shot at is a good day.’ ”
I’ve heard that sentence over and over through the years. If I had a bad day at school, if I com-plained about my homework or having to practice playing guitar, it was “Pop Pop used to say ‘Any day you’re not being shot at is a good day’ ” until the words meant nothing.
Pop Pop volunteered for service in 1943.1 He was 18 years old. People all over the country were being drafted, and, because of the military’s high expectations for physical and mental wellbeing, about half of them were promptly rejected for service. Pop Pop passed all of these tests and evaluations, and, before long, he was in the army, and shipped off to Europe.
As I read a talk he gave at Kutztown University on the Rhetoric of Peace, I picture him as he described, a skinny 20-year-old, two years into his service in March of 1945, less than a year after recovering from a shell explosion that left shrapnel in his body, now ready to cross the Rhine River in a small boat with some others. Despite not being trained in this kind of operation, he recalls that someone thought it was important to get more troops across the river to finish the destruction of a collapsing German army. The morning darkness prevented him from even seeing how many men were aboard the vessel with him. Then, only minutes after leaving port, he felt cold water at his feet and panicked shouts from the bow as the ship sank into the dark water. Although he doesn’t say it, I suspect the boat had been shot at. He recalls that with a calm he could not explain, he jumped out of the boat and attempted to get as far away from it as possible. Amid the chaos, the yelling for help, and the splashing of water, he pushed away a drowning man to keep his head above water. He stayed there until after the last shouting man from his boat disappeared beneath the water.
Nearly half the boats from that effort sank, and Pop Pop barely survived using two steel helmets to trap air inside, lock his fingers over the top, and hold them to his chest to stay afloat until he was rescued.
In my essay I wrote about the historical significance of World War II in ending the Great Depression (another global event that greatly affected my grandfather’s early life), the heroic story of fighting the Nazis at 18 years old, his honorable discharge, his Purple Heart, and the stepping stone that his service became. Due to the GI Bill, he was able to be the first in his family to pursue college, get his BA at Lock Haven State College, get his master’s at the University of Iowa, nearly finish his doctorate, write his dissertation on the rhetoric of war, and become a professor of English at Kutztown University. I didn’t mention his lineage, that his family had immigrated from Germany, that his future wife’s family also came from Germany, or that, no matter how terrible their beliefs might have been, he could have been fighting, and killing, his cousins, his uncles, or future in-laws. I don’t write about how he was upset the rest of his life about the army recruiter showing up in the flyer at his church, or how he was ultimately disappointed in himself for giving in to the idea that an 18-year-old like himself ought to fight for his country, or how he spent the rest of his life fighting to make sure his generation was the last to see military service as the natural next step in their lives. I don’t write about how every battle makes him believe that there’s no divine plan for human beings, or how witnessing all those deaths turned him toward a life of peace and avid anti-war sentiment. In other words, I didn’t write about the hero my grandfather was, but the hero they wanted to hear about. My omissions made me sick, but everything I read showed me how much we had in common: an interest in farming, fighting bias and ending war. It made me realize how much I could have learned from him about farming, activism, or writing.
My hands trembled as I hit print on the essay, and again as I handed it to the guidance department the next morning. But despite my essay and the stories that I read, the time he served didn’t define him to me. It’s not how I think of him at all.
My Grandfather was reported missing in action twice during the two years he served, and twice he was the sole survivor of his platoon. He witnessed the perversion of taking human lives, sending them out, and not expecting them to return. At the end of it, he finally returned home to Montoursville, Pennsylvania. And there, in his home, having miraculously survived the war, having seen so many deaths, and having lived when so many died, his mother happily greeted him at the door with a handshake. There was no dramatic hug or leap into her arms. He was greeted with a handshake.
This is the version of Pop Pop that my father was raised by. A calm, stoic figure worthy of great respect, but who would not show physical affection.
“I thought highly of him,” he told me as he thought back on his younger years, “but I guess you could say he was a little aloof. ‘Go do your thing let me know if you have any issues.’ In some ways, I wanted some more direction.”
After the war, my grandfather went off to college, where he met his wife, Barbara. By the time my father, the youngest of their four children, was born in 1959, they had a peaceful rural farm and a tall stone house in Kutztown, Pennsylvania with lush green fields that seemed to stretch on for miles. There, my grandfather had 25 sheep to tend, four or five goats, several angora rabbits, fences to repair, a garden to grow, and a professorship at Kutztown University.
During the school year, Pop Pop would pay for speakers for the students on the literature of peace and war. He was educating the new generation of youth in America, and he wanted them to hear his truth. He saw to it that his generation would be the last to view going into the military as “the thing to do”. He studied and taught classes on the rhetoric of peace, read about what military leaders and military men said, and taught classes on it.
Everyone had their place on the farm, and even my father. Every year the neighbors would hay the fields for them, so my Dad and Pop Pop would spend hours moving the hay into the barn together. In the back corner of the barn, my Nana devoted a section to a workshop with buckets, dyes, and mechanisms for dying the fleece which could be sold, or spun into yarn.
Pop Pop had come a long way from his previous life. After growing up in the Great Depression with a father who had found work shoveling coal into a fire, he’d managed to not only graduate high school, but college as well, and lived a life with infinitely more options. “He changed the trajectory of all of our lives.” My Dad said.
Pop Pop’s brother Bob, who had been in the military but never seen action, was a janitor at a local school, and my dad’s cousin Allan got his plumbers’ license and did plumbing maintenance guy at the same school at which his father worked. His family had lives and careers, but they didn’t value college education the way Pop Pop did. But despite changing his lifestyle, and the fact that his family didn’t value a school education, he managed to maintain the connection he’d had with them all.
Pop Pop was the “golden boy” of his family, in many ways, but everyone worked hard, and in their free time they would play. They’d fish, and hunt, enjoying and retreating into the solitude of nature.
After Pop Pop retired, he moved to Maine and established a routine near his new home. He spent much of his time at the Health Club in Farmingdale, about 15 minutes from our house, and a warm and welcoming local Chinese Restaurant called Lucky Garden that overlooked the Kennebec River.
When he bought it, the house was run-down and was thought in town to be spooky and haunted because of how long it had gone without being lived in. At this house, in the middle of nowhere Maine, he set out to fix it up. The house was blue-gray when he bought it, and it was built as a small inn. It wasn’t fitted with electricity, proper insulation, or heating, and it took years of construction projects, planting trees, and gardens for the house to feel like a home. Then, he built an addition to the house for my Mom and Dad.
In retirement, Pop Pop softened. He had time to look back on his life and reflect.
My Dad recalls that one day, as they were working on the house, my Dad gave Pop Pop, who he says was never a very good handyman, the task of fitting a piece of wood for the trim of the house. My Dad knew not to expect much from him but, to his surprise, Pop Pop came back with exactly what he needed.
“Perfect, wow! Great job!” my dad said with surprise, grabbing his father’s shoulder.
That tiny moment started a revolution in his brain as if experiencing affection from his son permitted him to do the same. He became more passionate, attentive, and affectionate, and a joy for everyone to have around.
“He was a great person to have around at parties,” my Mom remembers, “because he could start a meaningful conversation with anyone.”
I recall eating at Lucky Garden as a family, the smell of delicious soy sauce and deep-fried foods in our noses. Our waiter would smile ear to ear, and call him by name. “Table for seven?” they’d ask.
In those moments, seeing the joy that he brought to every person around him, I remember so distinctly feeling bubbly and happy to have him as my grandfather, because with him we had a community around us.
It was a brisk afternoon in October when my Pop Pop, put on a sweater and left through the heavy, burgundy, front door of the house we shared. My Mom and Dad were away at work, my older sister and I at school, and my younger sister at daycare. My Nana died only a couple of weeks before, so there was nothing to stop him from going outside into the afternoon air and going for a walk. Pop Pop loved to walk. He had been physically fit since his time in the military because he hoped to live a long life. The smell of the moist leaves on the ground filled the air, and the gravel of our driveway crunched under his shoes as he headed for the road. Earlier that morning he had happily walked my sister and me down to the bus stop, and now he was making the walk again. When he reached the end of the driveway, though, he turned left and walked up the big hill on Route 27, cars whipping past him clocking 60, maybe 65 or 70 miles per hour as they always did. At the top of the hill is a local store - the only one in our town. It’s a small red building that was converted from a gas station into a general store. It’s not much to look at, but he would have known it well. Pop Pop used to take us there sometimes because they had delicious turnovers and other pastries. Pop Pop made scrambled eggs for us every day, as he believed they were the key to a balanced breakfast, but he also welcomed a sweet treat from the store every once in a while. He used to hold my little hand in his and wait for me to point out what I wanted before he’d reach in for the sweet-smelling treat and pay at the register. Usually, we’d go back down the hill and wait until we got home to stick it in the toaster oven and eat it. Today, though,
Pop Pop reached the store and kept walking. He was headed to his childhood home in Montoursville, Pennsylvania.
This was a sign of mid to late-stage dementia. Because Nana’s difficulties had been so glaring, Pop Pop’s struggle and decline had been overshadowed by hers. But now she was gone, and so, too was the façade that he was getting by.
“When you forget a noun it’s no problem,” my mom says at the dinner table one night, “but when you forget what to do with a noun, you know that’s a problem.” She’s referring to one morning when, in the dining room around our dark, wooden, dinner table, she found Pop Pop eating his classic scrambled eggs with a comb instead of a fork. “If I ever get like that, feel free just to push me down the stairs.” my Dad says, motioning the push with his hands, and the dinner table quiets. He’s sitting with his arms crossed, and a smile on his face, but I see not only his sadness but his fear that one day we, his children, will experience the same reversal of roles. I feel that he fears one day he will no longer be our caretaker, but that we will be his caretaker in the same way he stepped into the same role for his father.
‍ ‍It’s a joke, I tell myself, but sit quietly wondering if I would even be capable of such a thing.
It took about half an hour for a kind stranger, your stereotypical lumberjack type with a scruffy beard and a flannel shirt, to pull over, pick Pop Pop up in his truck, and bring him home. He didn’t know he was in Maine, 700 miles away from his would-be destination. He didn’t know where he lived, but he was able to point out the house as they passed by it. The man told my parents “You know, he really can’t be left alone” and, although they were already aware of the
growing issue, that was the end of it. After 30 years in our house in Maine, Pop Pop didn’t recognize it anymore, and it was time for him to go back to Pennsylvania.
We started making trips several times a year to visit him, and I loved them, for the most part. When we would make the eight-and-a-half drive to Pennsylvania we would stay with my Aunt and Uncle who lived near Pop Pop’s new home. I loved my Uncle Bill and my Aunt Linda. They were the most energetic, fun adults I knew, and never too busy to do something fun. They had chickens we could feed, collect the eggs from, and play with. They also had a hot tub, a paved driveway with lots of chalk, a pet turtle on which Aunt Linda had painted, a neighborhood in which they had friends, a beautiful stone house, cousins our age within walking distance, and a Wii. Their house was everything we didn’t have, and so much more. The only thing keeping us apart was a whole day of driving.
The thing about those trips was that I dreaded going to see Pop-Pop. He was unrecognizable to me. He never knew who I was, who my Dad was, or anyone who was with us. I was frustrated and, even though I knew he wasn’t faking, I kept thinking How could he not recognize us? He used to live with us! And his kids? He should know them!
My Mom remembers during a visit, Pop Pop turned to her, smiled, and said, “What a nice group of people.”
Unsure how to respond, she said, “Well, they’re all here for you.”
Pop Pop, although visibly confused, teared up and he asked, “Why? What have I done to bring these people together?”
Of course, my parents wanted to see him as much as they could, but I hated being there, I thought it was boring as hell, and he stank of sleep and bad breath. His body was a fleshy bag of sticks. We went for my parents, I knew it wasn’t about us, and I had to be on my best behavior. Sit still I’d be thinking as I sat there, in an uncomfortable, foldable chair.
Uncle Bill taught me to interlink my fingers and crank my thumbs around each other to pass the time, but it wasn’t as amusing as not being there.
Sometimes I brought my guitar, but I didn’t like to play for him. I doubted he knew any of the songs I could play, and I didn’t feel like I was playing for him anyway. I felt like I was playing just because my parents wanted me to have something to do, or maybe just to fill the silence.
Almost 70 years after being discharged, and just four years after moving back to Pennsylvania, on June 4, 2014, my Pop Pop’s time came to an end. At 89 years old he lay sick on a bed in Whitehall, Pennsylvania. All of his children, my Dad, Matthew, my uncles Jonathan, Bill, and my aunt Ginny surrounded him as he sat still, conscious but unable to recognize those around him. His frail old body, a body that had survived war, loss, and untold suffering, was now unable to fend for itself and lay on the bed that had been his home for three long years. The room was all-white like a hospital, and smelled like sleep, sweat, and cleaning supplies.
They had all been going through old photos and reminiscing about their childhoods, but Pop Pop hadn’t made any indication that he recognized any of his children, so my father choked and decided he needed a walk. As he announced this to his siblings, Pop Pop had a moment of clarity. He reached up, grabbed his youngest child’s hand, and said simply “Don’t go, Matt.”
As far as anyone knew he could have had days or weeks left, but his brain cells had deteriorated, and he could no longer swallow. His body was cramping from dehydration, so the nurses gave him morphine. He spoke to his family a good while after receiving the morphine,
though no one knew what it was he was trying to say. Then, finally, enough of his brain cells died that he no longer could control his body. His organs failed, he lost control of his muscles, and his brain died. That night, he passed away.
Rather than his history in the army during World War II, rather than the stories that my parents have told about him since that time, rather than remembering him as a husband, a former English professor, an intellectual, humorous, old, ill, or confused, that story defines my grandfather to me. As, above all else, a man who knew that his children were suffering, and cared, in his final moments, to have them with him, to talk to them, and bring them a feeling of peace. Who knew that his children were suffering, and cared, in his final moments, to have them with him, to talk to them, and bring them a feeling of peace.
When Pop Pop died I was about a month shy of 12 years old. I understood it was a solemn time, and that energy lingered in the house for a long time afterward, but while I understood they felt sad, I couldn’t imagine or consider how my parents were feeling. Their emotions were too big for me to understand, too colossal for me to translate. I knew I couldn’t understand, so I kept quiet, and I kept my distance, as I saw them as needing it.
Although my father had also watched his mother’s decline, the two deaths were not the same. Nana had not been herself for decades. My mother, who married my father in 1985, hardly remembers a moment of her during which she seemed to have her head screwed on right, despite my father claiming that she had been level-headed and reasonable in his childhood. When she lived with us, she rambled almost constantly about the tiny people living in the walls of our basement, and the angels who were keeping her healthy. When she was in the home, she would accuse the nurses of stealing or moving her things. My Dad remembers that she had been unhappy for a very long time, and in the home, she teetered on the edge of death for months before she passed. For her, it was what she wanted. In the end, it was hard for her to find joy in anything. She had made up her mind that life’s meaning went beyond living on earth, and was done with being alive. Every time she’d stop drinking water my dad would think “Maybe she’ll actually do it this time”, and then, soon after, she started drinking again, and still was miserable.
“With Pop Pop”, he said, solemnly, “He kept his essence to the end, his brain just gave up on him.” Pop Pop didn’t want to stay or go, live, or die, he just wanted to live his life. He was a caring, gregarious person. Peace, activism, and family were always important to him.
“That was the best that I think of him, his activism for peace.” My Dad said when I asked how he wanted my sisters and me to remember Pop Pop.
One or both of my parents refer to Pop-Pop nearly every day, even if it is just repeating “Any day you’re not being shot at is a good day.” His presence is missed in their lives. No one can replace him, or bring him back, so they remember, and preserve what they have of him so that my sisters and I never have to wonder who our grandfather was.