Memories of My Grandfather

              Bob Rainey, my grandfather, was one of the sweetest men in the world.  He had to be, to live with my grandmother, and he loved her dearly.  She was 15 and he was 18 when they met.  She had gone to a dance with Harold Shelletti, with whom she was head over heels in love, and he broke off with her that night and took another girl home.  Bob Rainey took my grandmother home after the dance.

              My grandmother said, when my grandfather proposed a couple years later, that she was still in love with Shelletti.  Her mother told her she would have a far better life married to a man who was head over heels in love with her, than she would if she married a man she was so crazy about.  So, she took her mother’s advice and said yes to my grandfather. 

              Initially they lived with Pop’s parents.  For the first Christmas, Pop gave Mom a black negligee set.  She was horrified.  They lived with his mother.  She could never wear that!  So she returned it to the store.  Pop never again gave her another truly personal gift.  He gave her things like vacuum cleaners and a rotisserie and a set of pots.  Years later she often remarked how much she regretted having returned that negligee.

              Pop was a bus driver and drove the early shift, getting home about 1:30 in the afternoon.  Mom and Pop would hug and kiss, smashing me between the two of them when I was little!  Then we would have tea and something: cake, pie, crackers with cream cheese.

              Pop was born February 2, 1901.  When I was growing up, February 2 was the feast of the Presentation and Purification, a holy day of obligation in the old days (meaning you had to go to mass that day, under pain of mortal sin).  Since I went to a small Catholic girls school that wasn’t affiliated with a parish church, we got the holy days of obligation off from school.  Pop, working for PTC/SEPTA, got his birthday off thanks to the Transport Workers Union.  February 2 was also Candlemas, the day all the candles to be used in the church that year were blessed.  And, of course, it was groundhog day.  Pop always said there were more celebrations that day than any other.  Later I found that it was also Brigid, or Imbolc, one of the Sun celebrations on the pagan wheel of the year.  So Pop’s birthday was and is a special day!

              When asked about things I learned from my grandfather, or things he said to me, I was always stumped.  Pop never said anything.  I remember him telling me once not to play with matches.  I was probably about 8.  In a house with two chain smokers, my mother and my grandfather, there were matches everywhere, and I supposed I was trying to strike them.  I remember once telling him I loved him and having him say “Does ya, honey?”  I don’t remember him saying much else to me.  Verbal messages from my grandfather came through my grandmother, who would tell us what Pop thought or said about an issue.  Usually what he said was what her opinion was anyway.

              But I remember Pop for what he did!  It was my Pop who went down to Campbell’s and picked out my first two-wheeler when I was 6.   He put it together, with the training wheels.  He was also the one who took the training wheels off and held the seat and ran behind me, picking me up when I fell.  He helped me pick out my second bike, about 3 years later when I had outgrown the first.  There was always something not quite right about how that one was put together but Pop had put it together for me, so I put up with it.  We never did figure out what was wrong with it. 

              When I fell down the stairs at the new house at age 9, from the top to the bottom, 15 stairs with no carpet, hitting the TV cabinet at the bottom, it was Pop who laid on the floor with me, and let me cry on his shoulder till I felt well enough to get up!  Pop also took me to the Father/ Daughter dance at school that year (Mommom made him go), and actually danced with me (not something he was known for)!  The year I was 11, my mother gave him two tickets to a Phillies-Dodgers double header.  Pop decided to take me.  In theory, I was thrilled and proud.  In practice, Pop didn’t believe in going to the game to eat hot dogs, or anything else for that matter.  He went to watch the game.  The scores were something like 3-2 and 3-1, with the Phillies losing both games.  Hours of absolutely nothing happening!  For me, it was agony! 

              Pop loved his sports though: the Philadelphia teams Phillies and Eagles, and the Monday and Saturday night fights.  He would wash dishes each night, I would dry and he would listen to the game on the radio if there was a game (otherwise he would let me sing, but not if a game was on).  He had a TV in the basement for the fights, or would watch upstairs in my mother’s room if she wasn’t home.  My grandmother wasn’t into boxing and she controlled the living room TV.  But I watched with him sometimes: the old greats: Sugar Ray Robinson and Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Ingemar Johansen, and Sonny Liston.  Pop liked good footwork, and liked the flyweight and bantam weight bouts better than the heavyweights, but I don't remember any of their names.  He liked Cassius Clay, who did indeed "float like a butterfly" in those days, but Pop got annoyed at the whole name change thing. 

              He made the bedroom for Ginette one Christmas.  Ginette was a baby doll, the “sister” of Ginnie, a small fashion doll who was Barbie’s predecessor.  He covered a large, cut-down cardboard box with wood pattern Contac paper on the outside, and pink on the inside.  He put a postcard in the window with crisscrossed wood pattern strips, so there would be a view.  There was a shoebox-on-end closet in one corner with a bar for doll sized hangers in it, and a jewelry box window seat that fit all Ginette’s little shoes.  There was a crib and changing table, a rocking horse and a highchair.  I played with that doll house for years.

              Later, in high school, when I needed a place to study, Pop made me a desk.  He was an avid reader of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science and got the plans for the corner desk with two drawers from one of those magazines.  I used that desk through college and medical school.  Years later, a friend of mine made fun of the workmanship.  Yes, the screws were not sunken in and not covered over and the drawers were not dove-tailed, but just glued together and braced in the corners with metal strips and screws, but my Pop made this for me!  It was part of my furniture until it quite literally fell apart!

              Pop taught me to whistle, and to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Let me call you sweetheart”.  He also was part of teaching me to drive.  My mother tried first.  I was learning on her stick shift.  Those of you who learned to drive manual transmissions will remember that, if you let the clutch out too quickly, the car bounces up and down before it stalls out?  Well, first time out, my mother cut her forehead on the rear-view mirror.  This would have been 1965 – no seat belts, so she was sitting forward in the seat and facing me.  She wouldn’t take me out again after that.  So Pop did.  He lasted two or three times, until we were going around the corner and up a little hill, and I stalled the car.  In trying to start again, I rolled back into the car behind me!  Pop said “let me deal with this.  I was driving, not you!”  After that, they just sent me to Keystone AAA classes!   

              Mom had gone downtown shopping one day and was late getting back (she didn’t drive, so she would be taking the trolley).  Pop had been reading a magazine and saw this tuna casserole recipe that he thought sounded good, so he made it.  This was the 50’s, and men didn’t usually do “women’s work”, so this was a big deal.  When Mom got home, Pop put dinner on the table.  Mom told him how good the Tuna Casserole was and asked for the recipe.  Pop said he had torn it up in little pieces and put it in the trash.  Mom, shocked, asked why.  Pop said, if it wasn’t good, no one would want the recipe, and if it was good, he wanted it to be remembered and not repeated.  Sixty one years later it is still remembered!

              Pop was the world’s most patient person.  He would take Mom shopping, wait forever, and carry packages.  Mom had 6 sisters and one by one, their husbands passed away, till Pop was the last one left.  A large part of his life became “Bert has a doctor’s appointment and Marie needs to go to the store and we need to visit Anne”, and he cheerfully did whatever was needed.  We did say however, that the only time Mom and Pop moved at the same speed was when Mom fell over the dog, broke her ankle and had a cast on her leg.  Most of their lives she ran rings around him!

              I was in med school, living across town.  It was the first day of what was supposed to be my vacation and I was going to go skiing, but it had snowed the night before, so I was eating a leisurely breakfast and not worrying about getting an early start.  Pop called and told me that Mom had passed out, and he didn’t know what to do.  She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and passed out on the way back to bed.  Mom later told me that when she came to, Pop was shaking her, saying “Minnie, Minnie, who should I call?”.  She went out again and came to again to the same question, so she told him to call me.  I told him to call 911, but Pop said Mom had told him not to, but to call me.  I explained that the snowplow had been down the street and I was plowed in and would have to shovel out and drive across the city with the snow on the roads.  Pop just said “OK, Honey, just be careful and don’t hurry!”!  I called 911 after I got there.  Pop was patient but dealing with a crisis wasn’t his thing.     

              My grandfather retired from driving Philadelphia buses at age 62, the mandatory retirement age for bus drivers working for SEPTA.  When he had a heart attack six months later, he decided it was because he had retired.  He got a job as a janitor at a local nursing home and later added another job as janitor at a bank.

              That year was their 45^th wedding anniversary.  My mother had always planned to throw them a big 50^th anniversary party, and now we were afraid he wouldn’t make it to the 50^th (actually he made it to their 63^rd, but who knew?)  We asked the doctor, who said the party shouldn’t be a surprise for my grandfather.  So we let him in on it, and had 70 people crowd into their row house to celebrate. 

              I was working in Baltimore when Pop started complaining about leg pain.  We had a study open on peripheral vascular disease, so I had him come down and get studied.  He had no major circulation below his iliac arteries.  All the circulation in his legs was collateral vessels (small arteries that get dilated because they had to carry more blood).  Pop didn’t want the surgery they recommended, so the doctors told him, if he wanted to keep his feet until he died, he should do two things: 1. Inspect his feet every night to be sure he had no sores or blisters, and if he did, take care of them immediately and 2. Every day, walk to the point of pain, wait for the pain to go away, and walk to the point of pain again, to help to develop more collateral circulation.

              So, Pop came home and stopped the newspaper delivery.  Each night he would walk four very long city blocks, past St. Helena’s church and school, Fisher’s Park, and Lowell Elementary School, to the nearest newsstand at 5^th and Chew.  When he first started doing it, he could only walk about ¼ block before he had to stop to let the pain go away.  While he waited for the pain to go away, he would smoke a cigarette!  He could smoke a whole pack on the trip down and back.  I was horrified when I realized this was what he was doing; I thought it would negate any good from the walking.  But with months of doing this, he was able to walk further and further without stopping for pain or stopping to smoke!

              When he had his second heart attack at age 73, he took that as a sign that it was time to stop working.  Mom decided since he was retired for good, he could take over the housework.  She loved to sew but said she had never had enough time to do it.  So she would now sew and Pop would clean.  But after she made outfits for herself and my mother and me, he complained that he wasn't getting anything out of this arrangements.  So Mom made him a couple of shirts.  When he asked about the trousers, though, she said she was 70 and had never put in a fly front and wasn't going to start now.  He could have pants if he would take rubber in the waist!  Pop settled for shirts.

              He was 84 when he had the third heart attack.  Thing were touchy for a while.  He was on a hospital bed in the dining room (the bedroom was upstairs) and on oxygen 24/7.  He had been home for two weeks before my grandmother felt safe enough to leave him for a short time and go to the grocery store.  They no longer had a neighborhood supermarket, so she had to take the bus.  Coming home, the bus stopped at a 7-11 about 5 blocks from our house, and who should haul himself on the bus but my grandfather.  My grandmother’s jaw dropped.

              “Robert, what are you doing?”

              “Well, I knew you wouldn’t buy my cigarettes.”

              And my grandmother’s response: “I will buy your cigarettes until the day you die!”

              Six months later, my grandfather developed congestive heart failure and pneumonia and was hospitalized.  When he returned home, it was back to the hospital bed in the dining room, with the oxygen.  A few days later, my grandmother came down in the morning to find him blue and gasping for breath.  She called the doctor but must have sounded rather hysterical.  Pop was supposed to have a pro-time drawn that morning.  The doctor told my grandmother to wait until the lab techs got there and have them call him.  When she hung up from the doctor, she called the priest and asked him to come and give last rites.  A few minutes after she hung up, the visiting nurse called on the phone to ask how Pop was doing.  When my grandmother told her what was going on, she told her to call 911.  My grandmother, though very upset, told her she couldn’t do that because the doctor had told her to wait until the lab techs came.  They were supposed to be there at 7:30, but it was after 8 and they hadn’t arrived yet.  The nurse tried to convince her to call 911 anyway, but the doorbell rang and my grandmother said she had to hang up because the priest was at the door.  My grandmother had no sooner let the priest in, when the phone rang again.  It was the visiting nurse and she asked to speak to the priest.

              “Father, when you finish last rites, would you for God’s sake call 911!”

              The priest called 911 before he even started Extreme Unction.

              My grandmother went with the ambulance, of course, but when they wouldn’t let her stay with my grandfather while they worked on him in the ER at Einstein Hospital, she took the subway and went home.  She called me in Delaware.  I cancelled patients and drove to Philly.  It was late by the time I got there.  Mom had talked to the doctor, and Pop was hanging in there, so she said we would just go to the hospital in the morning. 

              When we did go to the hospital, they said my grandfather was in the ICU.  When we got up to his room, he was also on a ventilator.  I asked Mom if he had been on a ventilator when she left, but she said no, he just had an oxygen mask on.  He also had a Swann-Ganz catheter and an arterial line. 

              Mom asked to speak to the doctor.  They sent the intern to her.  She asked why they had done all those things to Pop.  The intern said he had taken a “turn for the worse” in the middle of the night and they had moved him to the ICU, putting him on the ventilator and inserting the lines.

              “If we hadn’t done all that, he would have died last night.”

              To which my grandmother responded, “Then he was supposed to die last night.”  Pop hadn’t wanted all that, neither did Mom.  The intern wrote out instructions and implications of taking him off the ventilator and making him a DNR on a page of the chart and Mom signed it.  Then, since Pop was unresponsive, we just went home again.

              Dr. Kolpe, Pop’s internist, called Mom later that afternoon.  He said he hadn’t known that Pop had been put on the ventilator and apologized for not having written a DNR order the day before, since he had the paperwork and knew that was what Pop wanted.  He said my grandfather had been taken out of the ICU and the Swann-Ganz catheter and arterial lines had been removed, but they had left him on the ventilator because he was awake, and when they tried him off the ventilator, was short of breath and uncomfortable. 

              Mom said we would go early the next morning, before visiting hours started, since Pop was awake.  When we got there, he was in a private room, on a ventilator but with no cardiac monitor.  He was awake.  He made eye contact with Mom and me and kept looking around us at the door.  We thought he was also looking for my mother, but she hadn’t come up from Delaware yet.  He tried to reach out, but his hands were tied.  My grandmother and I both remembered when his father was in the hospital, his frustration and Pop’s anger at him having his hands tied.  We untied his hands and sat on either side of him, holding his hands and chatting until he fell asleep.  When he seemed to be sleeping, eyes closed, and lunchtime was approaching, my grandmother said, “Look, we have to move the car anyway, so let’s go somewhere and have lunch and then come back.”  

              We went up to a restaurant on Rising Sun avenue and had lunch.  It was about an hour before we got back.  I knew when I saw the light on over his door that something wasn’t right.  There was no way he was going to push the nurses’ call light.  Pop was dead.  They had been trying to reach us at home but no one answered (this was before cell phones) .  His body had been wrapped to go to the morgue, but was still in the bed, so Mom and I got to see him again.

              As Mom and I discussed later, even if they went to check on him and realized he was dead very soon after we left, the nurse would have to call the intern to pronounce him, they would give a couple of tries at reaching us, realized they couldn’t and decided to get his body ready to go downstairs, well, we were only gone an hour.  Pop must have died while we were there.  There was no cardiac monitor, his chest was rising and falling with the ventilator, and I wasn’t exactly checking his pulse, just holding his hand.  Since I was a general internist in private practice at the time, I was a little embarrassed not to have noticed that my grandfather was dead.  Mom hadn’t wanted the ventilator, but that ventilator meant that her last sight of him, instead of seeing him blue and struggling and gasping for breath, was a death so peaceful that the two of us present didn’t realize he had passed.  A ventilator is not always a bad thing.  My mother called as soon as we got home; Pop had stopped to see her on his way out, so she knew he had died.   

              The funeral was on a weekday.  Mom didn’t want to put any of our younger male relatives in the position of feeling obliged to take off work, so she called some of Pop’s friends and retired relatives and asked them to be pall bearers.  The youngest one she asked was her nephew, Bunny, who was 74.  He demurred, saying he thought he was too old, but she pointed out that Al Noller, a friend who was Pop’s age (85) had already agreed and guilted him into agreeing too.  Fortunately, there were a lot of younger male relatives who did take off work for Pop’s funeral, so we replaced all the pall bearers, except Al Noller, who insisted that he said he was going to do it and he was!  Not only was Al 85, but he was not Catholic, so he was always 2 steps behind, on the way down to genuflect as the others were on the way up and moving into the pews.  He hung in there though.

              My two Moms (mother and grandmother – it got confusing for me too sometimes) and I were sitting in the limousine at the bottom of the church steps when the pall bearers brought the casket down.  St. Helen’s steps are steep and there are a lot of them.  Behind the actual pall bearers were the original ones.  Johnny, Mommom’s brother, was being assisted down stairs by two family members.  He had been one of the first to agree to carry Pop’s coffin.  Two of the original men it seemed had had recent hip surgery.  They were both using canes and being helped down by someone.  I started to laugh.  They each had canes in a different hand, so if we had just put them on the appropriate side of the casket…  The three of us sat in that limo and laughed.  Pop would have appreciated the joke.