Mem-non is a nickname Rob calls me when it’s suits him – when we both remember things differently. Or I don’t remember something at all. Mem-non meaning no memory. To be honest, it’s often true of me.
I was thinking about my grandfather today and for some reason thought of the last time I saw him. I was with my mother visiting him in the hospital. I don’t know if he wanted us there. He was in so much pain he couldn’t talk. His skin was gray. His chest rose and collapsed in sharp halting breaths as he gasped for air. He was dying from black lung.
Pop came from a struggling small family farm in Spain to the U.S. where the “streets were paved with gold”. He was nineteen. He was disillusioned but not ready to give up his dream of owning a Cadillac. So he stayed and took the only job available to him at the time, working in a coal mine.
At the hospital I remember my mother telling him about my son. “His name is Joe” she said, “just like yours.” Yes, Joe was named in honor of my father-in-law and my grandfather even though Joe was not Pop’s real name. It was, however, the name everyone called him since his first day on U.S. soil. The Ellis Island immigration officer couldn’t pronounce or spell Narciso and wrote Joe on his landed papers instead. At least that’s the story I was told.
My son was born a year before our visit and Pop knew his name was Joe. My mother said all kinds of things but that’s all I remember because at the time I thought it odd. But now I think my mom just wanted to see him smile or see any expression other than pain. She was in pain too. I was in shock. I never saw anyone close to death before. I never saw anyone with gray skin.
I don’t remember the drive up or back. Did anyone else go with us? Rob must have driven and he had to be with Joe. I don’t remember my grandmother on that trip but we must have stayed with her overnight. Except for the brief memory of our visit to Pop’s room, I can’t recall anything else. Mem-non.