If Anybody Wonders

If anybody is wondering, I haven't given up blogging as a hobby. Like everybody, in my adult life I've learned to prioritize some things correctly. For the three weeks, a large portion of my time has been spent bedside, at one point in a hospital, and now at our Tribe's own Adult Foster Care Facility. This is mainly because of the health of my great-grandfather Hubert Mercier.
Don't worry, he is doing fine now, although about three weeks ago I would not have said that. For personal reasons I won't get into what his problems have been, as they have been numerous, and the progenitor in it all was his stubborn refusal to give up the life he has known for close to 98 years now, notably sharp power tools. I doubt he will be able to continue these "hobbies", at least not with the frequency before.
It has been interesting, though, all this time with him. For one we barely know eachother, having been interacting on a regular basis for only a six or seven years now. The depth of his life, 97 years and counting, is more than triple mine, 32. In other words, he has a lot more to say. Somebody pointed out to me at the hospital weeks ago that in his lfetime he has probably known just about everybody of note in Grand Ronde. Names that get tossed around in a historical context by some of our cultural folks are frequently people who he knew, often quite well. As a cousin of mine pointed out, Hubert probably in his childhood held hands with people who had known life before the Reservation Era, before the treaties, who possibly didn't even speak English, nor Chinuk. That just floors me
Two weeks ago I bought a device that will allow me to remove the hard drive from my old 1995 Compaq Presario and transfer much of the used memory of that, Word files mostly, onto my newer Dell XPS 400. I would give most of my worldly possessions to somehow invent a way to make a similar transfer of memory and information from the mind of my great grandfather into my own, just to know and remember what he does. He tells a lot of stories, especially now in his less mobile state. I listen to him as if he were a college history professor, though in this case the lectures are real life experiences. The words that exit his mouth are living history, a link to a past that only a few living souls these days have gotten to know and see.
Hospital staff to a man were greatly impressed that he lived alone at his age. They were even more impressed by his overall health. Because most of his stories are a constant first person narrative of different vignettes, he doesn't always get into general details of day-to-day life in early 20th century Grand Ronde. I can't help but assume he spent much of his life working, probably seven days a week for months at a time. His work was labor, logging, picking moss, fishing and even helping to construct Oregon Highway 101. The constant hard work, in addition to giving up alcohol and smoking earlier in life, presumably do more to account for his health at this age than anything else.
It has only dawned on my over the last year that by the time he was my age, World War I and the Great Depression were afterthoughts. World War II, a period that has always fascinated me, was just getting under way. He would go on to see the Korean War, Vietnam, the rise and disbanding of the Beatles. He would also live through Termination, and still be quite spry at Restoration.
Years ago I wrote a story on him in the "Smoke Signals". Many of the quotes weren't entirely accurate, as he is known for using profanity. I had hoped to use the typical "(expletive)" to capture the mood of some of his quotes, but the swear words ended up being edited out entirely, the words stripped from the sentence entirely. I guess our newsletter just wasn't ready for that back then.
My biggest regret is not doing a lot of this listening ten years ago, when his mind and memory were sharper. Of course, I might not have been able to catch up with him back then, as ten years ago he still had a driver's license. I was just finishing college back then, but on my visits to Grand Ronde once in a while you'd see him heading up Grand Ronde Rd. to the Reservation, probably to pick moss or snatch some firewood. Getting that license revoked was incredible disheartening to him, like declawing a cat, clipping a bird's wings.
But just like three weeks ago, he found a way to get by. Just like he has every day since 1910, when Grand Ronde was a different world, and like his ancestors then, a person just found a way for life to go on.