not your average joe.

My grandpa got rushed to the ER last night.

A man who never complains told my grandma – very calmly, I might add – to call 9-1-1. It turns out that he has an intestinal blockage, probably caused by the abdominal surgery he had to undergo about four years ago.

From my earliest point of memory, I have always been taught to trust in the medical system that has been built in this country… you know, all of the doctors that spend four years in undergraduate science hell and then seven more working obscene hours and studying when they should be sleeping. But there is just that nagging uncertainty that something could go wrong. Or, what if they do find something seriously wrong - I mean, the guy is 83 and he has Parkinson’s; chances are, they probably would not do any sort of more complicated procedures. It scares me and I’m not even the one going through it!

Doesn’t scare Grandpa Joe, though. He is relatively unphased by anything that has to do with medicine - he goes to the doctor’s office when my grandma yells (yes, yells) at him to get into the car, he takes what seems to be a meal of pills every six hours, and he plods along with the most assuring of dispositions. When I was heading for the door after one visit, he picked up his cane (which he rarely uses even though the doctor tells him to) and walked out with me – I assume so he could inspect my car a little bit and make sure I was taking care of it. On the slow walk out, he simply said to me, “Well, here’s hoping that when I see you tomorrow everything is still attached…”

Spending time with my grandpa really puts knowledge into perspective. I went through four years at Chapman trying to study and gain all of this “knowledge” for further application. Not an ounce of what I learned can help me fix my car or my refridgerator, cheat the cable company and install my own stuff so I don’t have to pay their installation fees, or build my own entertainment center without really getting any instructions. Shakespeare doesn’t help with house upkeep. Locke can’t repair our sprinkler system. My Grandpa can do all of that though – and he did so for as long as my grandma let him. He’s like the Mexican, 20th century version of Leonardo di Vinci or something – minus the whole flying contraption situation.

With all of his world knowledge and practical knowledge, he is one of the few people that has never said the words, “Well, you’re young…” as an excuse for anything – he has never reminded me how much I have to learn – and he has never tried to impart a strong opinion or make a decision for me. He kind of teaches just by living.

As he was being carted out by the paramedics, he told my mom, “Could you make sure that you sleep in the same room with your mother tonight… to make sure that she is ok?” It is in these moments that you learn what life is supposed to be filled with- love, not money; companionship, not acquaintances; dedication and integrity, not self-absorption. I guess he showed how to give a Valentines Day gift with meaning… every day of his life.

We can’t choose when these sorts of things happen – we can’t choose how they happen – and we can’t choose to whom they do not happen. But we can choose how we decide to react and live from that day forward.

Today is one of those plodding days… like walking with a cane.