More Mystery Than Man

     “FREMONT: Rolland M. Wright, 62, died at 6:30 a.m. Monday at Community Hospitals of Williams County – Montpelier. He retired as an inspector for Simpson Manufacturing, Fremont, and was a World War II veteran. Surviving are a son, Ronald of Edon, Ohio; two daughters, Karen Rogers of Edon and Debra Faulkner of Plattsburgh, N.Y.; two sisters, Kathryn Mitchell of Camden, Mich., and Norma Lear of Stryker, Ohio; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Services at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Beams Funeral Home, Fremont. Calling from 4 to 9 p.m. today. Burial in Camden Cemetery, Camden, with military graveside rites.”

     Reading the clipping from the newspaper seems somewhat surreal as I think of myself as one of those seven “surviving” grandchildren. My grandfather, Rolland, died on the morning of May 21st, 1990. I was 2 and he was 62. His heart had simply stopped while he waited in a hospital bed for his trip to the nursing home. Far too young, I believe. But, despite that, when I sit next to his daughter -- my mother -- on the end of her bed and say I am going to write about him, she simply says, “So it’s going to be a negative essay, right?”

     “The earliest memory I have of him is dragging him out of the bars so he would eat dinner with the rest of the family,” my mother says as she looks away from me. Her eyes are so distant, so void of emotion. She is simply stating a fact rather than telling me about her father. She tells me that he would spend most of his time in a bar, drinking beer after beer until his youngest child hauled him out. He wasn’t an angry or abusive drunk. Instead, he would become detached, emotionless. Like my mother as she talks about him. He would just shut down.

     He was the middle child with two sisters. His father left for another woman, and never contacted his family again. So Rolland was stuck in Camden, Michigan to be raised by his mother alone.

     During World War II, he was an American infantryman on the mainland of Japan. I remember reading about the Pacific campaign. The Japanese had been told that the American troops had come to conquer their land, to torture them, to pillage and rape their women and children. The Japanese troops would never surrender, and I had seen a video of a woman with a child in her arms jump off a cliff to her death as American soldiers advanced. The Americans would go from island to island, battle to battle, with the same results. The Japanese would kill as many as they could, knowing full well they couldn’t beat the invaders, and die themselves. I don’t know if this is why Rolland drank when he came back from the war. He never talked about it to his family. To anyone.

When he wasn’t drinking, he worked for a relatively small wage in a factory. He drove for about 40 miles every day from Camden, Michigan to Fremont, Indiana where he inspected automotive parts at what was called Simpson Manufacturing. The factory was a small one, located in a small town. I imagine it was hard, thankless work. But that’s how he supported his family. That’s how he bought his beer.

     My mother smirks a bit as she brings her knees up to her chest, and folds her hands over them. It is the closest thing to a feeling I have seen in her since she started talking. She speaks quietly, looking toward the carpet, still smirking, “I remember that Mom would go sing at the bars and one time, when she was on stage, me and Dad joined her. All three of us sang.” If you only knew my mother and grandmother, you’d know how strange a scene that would make. I can’t remember a time when my mother sang to me, or sang at all. She’s always been so reserved, so in control of herself, and to think about her getting up on a stage and singing is impossible to me. And she has never mentioned that my grandmother was a singer. Apparently she loved to sing country-western songs and my mother says she was astounding to listen to. I wonder why this was all new to me. Should I have asked before now?

     “I think that’s one of the reasons they got the divorce,” my mother says, her mood suddenly shifts as he knees lower again, “I think Mom wanted to do more with her life and Dad didn’t.”

     After 17 years of marriage, they had divorced. It was never the strongest of relationships, but it had fallen apart after their fourth child was lost in a miscarriage. It was too much for my grandmother to bear. And she had to bear it alone. Rolland would just slip back into a bottle and shut the world out. Shut his family out.

     He married again a few years later. They had met at the bar he frequented and she shared the same love for alcohol. She married him, my mother says, mainly because he had a job, one that could support her children and her drinking habit. She was brutal and controlling, and she allowed him to see my mother only once while they were together. She didn’t want to see him. But my grandmother pushed my mother to go because she didn’t want her to lose hope for Rolland. Maybe my grandmother wanted to give him some hope, too. But during that solitary visit, he never uttered a word to my mother. Not one. Eventually he divorced his second wife and moved into his own apartment.

     He lived alone in Fremont, Indiana. The company he worked for was downsized and his superiors forced him to retire. He spent his new free time drinking. His world seems like it was so small. After the war, his life can be mapped out across 50 miles. Once he lived alone, it could be mapped to his apartment and a convenience store. And, more importantly, he had no ties to his family left. He was truly alone. Did he want that?

     My mother had moved from city to city after her parents split. She was never able to hold on to many friends because she switched schools so often. She tells me that later on, she made an effort to contact my grandfather. She started picking up his dirty clothes along the way to her sister’s place, clean them, and, on her way back home, drop them off to him. “I picked him up,” she explains, “and had gone to a grocery store to pick up some food. We sat down at a picnic table on the side of the road. I don’t know why the table was out there, maybe for people like us. But we just sat and had a little picnic and talked a bit.” They talked about nothing in particular, nothing deep or meaningful. They simply talked. It is one of the few good memories my mother has of him.

     His health deteriorated drastically and he was admitted to the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Fremont. My mother visited him every day when she finished her classes at college. On the edge of death, he was read his last rites, but somehow recovered enough to be moved into a much larger facility. He was surrounded by elderly veterans, waiting for their time to run out. Somehow he bounced back from it. Maybe it was a desire to make it out of that place alive. Maybe it was the realization that he wasn’t alone. Maybe my mother gave him the hope he needed. But he wouldn’t stop drinking.

     “I remember one good thing, though. It must have been after I came back from the Air Force because I was old enough to drink,” my mother says as a little bit of warmth shows in her eyes. She looks at me, enthusiastic as she speaks of the time she, her brother, and her father drove about the country roads. Her father was happy. One of the only times she had seen him that way. She was in the back of her brother’s pickup drinking beer, while her brother and father sat up front. “I was scared out of my mind, but I was with ‘the boys’ so what was I supposed to do?” As my mother finishes her stories, I realize that’s all they are to me: stories.

     I never knew my grandfather. He had seen me once, shortly after I was born, before he died. I sit here wondering what he thought as he held me, what he expected of me. I wonder what kind of man he was. To this day, my grandfather seems more mystery than man.