The chest in the back corner of the study was made of cedar. That was all Daniel knew about that particular item which could be found in that dusty, cramped back room in his grandfather’s dusty, cramped house.
Daniel’s grandfather, Albert, had always been a very frugal packrat. Daniel had heard that people who had grown up during the Depression tended to be like that.
It was on his grandfather’s ninety-fifth birthday that Daniel found himself loitering near Grandpa Albert’s old study. He and his extended family were in Grandpa Albert’s old house in an old neighborhood mostly populated by other old people. It was the same house where Daniel’s father and Daniel’s father’s siblings had been brought up in.
“I swear,” Daniel’s father had said to Grandpa Albert once, “you’re going to be buried in this house.”
“Oh, stop it,” Albert had said wryly. “I’ll be buried in the front yard! My gravestone will double as a No Trespassing sign.”
Grandpa Albert had always been something of a wit. But things were changing, and Daniel knew it all too well. Which was why Daniel now found himself looking at the cedar chest in his grandfather’s study. What was in there?
Daniel, a college drop-out who now lived with his parents and played videogames for a living, had just celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. He was beginning to feel his quarter-life crisis creeping up on him.
His curiosity about the cedar chest in the back of Grandpa Albert’s study was the result of a peculiar childhood memory. He’d been eleven, and Grandpa Albert and Grandma Nancy had been keeping an eye on him and his sister Morgan at their house while mom and dad were away by themselves for the weekend. Then-eleven-year-old Daniel had been bored out of his mind, owing to the fact that grandma and grandpa didn’t have cable TV, and that he wouldn’t be getting his first Gameboy for another two years. Morgan, then aged nine, had been keeping herself occupied by drawing pictures in crayon. Daniel had declined to do the same.
“Why the long face, Danny-boy?” Grandpa had said to Daniel a little before lunch. “There’s nothing to do,” Daniel had replied.
“Then we’ll find something for you to do,” said Grandpa. He had an aura of kindness and warmth about him, a warmth that Daniel couldn’t have helped but take a shine to, especially at the age he’d been.
Grandpa shepherded Daniel into his study, and began showing Daniel his collection of books. “Reading is the magic key,” said Grandpa to Daniel, with a knowing grin, “to take you where you want to be. I read that in an old grammar book when I was your age, a long time ago.”
Grandpa then went over to a cedar chest, which was positioned front and center on the bookshelf, occupying the place where a TV might ordinarily be placed. This cedar chest had enjoyed a much more prominent spot in the small study when Daniel was eleven.
Grandpa had searched along the shelf of his bookcase, and had then pulled off a slim volume with a battered green cover, before handing it to Daniel. “Do you read much, Danny- boy?” said Grandpa.
“Not really,” said Daniel. He looked at the thin green volume. The title read, “Kidnapped.”
“This is one of my favorite books, Danny-boy,” said Grandpa Albert. “It was written by a fellow named Robert Louis Stevenson. Give it a read and tell me what you think.”
But Daniel wasn’t looking at the little green book anymore. Instead, he pointed up at the large chest occupying the middle of the study’s primary bookshelf. “What’s in that chest, grandpa?” Daniel had said to his grandfather.
Grandpa Albert smiled indulgently. “That,” said Grandpa, “is the bedrock of all my fortune and happiness. What’s in that chest is something which everyone ought to have.” Grandpa kneeled down in front of Daniel, and ruffled his hair affectionately. “When I kick the bucket someday,” he said, “you can have it if you like.”
“Okay,” said Daniel. He looked at the book he’d been given, and opened it, looking at the worn, yellow pages. The book had evidently been very well-loved.
“Now, go and read a little,” said Grandpa Albert, pointing towards the study door. “You might just have a little fun.”
But that was then, and this was now. Eleven-year-old Daniel had not enjoyed Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and twenty-five-year-old Daniel still didn’t enjoy reading books at all. That wasn’t why he’d left community college, though his experience with books at that time in his life hadn’t been a barrel of laughs either. A chemistry professor had required him to spend fifty dollars on a textbook which she said they wouldn’t need to use.
Then why did you have everyone in the class buy a copy? Daniel had thought then. When he’d gotten a solid C-minus in that class and had talked to the professor, she’d only said, “Didn’t you do the readings in the textbook? You would have learned a lot if you did.”
Daniel did not sign up for another quarter at the college.
Six years later, Daniel was still working his way through every single game in the Call of Duty franchise (he was something of a videogame connoisseur), and now he found himself standing in a corner of his grandpa and grandma’s old house, right in the same spot he’d been fourteen years ago when his grandfather had given him a book which to him was totally undecipherable.
He’d tagged along with his parents and sister to his grandfather’s ninety-fifth birthday party, his parents having promised him that there would be cake and food. He’d enjoyed the cake, a store-bought carrot cake, and it made him feel just a little good inside watching his grandfather enjoy it as well. The food was mostly appetizers, snacks, and finger-food, but Daniel didn’t feel the need to complain. Food was food.
“Whatcha’ looking at, Danny-boy?”
Daniel was mildly startled when he realized that Grandpa Albert had snuck up behind him, quite unexpectedly. His grandfather was tall, lanky, gray-haired, bespectacled, and surprisingly quiet in his movements. He kept in shape, but his mind hadn’t stayed as fit. Despite having an active intellect fed by years of habitual reading, Grandpa Albert was beginning to fall prey to dementia. Daniel’s mother and father had often talked about it at dinner.
But Daniel decided to answer his grandfather’s question, and truthfully as well. “I was just looking at your old cedar chest, grandpa,” he said.
“My old what?” said Grandpa, leaning in closer to Daniel. Grandpa’s hearing was beginning to go too.
“Your old cedar chest,” said Daniel, a little more loudly. “I was just looking at it.”
“Oh, that old thing!” said Grandpa, laughing just a little. “Yes, I kind of wish I could put it up in its old place, though… somebody put a TV where it used to be. I watch that a lot, you know.”
“Sure,” said Daniel. He decided to change the subject. “How did you like the cake?” Eventually, the birthday party began to wind down in the middle of the afternoon, and Daniel’s various relatives and extended family, including his father’s two brothers and two sisters, all began to leave with their families in tow. It had been a big to-do indeed.
As Daniel scrolled up and down on his phone in his spot in the back of his parents’ car next to his sister Morgan, he dimly made out the conversation taking place between his mom and dad.
“He’s getting worse every day, Jim,” said Daniel’s mom. “We need to put him in a home.”
“I… I don’t want to do that,” said Daniel’s dad. “He can still walk around well, and he knows what’s going on. He’s… he’s just a little slow sometimes.”
“He forgot what your name was!” said mom. “He’s beginning to forget that the place where he lives is called ‘a house!’”
“It’s not that bad!” said Daniel’s dad. Daniel could tell that his father was trying to be patient. “Just… just… let’s talk about it later, okay?”
When they got home, Daniel headed to his room to boot up his videogame. But just as he was turning on the console, he heard a snatch of conversation coming from downstairs.
Daniel’s primary job may have been playing videogames, but he had just a hint of curiosity about things which didn’t concern him, an element of his personality which picked that moment to surface.
So Daniel quietly turned off his videogame, meandered over to the top of the stairs, sat down at the top, and listened to the conversation which was going on below.
“Okay, fine,” his father was saying. “We’ll… we’ll work something out. Dad was smart enough to get his investments in order, and I know that he has something of a pot of gold hidden away. He had a living will written up, and I have his lawyer’s contact info. I know that much. But he won’t want to go into a home.”
“We can’t just let him live in that house by himself!” said mom. “If your brother won’t let him move in with him, who will take him? Not Sue, that’s for sure.”
“Sue has a lot on her plate!” said dad. “And so does Frank!” “Then why not put him in a home?” said mom.
“I… I don’t want to do that,” said dad. “And he won’t like it either. I don’t want to take away his… his freedom.”
“Freedom to do what, exactly?” said mom. “Bumble about all day, not being able to make himself meals, and going out walking unsupervised, with no clue about where he’s going or why? Because that’s what’s been happening since your mom died, and now it’s gotten to the point where it can’t be managed!”
The argument went on like that for a few more minutes, before abating, after which Daniel heard his father migrate over to the living room where the TV was. The football game he wanted to watch would be on soon.
Daniel retreated back to his room, and the sliver of curiosity which had managed to worm its way to the top of his mind was beginning to grow, just a tiny, tiny bit. Grandpa had investments? Was he… wealthy? And what about that chest? Did that have anything to do with it? Or maybe it was just some kind of little joke or superstition that grandpa had?
Daniel knew that his grandpa had a reputation within the family for being something of an oddball character. Based on that, Daniel frankly wouldn’t have been surprised if only the last of these questions could be answered with a solid “Yes.”
But still… it would be nice to know what was in that chest. And if they were trying to write up a will, and grandpa had anything to give away in a will…
As Daniel sat back down in his room, he glanced around at his various worldly possessions. He had every installment of Mass Effect, The Legend of Zelda, and Call of Duty. There was his five-year-old flat-screen TV. His various game consoles, all lined up neatly in front of the flat-screen TV. What more could he want?
That is the bedrock of all my fortune and happiness. What’s in that chest is something which everyone ought to have.
The words that had crawled out of that distant childhood memory came to Daniel’s mind now. And his eyes happened to glance at another item in his room. It was a framed photo of Daniel and his family at Daniel’s high school graduation. They had all been so happy that day. Daniel was going to go to community college, get his associates, and then go to a four-year college in Seattle and study accounting. He’d had it all planned out. And then… it just hadn’t… it just hadn’t worked out. He just didn’t like college. No. He didn’t.
But maybe… maybe I can try again, he thought. I’ll… I’ll go to a real college. A real, four-year one. Out-of-state. And if grandpa… grandpa has money? He’s… wealthy? I never… never would have thought… but…? But… maybe…
He knew what he had to do.
Daniel’s quarterlife crisis had been grating on him every single day since he’d turned twenty-five four months ago, and no amount of pressing buttons which allowed him to shoot digital bullets at digital terrorists was making that problem go away.
The course of action he was about to take was dramatic, but he was prepared for it. I have to be, he thought.
As his dad’s football game was winding down, Daniel came up to him in the living room.
The two were alone downstairs. Mom had gone to bed early. “Dad?” said Daniel.
“Hey, Daniel,” said Daniel’s dad. Daniel’s dad was pretty easygoing while unwinding, a trait which Daniel found to be rare in boomers.
“Um… is Grandpa Albert doing okay?” said Daniel. “I heard someone say something at the party earlier.”
“Oh, we’re just worried that Grandpa is getting a bit long in the tooth,” said Daniel’s dad. “We’re going to need to do… to do something about that, I guess.”
Daniel bit down. And then he bit the bullet.
“Dad,” said Daniel, “I’d like to help out. And I have an idea about how I can.”
***
Morgan was just as surprised as her and Daniel’s parents had been when she had heard about the new job which Daniel now wanted to create for himself. “You’re going to be grandpa’s in-home caretaker?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Daniel nonchalantly. “I have a driver’s license, and I can drive grandma’s old car to get back-and-forth between grandpa’s house and his doctor’s appointments and stuff.”
The two were loitering in the kitchen one evening after dinner. “Besides,” said Daniel, “it’s not exactly like I have anything better to do with my time.”
Morgan didn’t say anything, either good or bad. A gloomy girl with much better job prospects than Daniel, she didn’t like college much more than he did. But as Daniel’s mother was quick to point out, at least she was going to school at all, in addition to being gainfully employed as a front-desk receptionist at a health club.
“Hm,” said Morgan. “Good for you.” She then left the kitchen.
Three weeks later, Daniel had settled into his newly acquired role as his grandfather’s in- home caretaker. His parents had been surprised, cautious even, but weren’t about to question this sudden solution to a creeping problem.
“You can always let somebody else do it,” Daniel’s mother had said to him, in her gentle, gentle way. “It’s great that you’re volunteering for this big, big job, but we’ll be right behind you every step of the way.”
“Thank you, mom,” said Daniel, who had taken a break from watching TV with grandpa. It was raining outside, and grandpa was still savvy enough to articulate that he wasn’t inclined to go out in such weather.
Daniel saw his mother peer off to the side, before looking back up at him. Daniel had grown much taller than her over the years, but he still felt small in her presence.
Daniel’s mother then said, “Just… just don’t take on more than you can handle,” she said. “I know you’re trying to be helpful, but… don’t… you know…”
“Relax, mom,” said Daniel. He summoned every inch of charisma and charm that he had (which was very little), and spoke his reply. “I can do this,” he said. “I… I can do this.”
***
Daniel’s daily routine as his grandfather’s new in-home caretaker was equal parts simple and surreal. His father had warned him that old folks needed less sleep than not-so-old folks, leading them to wake up at odd hours. The result was that on one occasion, at three o’clock in the morning, when Daniel was still snoozing away in the meager guest bedroom he’d been afforded, he suddenly heard small noises coming from another part of the house.
Getting up and putting on his gym shorts, Daniel wandered out into the darkened, central area of the house where the kitchen was, only to find his grandfather pouring himself a bowl of cereal.
His grandfather didn’t seem to notice him at first. But when a groggy, bleary-eyed Daniel came closer to him, Grandpa Albert looked up and said, in his croaky, strained voice, “Would you like some breakfast, Danny-boy?”
Daniel learned to take such behavior in stride, and he clumsily adapted to Grandpa Albert’s eccentric routine. Grandpa would now wake up at four in the morning and eat some breakfast prepared by a sleepy Daniel. Then grandpa would watch the golf channel for a few hours.
But things would get really interesting in the middle of the morning on Fridays. At about that time, if it wasn’t raining, grandpa would abruptly get up from watching the golf channel with Daniel, and shuffle over to the closet. The first time this happened, Daniel had been bemused as Grandpa Albert put on a sweater, coat, and baseball cap, and then turned to speak to Daniel.
“I’m… I’m just… going some place,” said grandpa.
Daniel, who had gotten up from his spot on the sofa and had walked over to his grandfather, said to him, “…Eh, where are you going, grandpa?”
“Just… just out,” said grandpa. It seemed that he’d began to lose his ability to speak almost overnight. He barely had enough presence of mind to put in his hearing aids and to put on his glasses.
“Do you want me to go with you?” asked Daniel. Even if his grandfather said “No,” Daniel would have done everything in his power to follow along anyway. It was his only choice.
But grandpa never said “No.”
“Sure, come along, Danny… Danny-boy,” said grandpa.
Once Daniel had put on his own outdoor gear (they were solidly in jacket-weather at the time), he and grandpa went out.
They walked in the cold, still November air, the bright orange and yellow leaves of Fall covering up the ground around the trees planted along the sidewalks. Daniel kept pace with his grandfather, who still had something of a spring in his step, even at the age of ninety-five.
Their walk through the old suburb usually led them to a strip mall near the main road. Grandpa’s house was only about a quarter mile from it, and Daniel didn’t mind the exercise.
The destination of these Friday trips was a hole-in-the-wall burger joint. The first time that Daniel had bought some lunch there for him and his grandfather, he immediately realized why his grandpa was eager to come here. The burgers were the best he’d ever tasted.
The man who ran the store, a tubby, cleanshaven man known to Daniel as “Stuart,” apparently knew Grandpa Albert as a regular at the burger joint.
“Yeah, he’s come here like clockwork every Friday for the last six years,” Stuart said to Daniel as they chatted over the counter. The burger joint, aptly called “Burger Central,” was about the size of a campground outhouse, or at least the part containing the kitchen and dining room was. Daniel didn’t have enough curiosity to wonder what the back of it looked like.
“Every Friday?” said Daniel. He glanced behind him at grandpa, who was still munching on his burger. How did the man look so fit despite periodically eating such grease-soaked meals? It must be all the walking he does, thought Daniel.
“Yep,” said Stuart. “He and his wife used to come in together all the time, but then they stopped. But then he started coming back again.”
“Wait… his wife?” asked Daniel. Stuart’s last few words had now attracted Daniel’s undivided attention.
“Yeah,” said Stuart. “He and his wife, your grandma, I guess, used to come in here all the time. I think they remembered it from when the guy I bought this place from ran it.”
The cogs in Daniel’s brain began to turn. “Um… how long did that guy own this place?” said Daniel.
“Heck if I know,” said Stuart. “Old Bob was almost as old as Mister Albert is now when I took over this place a good fifteen years ago. It had a different name back then, and it was a pizza parlor.”
Daniel glanced back at his grandfather. Grandpa Albert was just finishing up his burger, and drinking the last of his can of Coke. Was there something about this place which Grandpa Albert found magnetizing? Something that made him remember Grandma Nancy?
When Daniel and his grandfather finished lunch, they would walk back to the house and watch some more TV. Daniel would turn on the news sometimes, though his father had given them a Netflix account. Grandpa liked watching an old TV show on Netflix which Daniel had never heard of called “Columbo.”
As Daniel sat back in the old sofa with his old grandfather in his old grandfather’s old house, he kept playing over in his mind the years he’d spent not noticing Grandpa Albert at family picnics and barbeques. Could he have learned something from Grandpa if he’d given him more attention? Was there something going on in Grandpa Albert’s mind, even now, that he ought to know?
He glanced at Grandpa Albert, who was still casually watching the news. A report about a local city council race was on. It was apparently in a dead heat. Not that Daniel had ever registered to vote.
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and he looked in the direction of his grandfather’s study. He got up from his spot in front of the TV and gently walked over to the study. Grandpa Albert didn’t seem to notice him leave. When Daniel came into the study, he approached the dusty, wooden chest which laid in the corner of the room.
What is in that thing? thought Daniel. And if it’s so important to grandpa… why doesn’t he act like it?
Just then, Daniel caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eyes, and turned around quickly. Grandpa Albert was standing in the doorway of the study, smiling.
“Whatcha’ doing there, Danny-boy?” said grandpa.
“Oh, I, uh… I was just seeing if the TV here was working,” said Daniel.
Grandpa, still smiling, stared at Daniel for a few seconds, before bursting into a fit of snickering. He then left the room, saying cheerfully, “I guess that’s good.”
Daniel nodded, and decided to follow grandpa out, back to the living room. Perhaps it would be best to stay close to the old fellow.
A long afternoon of watching TV was followed by dinner in the evening, after which grandpa watched an episode of Columbo, before going to bed. After Daniel had made sure that grandpa was settled, he would go to his own room and go to sleep.
And that was what nearly every day was like for Daniel for the next two years. Grandpa and Daniel’s mid-morning excursions to Burger Central on Fridays were complimented by
grandpa’s resolute tramping around the neighborhood on other days. Daniel went everywhere with him. He would see his parents on the weekends, when they came over to check on them to see how they were doing. Once in a blue moon, Morgan would come by. Daniel would drive grandpa to his doctor’s appointments once or twice a week, and he would serve grandpa the dinners that mom made for them.
But Daniel had learned to cook a wide variety of foods himself. Mom came over one Saturday and coached him on how to properly make waffles, and later how to make lunches that weren’t just peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and potato chips.
“Those sorts of things are really bad for you anyway,” mom would say as they made a nice salad together.
“I don’t think they were meant to be anything else,” Daniel said.
A day didn’t go by where Daniel didn’t think about what was in his grandfather’s old cedar chest. But he gradually began to stop creeping over to his grandfather’s old study to take a look at it. He had less reason to go there. He began to enjoy dining with grandpa, and the two managed to have basic, stilted conversations.
Grandpa’s ability to speak was greatly limited by now, but Daniel was beginning to see that somewhere, in his grandfather’s very soul, was a perfectly rational human being who simply couldn’t get his faculty of speech to do what he wanted.
That theory of Daniel’s was suddenly put to the test on a bright Sunday morning in the April of his third year of living with Grandpa Albert.
***
“I’ve… I’ve got to go, some… some place,” Grandpa Albert has said. Daniel watched him go over to the closet, like he usually did, and put his sweater, jacket, and baseball cap on. It was a baseball cap marked with the insignia of a sporting goods company, a silhouette of a golfer. The hat was a new one which dad had given grandpa for his birthday last year.
What is it with old people and golf? thought Daniel. “Where do you need to go?” asked Daniel.
“I… I…,” said grandpa, still putting on his coat. “I… I have to be… someplace. It’s… it’s… a day… which is… important.”
Daniel furrowed his brow. “Important?” That was one of the few words he’d ever heard grandpa speak in the last three years which was more than one syllable long.
Daniel hadn’t been idle during the last three years. After about six months of keeping an eye on grandpa, Daniel’s father had convinced him to enroll in an online college. The tuition was cheap enough for Daniel’s father, a sales manager at a glass manufacturing company, to pay for. Daniel, armed with a brand-new laptop, kept himself occupied doing that when not watching TV with Grandpa Albert. He’d be graduating in less than two years.
But what will grandpa be up to? he had often thought.
Now, it was April, and Daniel was still in the middle of studying for an exam in a supply chain management class. He had grown used to working on Sundays, but in the end, he had to justify to his father how he spent his abundant time. Daniel had quickly decided that online college was much more to his liking than regular college. Why commute to school, or even live on campus, walking from class-to-class and back to a dorm, lugging mountains of equipment, when you could do it all from the comfort of your dinner table?
As Daniel glossed over these matters in the back of his mind, his attention returned to his grandfather. Grandpa Albert was leaving the house, and Daniel quickly followed him.
As they walked through the suburb, grandpa took a new route, going in the opposite direction of Burger Central. Instead, Daniel found himself walking with grandpa to a very different establishment.
The sign in front of the building’s packed parking lot read, “Bethlehem Lutheran Church.” Daniel hadn’t been to church regularly since he was fifteen, when his parents stopped making him and Morgan go. Eventually, neither of them kept going either.
But why was grandpa, who was now quietly shuffling through the front door of this small, wooden building with a steeple with a cross on top of it, going to church at all? What was special about this Sunday?
But then, Daniel heard the answer to his question in his ears, and he kicked himself for not knowing it. That answer came from the greeter who met him and grandpa at the door.
“It’s great to see you!” said the smiling, middle-aged, mustachioed man who stood at the door of the church. “Happy Easter!”
Easter, thought Daniel. Of course. Today’s Easter. Grandpa… of all the things grandpa could have remembered… it was that.
Daniel didn’t know much about his grandfather’s religious views, or even if he was particularly religious at all, even before he began to need Daniel’s care. Again, Daniel had sadly paid little attention to him in social situations where the both of them were present. His Gameboy was just so much more interesting. At least, that’s what he’d thought when he was a kid.
But now, Daniel found himself gingerly following his grandfather into the main room of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, sitting down with him in a back pew. It was nine o’clock in the morning.
The pastor, a stocky, happy-looking man in his forties with a mottled complexion and a thin beard, came to the front and introduced himself, before welcoming the churchgoers to the service and wishing them all a happy Easter.
“He is risen!” said the pastor.
“He is risen indeed!” replied the churchgoers.
The pastor, after a few more remarks, stepped down from the stage. A six-person choir, a forty-something woman playing a piano, plus a young man about Daniel’s age playing a guitar, began to sing and play worship music.
Then, as the musicians played, as the choir sang, and as the churchgoers packing the small church sang along with the help of the printed-out lyrics sheets which had been placed in the pews, something incredible happened which left Daniel utterly flabbergasted.
Grandpa Albert, taking the papers in his hands, peered down at the words, and then began to sing.
“When peace… like a river… attendeth my way,” sang grandpa, his voice rising with the rhythm of the choir, “when sorrows like sea billows roll… what… whatever… my lot… thou has taught… taught… taught me to say… it is… it is… it is well… with my soul.”
Grandpa’s voice stuttered and stumbled along with the rest of the singers, and the words he sang fell behind theirs. He followed along clumsily, and couldn’t quite keep up. But he didn’t stop singing, or at least stop trying to sing.
Daniel then realized that Grandpa Albert wasn’t looking at the lyric sheets, not anymore.
Getting into the middle of the next song (indicated in the lyric sheets as “Rock of Ages”), he slowly put down his copy of the lyrics sheet and sang on his own, looking ahead intently at the front of the church. A wooden cross was mounted in the center of the front wall, above the space where the choir and musicians were.
He knows the words by heart, thought Daniel. This is all familiar to him. He… he knew that today was Easter. And… and I don’t think anyone told him otherwise.
The singing ended, after which grandpa and Daniel sat down with the other attendees. The well-built pastor then returned, and began preaching his sermon, where he expounded on chapter twenty of the Gospel of John. Daniel didn’t catch the whole sermon, mainly because he was too busy keeping an eye on grandpa. Grandpa stared ahead, looking towards the front of the church, eyes glazed over and vacant. Was grandpa processing what the pastor said? Did grandpa, on some remote level, understand what the pastor was saying, or was at least trying to understand what he was saying? Had some kind of ingrained habit rooted in a happy memory from the distant past suddenly resurfaced in the form of going to church on Easter Sunday?
The forty-five minute sermon concluded. The pastor closed with a prayer, and the whole congregation bowed their heads, folded their hands, and closed their eyes, with grandpa doing the same.
Daniel wasn’t sure if he ought to follow along. He was still trying to puzzle out the questions he had. But he wondered if he got an answer to at least a few of those questions when he saw a single tear fall down his grandfather’s face as he bowed his elderly frame in prayer.
What’s…. what’s going on inside of grandpa’s head? thought Daniel.
What… what is he thinking about?
Daniel bowed his head, folded his hands, and closed his eyes.
***
The hospital, Overlake Medical Center, where Grandpa Albert had been taken, was in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Daniel regularly drove his grandfather to a doctor’s office near there. But now, Daniel travelled alone in his grandma’s old car, a dingy Ford Cutlass. His grandfather had been given alternative transportation to the hospital.
Grandpa’s physical health, as good as it was, had begun to degenerate over the last six months. He’d had trouble digesting food, and the doctor had prescribed more medicine and treatments. Grandpa’s arthritis had gotten worse, meaning no more walks to either Burger Central or Bethlehem Lutheran Church. The latter of these had become another weekly destination for Daniel and Grandpa Albert, and Daniel couldn’t say he disliked it.
But today, grandpa had abruptly collapsed onto the carpeted floor of the living room while getting up from watching the golf channel to go to the dining table to get lunch. Daniel had prepared homemade General Tso’s chicken, the latest addition to his cooking repertoire.
As Daniel drove along in his car toward the hospital in Bellevue, he thanked his lucky stars that he’d remembered to turn off the stove before calling 911, and then his parents.
An hour-and-a-half after grandpa had been picked up by the paramedics and had been carried into the back of an ambulance, Daniel and his parents found themselves all sitting together in the courtesy chairs in the hospital lobby, waiting for the doctors to come back to give them a report on the situation. It was one-thirty in the afternoon on a Tuesday.
Daniel’s father looked grim and stoic, sitting in his courtesy chair, blankly staring ahead. Daniel sat next to him, and Daniel’s mother sat on the other side of her husband. None of them spoke, and they were all scared. None of them even had their phones out.
“I’m very proud of you, son,” Daniel’s father had told him earlier. “You’ve done so much, and you’ve come so far in the last few years. The… the whole family is proud of you. You know that, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel had said. “Thank you.”
Finally, a doctor, a fit, balding man of perhaps fifty, came up to them. “He’s stable,” said the doctor, “but he’ll have to stay at the hospital for observation for a few days. We may need to do an MRI.”
“But he’ll live?” said Daniel’s father.
The doctor nodded, speaking kindly. “Yes,” said the doctor. “It helps that he’s in decent physical condition. He’s got a bit of a paunch, but that’s a lot more than can be said for a lot of ninety-eight-year-olds with arthritis and heart trouble. He’s in good shape for a man his age, and in adequate shape for a human being.”
“Can we see him?” said Daniel’s father.
“You can,” said the doctor. “He’s sedated at the moment, but he’ll be awake soon.” Daniel and his parents visited Grandpa Albert, who slowly woke up after an hour or so.
He couldn’t speak at all, and barely seemed to understand what was going on. When Daniel and his parents finally left the hospital at eight-thirty at night, he was sleeping soundly again.
As Daniel drove back to his grandfather’s house, he struggled to concentrate on the road.
Fear and grief gripped him. Was his grandfather finally going to pass away? Was he finally going to lose any chance he had of trying to understand what Grandpa was thinking as they went about their days together? Would he even be able to say goodbye?
Daniel had talked to his father about grandpa’s weekly trips to Burger Central and his sudden desire to begin attending church. Daniel’s father had little to say about the subject.
“I know he grew up Lutheran,” Daniel’s father had said. “But he didn’t stick to churchgoing for very long after all of his kids, including me, moved out of the house. I think both he and your Grandma Nancy began to think they were… above going to church, or… or something.”
Daniel, who had been sitting with his father on the back porch of grandpa’s house at the time, put forth an idea. “Maybe… maybe he’s trying to… get back in touch with his youth?” said Daniel. “I’ve heard that people with dementia or Alzheimer’s, or… or whatever, I’ve heard that sometimes they remember things that happened a long time ago better than things that happened more recently. Maybe… maybe this has something to do with that kind of idea?”
Daniel’s father just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He sounded utterly glum. “I’m not a doctor.”
Back in the present, Daniel arrived back at grandpa’s house. He imagined that he’d wind up living in this house after grandpa… after grandpa passed away. Unless his parents decided to sell it to somebody else. It was an old, old house with a lot of memories in it. In spite of everything, Daniel got the impression from his extended family that those memories were mostly good ones.
Daniel walked back into the house’s kitchen. He’d left all the lights on, and the door had been unlocked. He’d been in such a hurry to leave that he’d forgotten to lock it. The homemade General Tso’s chicken was resting in a pan on top of the stove, now stone cold. Daniel went over to the sofa in front of the TV and sat down. The golf channel was still playing on the TV. Daniel then turned off the TV, leaned forward in his seat, and cried for thirty minutes.
After that, he put the chicken into a container and put it in the fridge. But out of the corner of his eye, he noted the gleam of the kitchen ceiling light reflecting on the shiny, gold-colored doorknob of Grandpa Albert’s old study. Daniel walked over to the study, and opened the door.
The cedar chest was still resting in the corner of the room. Daniel, at the behest of his mother, periodically cleaned the house, which included dusting the study. The cedar chest had not escaped being dusted.
Now, at nine o’clock at night, in the old house which his grandfather had lived in for a good sixty-five years, Daniel went into the study, and turned on the light. The cedar chest was still there, shiny and clean.
Daniel approached the cedar chest, and put a hand on it. His hands stroked the surface of the chest.
But then he took his hand away.
No, he thought. No. Not… not like this.
He left the study and went to bed.
***
Grandpa Albert lingered on for a few weeks, but his condition only got worse. He had fought long and hard, but his battle was beginning to draw to a close.
Daniel was given the dubious honor of being invited to attend a family meeting, where his parents and his extended family began to discuss what to do now that Grandpa Albert could possibly be dying.
“He had a will worked out before Daniel had to come in to take care of him,” Daniel’s father said. “Dad had it all figured out, even then. He… he was always smart about stuff like that.” The family had all gathered together in the spacious TV room at Daniel’s parents’ house. (Daniel didn’t think of it as “his house” anymore.)
“I heard that Daniel started taking him to church,” said Aunt Sue. “Do you think all that extra walking was the best thing for dad?”
“Sue, it was dad’s idea to do that,” said Daniel’s father. He sounded testy. “Daniel said that dad wanted to go to church.”
“I get that,” said Aunt Sue, “but maybe we shouldn’t have let him?”
“How were we, or Daniel… I… how were we supposed to stop dad from going to church?” said Daniel’s father. His patience was wearing thin. “We couldn’t have just locked him in his room!” said Daniel’s father. “I honestly was just thankful that somewhere inside him, he had enough sense to stay at home when his arthritis got too bad! And since when is anyone going to church a bad thing?”
“If you think going to church is such a good thing,” said Aunt Sue, “then why don’t you go to church, Jim?”
“Why don’t you go to church, Sue?”
The meeting went downhill from there, and Daniel happily allowed himself to shrink into the background while the argument among his relatives escalated. He had come to believe that silence was golden.
Eventually, the family meeting ended, and a decision was finally reached. Grandpa Albert would remain in the hospital, and the family would clear their schedules so that they could each spend as much time with him as they could. The doctors had said that there was only so much time left, and the one thing the family was united on was that they ought to enjoy what little time there was to be had with Grandpa Albert.
Days turned to weeks, and then it happened. Daniel was there, in Grandpa Albert’s last moments. Every available family member was assembled, amounting to a collection of some
fifteen people crammed into a hospital room the size of a large woodshed. Grandpa Albert was breathing in and out, slowly. The doctors and nurses had given them time alone. Nothing could hold back the inevitable.
“D… Danny-boy… come… come here, pl… please.”
The occupants of the hospital room erupted in mumbling. But Daniel’s father nodded to him, and Daniel came forward, to his grandfather’s side. Grandpa Albert, weak and tired as he was, clearly had enough of his faculties about him to see Daniel one last time.
“I’m… I’m… pruh…. Pruh…” said Grandpa Albert.
“Grandpa?” said Daniel. He felt water welling up in his eyes. His throat felt like there was a golf-ball stuck in it.
“I’m pruh… per… per… per-ow…” grandpa said. But then he stopped speaking. Instead, he smiled, and said, with perfect clarity: “Well, you know.”
Grandpa Albert then sank back into his bed, still smiling. After a few more seconds, his chest stopped moving up and down.
The room was silent for a moment. Daniel’s nose was beginning to fill with mucus from his sudden fit of crying. Various members of his extended family were also shedding tears, and the room’s silence was punctuated by such soft sobs. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and it was Friday.
Eventually, Grandpa’s body was taken away, and Daniel never saw his face again. As the family filtered out of the hospital, Daniel heard his father talking with Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank said to Daniel’s father, “You know where he kept his will, right?”
“Yes, Frank,” Daniel’s father said, sounding drained. “In the upper drawer of his desk in his study. His lawyer has a copy, and there’s another copy in his safe deposit box.”
“And where’s the key to his box?” said Uncle Frank.
“It’s hanging on a peg at his house,” said Daniel’s father. “It’s by the door, with his other keys.”
Daniel just shook his head, and kept walking. He heard his mother talking to Aunt Sue about planning the memorial service. Aunt Sue said something about how to go about getting grandpa cremated.
But Daniel was lost in his own thoughts. I’m going to get a look at what’s in grandpa’s cedar chest, he thought. Yay.
***
The reading of the will took place three weeks after the memorial service. The assembled family members were shocked.
“He left… he left all of his money to that church?” said Aunt Sue. “How come we didn’t know about this?”
“Sue,” said Daniel’s father, who was present. His voice had become more weighted
lately, and Daniel was beginning to think that such an occurrence wasn’t altogether bad. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Aunt Sue opened her mouth to respond, but stopped. “Alright, alright,” she said. “Just… just let Norm read the rest of the will.”
Norm, who was the late Grandpa Albert’s lawyer, sat taciturnly at the dinner table at Daniel’s parents’ house, around which the family was gathered. Daniel loitered behind the rest of the group, brooding in a corner. Grandpa Albert had been dead for a month. Daniel’s father had asked Daniel to deliver the eulogy, and Daniel agreed. He had requested some time off from his online college. When he returned, he’d be starting the final year of his degree program. He’d have an accounting degree at the age of twenty-nine.
Daniel was then shaken out of his stupor when he realized that someone was saying his name. It was his father.
“Daniel?” said Daniel’s father. “Did you hear what Norm just said?” “I’m sorry?” said Daniel.
“Dad, I mean, your Grandpa Albert,” said Daniel’s father. “He left you something.”
Daniel’s heart suddenly leapt into his mouth. Was this it? He’d long since put behind him his vague plan of working his way into his grandfather’s heart, and then into his will. Was this about the cedar chest? Thoughts about that particular knick-knack hadn’t been occupying his mind in the midst of planning, attending, and recovering from the memorial service.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” said Daniel, getting up from his seat and going to the front of the assembled relatives. “I wasn’t paying attention, sir.”
“Your grandfather,” said Norm, “has left you a wooden chest found in his study, marked ‘A.M.L.’ That chest and everything in it is yours.”
“He left me the house and the car,” said Daniel’s dad. “Everything else of value he had is to be sold and the money given to that church.”
“Bethlehem Lutheran Church?” said Daniel. “The one which grandpa and I were going to all this time?”
“…Yes,” said Daniel’s dad. “Actually… that is the church that mom and dad went to with us when we were kids. It’s… yeah, it’s… it’s been a while.”
The meeting went on for a little while after that, before concluding around four o’clock in the afternoon. There was no end of grumbling and muttering among the grown-ups, though Daniel remembered that he himself was a grown-up now.
A week went by before Daniel worked up the courage to go back into his grandfather’s study. His father had agreed to sell him the house for one dollar, and the car for another dollar, upon his graduation from college and acquisition of a job. It was a handshake deal.
“You’ve earned this, son,” said Daniel’s father. “I’m… I’m very, very proud of you.” “Yes, sir,” said Daniel. “I… I… you’ve said that plenty. And I’m glad to hear it. I… thanks.”
Daniel was eating dinner with his parents and sister at his grandfather’s house when his sister Morgan reminded him about the chest. Daniel had cooked up a meal of white-bean pork chili.
“Have you opened the chest yet?” said Morgan.
“I haven’t,” said Daniel. “But… why don’t we all open it tonight? Now that we’re all together?”
“That sounds like a nice idea,” said Daniel’s mom. “Jim?” “I’m okay with that,” said Daniel’s father.
After dinner concluded, Daniel went over to grandpa’s study and lifted the chest out of the corner of the room. It was about the size of a microwave, and it was heavy. Very heavy.
Daniel needed the help of his father to lift it off of the ground and to carry it out of the study. “I didn’t know dad had a brick collection,” said Daniel’s father as he strained to help Daniel carry the box into the living room.
But Daniel and his father managed to lug the cedar chest over to the now-cleared dinner table, and set the chest on top of it. His parents and Morgan stood around the chest. It had no lock on it, and sure enough, it was marked, “A.M.L.”
“It’s his initials,” said Daniel’s father. “’Albert Martin Laney.’”
Daniel nodded, flipped the latch which secured the box shut, and opened it.
Inside the chest were books. Piles of books, all at least ten years old, all ranging in thickness from one to three inches. They had a wide variety of covers, some colorful, some a dull brown or black, a few paperbacked, some hardcover, and most leatherbound.
But they all had one thing in common.
“’Holy Bible?’” said Morgan, peering over Daniel’s shoulder. “What does it say on that one’s cover?”
“Holy Bible,” said Daniel, sifting through the pile of books, taking them out of the chest one at a time. And as he took each book out of the chest, he, with the help of his father, mother, and sister, soon were able to find what the chest contained.
“They’re all Bibles,” said Daniel, showing one to his father. “This one says ‘NIV,’ this one says ‘NABRE,’ another says… uh, it’s a bit worn… ‘NKJV’?”
“Looks like Grandpa Albert was a collector,” said Daniel’s father. Daniel’s father got to the bottom of the chest full of Bibles, the tomes which the four were working to extract from the chest beginning to pile up on the table. There were easily more than two-dozen of them.
“But… why?” said Morgan. “Didn’t grandpa… not go to church for a long time? And… are any of these worth any money?”
“I’m just as mystified as you,” said Daniel’s father. “Daniel? Can you shed any light on this?”
Daniel shrugged his shoulders. “When I was a kid,” he said, “grandpa said I could have this cedar chest and everything in it if I wanted it. He said that what was in the chest was the
source of his fortune in life. Maybe… maybe he just really loved God, even when he stopped going to church. Maybe he just… wanted to do religion on his own, and grandma did too. And then… maybe he just changed his mind near the end.”
The four of them stood there, in the dining room of the old, cramped, but clean and neat house. The light of a warm summer evening shone through the windows, illuminating the dining room.
Finally, Daniel sighed heavily, and took the newest-looking Bible, marked “ESV,” off of the pile that had accumulated on the table, before heading over to the sofa. The TV was off.
“What are you doing?” said Morgan. “Shouldn’t we keep looking these over or something?”
“Maybe later,” said Daniel. He sat down, and flipped open the Bible he was carrying. He knew what he had to do.
“I need…” said Daniel. “I need to catch up… on my reading.”
The End
