Final Thoughts: Family

Post Script

by Jack O’Brien, September 2022

[Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved.]

For the 13 months before June 22, 2022, I was most involved in helping my grandfather die. Everything I did, from school to sports to work to music, focused on helping him enjoy the life he had left. For the six days before he died, when he went into hospice at his home, I cleaned and diapered him, sang some of my opera and Sinatra songs, played violin (the Bach Double with my brother), and read to him. Finally, I told him his work on earth was done and he could leave us. I hated to tell him this, but I had to. No one would want another human being to endure his condition at that point.        

When my grandfather was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and heart issues in early June 2021, we had hoped he would live at least 3 years. He had been a superb athlete, a strong pillar who seemed incapable of being affected by illness or death. He set a goal to see me graduate college and my brother, high school. I called him almost daily to talk about my schoolwork, asked for his input, and had him come to my soccer, lacrosse, and Nordic skiing events. He showed a proud face but sometimes had to sit in a heated car since the cancer treatments affected his internal thermostat. I knew that although it was hard, he wanted to be there.

By January it was clear, after we spent a weekend at our cabin cross country skiing, that this might be his last ‘vacation.’ I switched gears and talked more about his life and values, asking for his guidance. His goal became to see me graduate high school. When he couldn’t stand without help, didn’t feel like eating, and wanted to sleep more, I would lie with him and tell him I loved him. We talked about our adventures together. Without saying so, we knew we had no future together, just a wonderful, loving, shared past. 

I learned about mortality, a concept I had not understood before. My grandfather taught me how to accept death; and in return, I helped him die. 

The Importance of Grandparents
A Surrogate Proposal

by Jack Hoeschler, March 2019

The best thing about having children is to be able to have grandchildren. This is a truism which my wife and I have learned lately (and late since our first of two grandchildren did not arrive until our oldest child hit 37). Besides being blessed by a wonderful grandchild, we are doubly blessed by a close relationship (both psychologically and physically) with our daughter and son-in-law. They live slightly more than a mile away and they are comfortable allowing us to play an active role in raising both of their children, both at their home and at our own.

From the point of view of our daughter, this gives her an emergency and/or regular babysitting service that allows her freedom that would otherwise be difficult or at least expensive to procure. My wife, who is now retired at age 62 from a very active business career, is able to pick the baby up from day care, take him on days that he may be sick and not allowed at day care, and it allows us to take him to our home to sleep over on Saturday nights so his parents can have a free night together more or less weekly.

From the point of view of the child, this gives him an alternative home, a supplemental and rested set of parents/teachers who are quite willing to read to him again from the same book his parents are tired of, and to take him on adventure trips that are different from those his parents would think of.

From the point of view of the grandparents, this provides an intimate opportunity to observe once again, the delights of seeing a young baby/child experience, learn and express new things and just enjoy life with the wonder of childhood. It allows us to enjoy the role of teacher and mentor without the responsibility of 24 hour care if we chose not to take it. We can give him back if things get too dirty, sick or tough.

This leads me to think about how tough it would be to raise a baby/child as a single, especially working, parent. The joys and benefits of relief that both we and our daughter feel would simply not be there without this grandparent function. I get tired just thinking about it.

Which leads me in turn to wonder whether there can or should be some system of surrogate grandparents for people and children who are not blessed by biological grandparents in close proximity.

As it happened, my wife and I were blessed by such a surrogate grandparent in the person of Manny Elson, our 70 year old landlord from Chicago whose wife died in my wife’s arms a week before our first child, our daughter, was born. For both us and for Manny, who had lost the main support and organizing force in his life as an artist and biscuit and cracker salesman, this tragedy came at an opportune time. He was able to find a useful role in helping with the new baby under the direction of my wife.

This role and the closeness of his bond with our family grew when we had our second child, a son, two years later. By that time we had moved to the Twin Cities from Chicago and Manny would visit us for weeks at a time to serve as a sort of live-in nanny.

As it also happened, neither set of biological grandparents played much of a role in this regard. My wife’s parents lived in New York and were too far away while my parents were closer physically but still remote psychologically because they had an (inexplicable to me both now and then) aversion to even the idea of being grandparents. They saw themselves as too young and active to be seen, thought of or, more importantly, to think of themselves as grandparents. They did not even like to be called grandpa or grandma. It had to be Nana and Gramps.

Thus, Manny was a godsend, but an accidental one.

My point is why should we not as a society have a mechanism to introduce willing and interested seniors to new parents to see if a Manny-like bond cannot be achieved between the elders and the child as surrogate grandparents.

In a time of sensitivity to the dangers of child abuse and molestation, appropriate safeguards would have to be taken, but it would seem that the insight that it takes a village to raise a child should be observed in more than the breach.

I wonder whether the day care system could be encouraged to act as a clearing place for interested parents and seniors to meet, experiment and establish appropriate bonds and arrangements to foster this kind of surrogate but meaningful relationship between young and old.

An ideal test bed would be the Jewish Community Center day care where our grandsons were once enrolled. The JCC has an active seniors program and could facilitate the supervised meetings of child and elder and encourage those relationships and parties that have the ability and desire to extend beyond the boards of the Center.

No doubt this is not a new idea to the workers at a place like the JCC. Clearly more investigation is necessary to determine why this idea has not been implemented. Is it money, staff time, legal concerns or just lack of leadership that has caused this not to happen? Let us explore and try to bridge the gap between willing and able children, parents and elders for the betterment of all.