After the fire
16 May 2008 02:47 PM Categories: Parents
It was just before nine
p.m. on a warm June night in 1966. He was working the
3-11 shift at a paint plant in Newport when the ping
of a hammer, a timid tap in a room stinking of
kerosene, sparked a fire. Flash of flame, no time to
escape: my grandfather and two other men were
adjacent to the vat.
As the story goes, he stepped outside, lit a Pall Mall, and popped the huge blister on his stomach. "I think you better call an ambulance."
80% of his body was covered in third-degree burns. He spent nine months in the hospital, nine months at home with a full-time nurse. He suffered through over 26 skin grafts. His hearing was ruined from massive doses of powerful antibiotics. When his right foot was giving up the ghost, its blood vessels cauterized by fire, surgeons took a couple timid swipes, lopping off one toe, then a couple more. It took a third operation to amputate it just below the ankle.
Years later, a doctor told him, "I've seen skin like that on a dead man."
When I knew him, he was demanding and unhappy, a man with a limp and two hearing aids. I learned to hate his call: "Jenny, got a minute?" I was definitely not a Jenny and what if I didn't have a minute? It was the typical stupidity of youth. I wish I could go back and treat him with kindness and empathy, to understand what was destroyed in the fire.
In my dreams he's back in the old house, living off hot dogs and root beer, not yet clued in to his own death. He tries to call me, jamming his thick, arthritic fingers into the phone's dial. No luck.
As the story goes, he stepped outside, lit a Pall Mall, and popped the huge blister on his stomach. "I think you better call an ambulance."
80% of his body was covered in third-degree burns. He spent nine months in the hospital, nine months at home with a full-time nurse. He suffered through over 26 skin grafts. His hearing was ruined from massive doses of powerful antibiotics. When his right foot was giving up the ghost, its blood vessels cauterized by fire, surgeons took a couple timid swipes, lopping off one toe, then a couple more. It took a third operation to amputate it just below the ankle.
Years later, a doctor told him, "I've seen skin like that on a dead man."
When I knew him, he was demanding and unhappy, a man with a limp and two hearing aids. I learned to hate his call: "Jenny, got a minute?" I was definitely not a Jenny and what if I didn't have a minute? It was the typical stupidity of youth. I wish I could go back and treat him with kindness and empathy, to understand what was destroyed in the fire.
In my dreams he's back in the old house, living off hot dogs and root beer, not yet clued in to his own death. He tries to call me, jamming his thick, arthritic fingers into the phone's dial. No luck.