An Exorcism.

I crept into the small opening in the rear of the fortress.
Like a cloaca, this aluminum porthole, injecting, ejecting the kids who thought the end times were upon them.
It seemed people grew up a lot faster in those days. Displaced into a surreal world where survival wasn’t a convenience.
Marrying at eighteen, off to war at nineteen, dying at twenty.
So those stories went, growing up with Grandpa Joe.

Math was his strong suit. Jazz was second. He played the stand up bass in a bar band.
His timing: the “thump, thump” beat of his thumb plucking four, thick strings.
His quick wit and discipline, what seemed standard in any adult from that era, made him a prime candidate for the Army-Air Force.

To get there, he lied about his age. Desperate to escape the West Virginia hollers. Away from the train his father conducted: the industry of shipping and dumping coal, blown from the seams, from the entrails of the Appalachian Mountains.
Away from a callous life in middle America. To become heroic in a demonic life abroad.

At seventeen, my Grandpa Joe climbed through this same porthole.
Inside the belly, they positioned him as bombardier.
—————————————-
It was an expensive ride. Something I saved for, for over a year. My ticket used mostly to subsidize the six thousand dollars in fuel. For a half hour flight. To circle the bay. A hundred mile round trip.
The remaining revenue, split up within the maintenance of the Flying Fortress. To repair and rebuild eighty year old, ancient electronics. To keep the mosaic of aluminum paneling, the jigsaw of its carapace, in working condition.
It was a miraculous resurrection.
A macabre celebration of death from above.
—————————————-
Inside, a hollow cigar of aluminum, with wires, stretched out in the open, extending from steering column across the ceiling, following the planes spine and ending in its bowels.
Each cable connected to a flap. Each flap a balancing mechanism to sustain the plane in flight.
Losing your balance as a passenger, reaching out, accidentally grappling a wire, could send the machine dipping back down to earth.

There was a dozen passengers. Two crew members. I sat down on one of many red cushions, laying lengthwise down its belly. Each person, sitting thigh to thigh, a thin seat belt pulled over, securing our waists. We stared forward, facing each other, in uncomfortable quarters.
Across from where I sat, flanked by two men, was a diminutive, elderly man.
His frame merely skin on bone.
Beside him, his two grandsons. They made conversation with other guests. Small talk on where they were from, on what they did for a living. Their grandfather, remaining quietly next to them, a veteran airman of the Second World War.

Here, in the bowels of the aircraft, were no windows. Just outside those thin aluminum walls, each Wright Cyclone engine was started manually. A slow chop at first, soon transitioning into a hellish grind, of twelve hundred horse power conjured within each engine.
Down the wing, each spun separately, one at a time. The second, the third.
And finally the fourth.
Combined, it was the sound of a freight train, of earth quaking.
The bellow of angry gods.
We began to taxi.

Gusts of air pushed through openings, a handful of windowless portholes going from front, trailing down its ribs to back. The influx of wind: a massive hair dryer pushing against our bodies, deafening our ears, as the plane lifted from the ground.

At the height of a couple thousand feet, we hit cruising altitude. Given permission to stand up, we walked single file through the hollow tube.
Past the waist gunner stations. One on each side. Facing East and West.
In the sunlight of those open windows, massive .50 calibre machine guns laid dormant.

Underneath us, the ball turret. That solid glass orb hanging from the fortress’ belly. I recalled the horror stories from Grandpa Joe: of the exit door getting jammed, of airmen getting stuck, dangling and helpless.
Of the ball turret getting shot off the plane. Shattered, those pieces of glass entangled with the airman himself, plummeting thirty thousand feet.

We passed the bomb compartment. A narrow aluminum bridge levitating over what was once thousands of pounds of bombs. A space now devoid of detonation, a vacuous compartment, separated us from sky by a set of flimsy aluminum doors.

Beyond, the plane opened up into the flight room. A split level, where above, the pilots steered us above our city.
I sunk below: a compartment stepped down underneath those control panels.
At the end, an egg of solid glass: the nose cone, extending out from the front of the aircraft.
Here was where my grandfather sat, waiting, propelled forward over Central Europe.

In the nose cone, I sat down in the bombardier’s seat. Between my knees lay the Norden Bombsight, an archaic instrument dictating geography. Dictating intended targets.

Many more of my grandfather’s stories stemmed here. Outside that glass, over Germany, the pop of flack. That exploding shrapnel yearning to puncture the plane. To puncture the airmen.
Of the Luftwaffe. Swarming like wasps, shelling whole planes in half.
And of friendly fire. Of allied bombers, knocked out of the sky by poor decisions, by bad reflexes.

In the nose cone, Grandpa Joe gave the signal to drop thousands upon thousands of bombs on factories. On train yards. On human beings.

With the device between my knees, I watched through the sight piece as my city below was obstructed by cloud cover. An eerie relief, it felt good being blinded.
The plane circled, we headed back and prepared to land.

Sitting back down on the cushions, we latched our seat belts. The elderly, retired airman was escorted in last by his grandsons. Calm, he sat down, a slight smile on his face as we heard the wheels distend from the aircraft.

Thinking of my grandfather, I watched the tiny hunched man exit the plane. His family easing him backwards down the escape ladder.
This was his final flight. His final mission. A coming to terms.

At the bottom of the ladder, the pilots greeted us.
I watched as the retired airman reached out to shake the pilot’s hand.
“Thank you,” he said, his lips moving slightly, his voice almost inaudible.

I too was thankful.
Thankful to have the opportunity to fly, in peace, in memoriam of my grandfather.
Thankful to exorcise his horrific memories, floating vulnerable, thousands of feet above a world, raging violently at war.

The Unbearable Greatness of Being.

In November, I visited Gram C. at her nursing home. Although I stopped by as often as possible, it was always hard to visit. Each patient/resident in a different stage of the disease. The most well on, walking in circles, mumbling indefinitely. The rest, sitting at tables spread throughout the dining hall. Silent, they stared incoherently at a diminutive TV blasting Fox News.
As I sat with Grandma, a much older woman, suffering full on dementia, made her rounds past our table.
She mouthed words, but it was as if she was speaking in tongues.
Gibberish to us, yet in her head, it was an eloquent language expressing exactly what she wanted. Her arm bled from having scraped her thin, chicken skin. Moaning, she reached across the table and swiped Gram C’s brownie.
Gram C. let her have it: she was always much more interested in others well-being anyways.
—————————————-
My Grandmother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago. I’d always associated it with soldiers, on some giant ship in the Pacific, eating out of arcane aluminum bowls. As they stabbed at their food, the utensils scraped heavily on the contours. Loosening the aluminum, they gobbled down the hard metals.

After partially tuning in to a medical report, I was certain aluminum blocked brain transmitters. Metallic things just sitting in your skull. Flashy like a tin can. Reflecting emotions. Reflecting your reflex. The brain stops moving forward, dumping you in a cyclic state of emotional ups and downs.

During the report I’d caught word of the over consumption of caffeine. Medical studies where patients were given a load–in excess of 300 milligrams–and their blurred memory, miraculously, became just a tad bit more clear.

I went home and sucked down coffee.
Four cups a day, at least.
Silently and subconsciously hoping the disease wasn’t hereditary.
—————————————-
In her single bedroom, my aunt had furnished one wall with photos of each family member. Tokens of remembrance. Small firecrackers, that when lit, could spark a memory for Gram C.. She didn’t remember most of us. Me included. Though once we started to talk, the fog of things past would lift.
“I don’t know them,” she’d say, pointing to the framed photo of my wife and me.
“That’s me and Ariel,” Gram.

“You and Allah?” She asked. Who’s Allah?”
—————————————-
She called me “The Artist.” Though I never understood her grounds for the moniker? I work in cahoots with a machine shop. They create. I sell it.
Artless.
She, however, was much more the artist. With the knack for telling stories. Good ones. Epic anecdotes of a life initiated in hard times.
In that case, she had the brush. Her synaptic landscapes conjured for me through her distant memory and painted through our conversation.
She had the one gift that Alzheimer’s sufferers are blessed with–to recollect the very distant past.
And although she often stuttered, she painted well.
Some things, even in this state of hers, as clear as day.
—————————————-
“I’m going to jot down some of your stories, Gram. Sound good?”

On her bed lay a copy of Prevention Magazine. On the cover, in bold type, ‘50 things nurses won’t tell you.’
Gram picked it up, thumbed a couple of pages and then threw it to the edge of her bed.
“I don’t want to know,” she said, and laughed, nervously. As if her reality, the clear definition of what she suffered was outlined in those pages. The truth inside. On page four. As if it were there to hurt her.

“I guess you can,” she responded, finally getting around to answering my question.
“But it’s nothing to write about.”
She paused. And after collecting her thoughts:
“But, you should write it, I’ll probably forget it.”

Again, she picked up her copy of Prevention.
Reading another sub-title she blurted out “Swimming With Sharks! That’s not a good idea.”
And she pelted the book back to her feet.
Her thoughts like a typewriter. It was as if her brain hit the return key, sending her thought process back to the beginning of the line.
With Alzheimer’s, instead of starting fresh, you start over. Again and again.
—————————————-
In the dining room, an hour’s old pot of coffee lay steaming in a corner. The liquid, black ink, stewing and watering itself down with a heavy dose of caffeine, swirling in its midst. I grabbed a styrofoam cup and poured a swig. The acid felt good going down. And I took pleasure in the taste, even if it were a placebo.

Having a seat at Gram’s table, we were joined by another woman. Her conversation was loud, boastful, and oddly coherent.
She introduced herself: “I’m Virginia, and I’m from Virginia. And you? Who are you?”
Without a second to answer, her persistence dove in:
“Lucille, who is this man?” She asked Gram.
Gram C’s memory lapsed. She thought hard as her lips twisted in puzzlement. When there was any delay in association, it took some time for her senses to return.
“He’s my friend,” she said, “He’s just visiting this evening.”

Virginia grabbed Gram’s arm. Pulling her out of her chair, Virginia led Gram no more than five feet away. Protecting her naivety, she warned Gram, announcing my intentions to the room:
“I don’t trust that man. He’s not your boyfriend, you know.”

Gram looked over at me. Deep in those tangled fibers was an unconditional love.
I was familiar to her.
Familial.
She pulled her arm away from Virginia, and walked over to say goodbye.
————————————–
At ninety-two she recalled memories far beyond. The Dust Bowl. The Depression. The Second World War.
She told vivid stories of growing up in rural Illinois.
Her life started on a farm.
A family dominated by a matriarch, her mother. The girls worked hard. With no electricity. No running water. An outhouse. A well.
Lives self-contained. Lives sustained by the fruits of their garden.

She often talked about her mother in the present.
“Mother works so hard,” she said. Her mother having been gone for decades.
And through hard labor, Gram C. became resilient.
A dual knee replacement in the early nineties.
Two years ago, a broken neck.
And finally, just weeks ago, a stroke.
—————————————-
Laying in bed, comatose, her Being, beating death.
With life support she would have treaded on: In a dream world, no less.
Remembering unto herself and repeating the amazing life she lived.
A film reel. Playing her most beloved movies.
Those comedies.
Life’s tragedies.
Love.
And the occasional reward of romance.
Forever.
—————————————

**In memory of Lucille M. Coplon.
May 22nd, 1920–August 7th, 2012.