“One-Fifth” by Alaina Welmaker, 17

Fifteen years, or a decade and a half, seems like a long time to know someone. It’s a long time for someone of my age, but my grandfather had lived five times that amount. For the fifteen years that I knew him, my grandfather had always been the stubborn, resilient, and stern veteran that had a soft spot for his grandchildren. PopPop, we’d call him. He had a stroke around the time I was born, so I had always known him walking with a brown wooden cane, glasses dangling around his neck, living in a house slightly secluded in the woods. He taught my mom the importance of financial stability, public safety, and common sense, lessons that both of them made sure to instill in me.

During the pandemic, he resided in a senior facility/healthcare residence, and that’s when I truly realized the severity of not only his condition of health, but the impact it had on my mother. At this point, it wasn’t just his stroke that served as his difficulty. I never knew that his ailments of my grandfather would change our lives drastically.

He came to live with us and my mom started to take care of him near the end of my eighth grade year. This led to more time constraints on activities, night assistance for my grandfather, and having medical services bus him around to dialysis, the VA, and the emergency room. I didn’t mind, I’d think I was more considerate of my mother and grandfather’s circumstance than other kids would have been. Within the three years that his health started to severely decline, his leg was amputated, he had diabetes, bed sores which caused toe amputations, lung tumors, and his physical strength dwindled due to being bed ridden. And through it all, he managed to stay himself, and witness the little things that happened around the confines of our home.

He passed in May of my ninth grade year. I've heard people say that you don’t fully comprehend a loved one’s death until some time later. I knew that I would no longer indulge in his wisdom or share his humor, but I did not truly comprehend his struggles until the opportunity showed itself.

In tenth grade, my healthcare class covered skin conditions. I took the chance and researched a dermatological condition that was similar to one of the many conditions PopPop endured–decubitus ulcers–bed sores that are typically common for elderly and bedridden patients. Because his lack of mobility led to lack of circulation, he received multiple amputations of his lower extremities on his right foot.

While some of his illnesses resulted from the choices he made, there were things he endured that were simply out of his control.

For the past two years, I find myself thinking of all the milestones that me and my siblings have accomplished. Milestones that my grandfather wasn’t here for. But it has allowed for my mom and I to have important discussions– about health and about advocacy, whether that includes speaking up at a doctor’s appointment, or shedding light on the illnesses that multiple people endure.

Recalling these moments revealed to me the struggles that my PopPop had, and helped me develop a deeper empathy for both those who have and are currently going through them and their loved ones. I, myself, have been subjected to illness, chronic during childhood, but conditions that I have grown out of, nevertheless.

Three years was only a fifth of that fifteen, making it one-twenty-fifth of PopPop’s lifetime. But as someone from the outside looking in, those three years were painful to endure, meaning I could not imagine those who have been subjected to other maladies for as long as they have lived..