Grandpa Mows the Lawn | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Grandpa Mows the Lawn | Previous Challenge Entry
By Larry Webster
04/18/05
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I pull into my parent’s driveway intent on some errand or another, my youngest son in the back seat chattering away at everything and nothing as five-year-olds will do. We get out of the car to head inside and I hear the sound of a lawnmower in the backyard. I walk to the end of the driveway and stop at the gate. Leaning my elbows on the top post of the cyclone fence, careful to avoid the upturned barbs, I watch as my dad mows his back yard.

I feel my son lean against my leg. Not tall enough to see over the gate, he peers through the wire diamonds and stares at Grandpa mowing his lawn. I’m not sure how long we stand there. Not long enough for Dad to see us, but long enough for me to remember some things. I remember his first heart attack twenty years earlier when he had yet to reach forty, the bypass surgeries, more heart attacks, late nights calls to the hospital, sleepless nights, congestive heart failure, experimental procedures. After twenty years of struggle, his heart was failing. Without a new one, the doctors gave him six months at most.

Many men would have given up along the way. Not Dad. He rarely let his struggles get in the way of life. Always ready to help his family, friends and even strangers, he never acknowledged the fading strength and constant discomfort. Often I would see him slip one, two, sometimes four nitroglycerin tablets under his tongue to ease the pain caused by merely walking to the mailbox and back. I remember Christmas of 2001 when he was at his lowest point physically. I remember the look in his eyes when he was unable to hold his grandchildren in his lap, even the smallest, my son who now stood beside me watching Grandpa mow the lawn.

I remember the long awaited call that a heart had been found, the ordeal of getting to the hospital two hours away. I asked him if he was scared. Dad looked me in the eye and said he was, but he knew he was in a win-win situation. Either the surgery would be a success and he would have more time with his family or he'd be waiting on us in heaven.

I remember three nights after the surgery, when the doctors said things were looking good and I drove home to be with my wife and kids. The phone rang after I had been home for less than an hour. My mom on the phone telling me something was wrong and that the doctor said we should all get there as fast as possible.

I remember walking into the waiting room and hearing that the doctors had told my mom that the new heart wasn’t working. That they had to go back in and see if there was anything they could do. They were not confident. I remember praying for two hours before the doctor’s returned. A flabbergasted doctor trying to explain why a failing heart started working perfectly as soon as the surgery began. A doctor saying he couldn’t explain it. I remember saying that I could.

I take my son’s hand and lead him back to car, the errand that brought me here long forgotten. As we pull out of the driveway with a new memory to overshadow the rest, I say a prayer, “Dear God, thank you for letting Grandpa mow the lawn.”

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