In the summer of 1994, when I was twenty years old, I volunteered to go to Croatia to work with the Project for Unaccompanied Children in Exile. I had read about the brutal conflict between those who wanted to create an independent Bosnian state and those who wanted Bosnia to remain part of Yugoslavia. Each day the news ran images of people fleeing burning homes, families trapped in cities under siege, women who’d been assaulted, and children orphaned by terrible acts of violence during campaigns of ethnic cleaning. It didn’t feel like enough to sit and talk about the situation. I felt pulled to do something, to help in whatever way I could, even if that just meant bringing comfort to a handful of people.
Along with several other students, I had raised money to cover our expenses. We intended to live and work in refugee camps in Croatia to help the children and families who’d survived the ravages of the conflict.
Before I left on my trip, though, I stopped into the nursing home where my grandfather Shah lived after suffering a second debilitating stroke. Shah had always been a hero to me; his stories about boxing fueled my passion for the sport, and he always seemed so vigorous, so knowledgeable, so much larger than life.
He was also a talker, so much so that his nickname came—as family legend said—from my trying to tell him, as a kid, to “shush.”
For the last eight years of his life, after my grandmother died, my grandfather had been on his own. He’d filled his time with travel and study, and told me wonderful stories about his experiences. Shah had gone to Mexico to take a class on art and had visited the museums in Mexico City. He came to see us in St. Louis and took classes at the local community college. He always seemed to be searching, always seemed driven to explore, learn. I wanted to be like him, someone who embraced life.
At one point, after his second stroke, he had to be fed through a tube connected to his stomach because he couldn’t swallow. By then he was unable to speak. During one of our visits, he shakily scratched out a note that read, “Don’t let them starve me.”
Down but not out, like the old fighter he was.
On my last visit to see Shah, I went to the nursing home alone. I wanted a few private minutes with the man who had inspired me, even if we couldn’t really talk together.
I’d stopped on my way to buy him a tube of lip balm, knowing his lips were often dry and cracked. When I arrived, he lay in bed, looking smaller and more fragile than I’d ever seen him. His brisk vitality was gone. His face was slack and gray.
I put one hand on his shoulder, and he took my other in his, giving it a good squeeze. He had a little fight left in him still. I handed him the lip balm, and he grasped it lightly. He focused his eyes and pursed his lips. He lifted the tube to his face and tried to apply it, but the tube wavered an inch away and the balm never touched his lips.
Paralyzed by sadness, I stood there and watched him. The effort tired him, and he set his hand back down. I should have reached across, taken the lip balm from him, and helped him apply it. But I didn’t. Something held me back. Fear, probably, and inexperience with caretaking. My mind told me to reach across those few inches to help him, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I watched as he struggled.
I’ve looked back many times since that moment, always disappointed with myself. I was motivated to fly across an ocean for adventure and to do a good deed, but at the same time I was incapable of providing a simple helping hand to my own flesh and blood.
It was the last time I saw my grandfather alive.