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In the room at the Alto

How many times that night did Grandpa pound on the door?  Were my commands to “Go back to bed” real or dreamt?  My fatigued body could not peel the layers of sleep and wake apart, and even now I am not sure how many chances I had that night to avert the disaster.

At the trailhead of the Sugarlands Nature Trail

At 8 AM the kids roused, and Rick jumped into the shower.  I knocked on the adjoining door to awaken Grandpa, but he didn’t answer.  I pushed the door open with my shoulder, exposing the whole room, and saw he wasn’t there.

When it’s written in sappy novels, “Her heart was in her throat,” you condemn the phrase as cliché.  But, truly, my heart was in my throat as I raced around the room looking for him, checking to confirm the obvious.  The only evidence of Grandpa was his forgotten hearing aid on the nightstand.  I ran to the outer door, which just a few hours ago I had shut, and threw it open, fearing what I would see—or not see.  The car was gone.

“Oh, my God, he can’t even find the bathroom!” This became a chant that I repeated, as if a mantra, hundreds of times that awful day.

Grandpa with Allison in 1981

Not only the car was gone, but also our suitcases and travelers’ cheques (the common tourist currency in 1987) which had been packed the night before.  Rick tore through the yellow pages for car rental agencies and started calling from them from our room phone.  (This was long before the advent of laptops and cell phones.)

Meanwhile, I questioned the maid who said she was sure the car was not there when she started her 7AM shift.

The getaway car

There were no rental agencies in Gatlinburg, so my husband called nearby Pigeon Forge.  He was having little luck, as this was Memorial Day weekend.  He finally found one company that agreed to drive a car from Pigeon Forge to our Gatlinburg motel.  Rick planned to head immediately for Cincinnati solo, looking for Grandpa, and he’d drop the driver back off in Pigeon Forge on his way by.

As soon as Rick got off the phone, I started my calls to highway patrols.  I called Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio.  In total horror, I realized that Grandpa might have taken off over the mountains; I then called Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida.

The rental car arrived, and Rick headed toward Cincinnati.  We knew all of Grandpa’s favorite haunts on the way home.  Maybe he’d be at Lamb’s just eating a hearty breakfast where he and Grandma had eaten twice a year for maybe fifty years.  Maybe he had stopped at his favorite gas station, where he had insisted on filling his almost-full tank on the way home every time we traveled together.  Rick promised to stop at every rest area and call with updates.

While Rick was gone, I was drowning in panic.  I had no emotional energy to expend on the kids.  The girls shot surprised glances at each other when I waved my permission for them to swim without supervision.

The swingset at the Alto Motel

I kept in constant contact with the manager who had known my grandfather for twenty years.  I told him about the Tennessee State patrolman’s reaction to my phone call.  “Ma’am,” the patrolman drawled condescendingly, “we can’t just pull over your grandpa because you say so.  We can only stop him if he’s doing something wrong.”  I shouted, “If you find him, I guarantee he’ll be doing something wrong!” Good God, man, he can’t find the bathroom in a motel room!

Grandpa was a pretty unassuming man, but I have to tell you, he was pretty well connected with the upper echelons of Gatlinburg Power.  He knew Hattie Ogle McGiffin, the Queen Mother of Gatlinburg, the woman whose family had resided in this valley long before it became a tourist mecca.  Thanks to the geographical location of her birth and a burgeoning travel industry, she became one of the well-heeled hill folk of the town.  Grandpa had known Hattie for six decades, long before either was rich, long before either was old.  Grandpa had always boasted of his connections in the same way he had bragged that Ronald Reagan had sent him a card on his eightieth birthday.  I admit I once thought Grandpa inflated his and Hattie’s prestige in this town, but I was dead wrong.

The current manager of the motel was Hattie’s grandson.  He called Hattie and described “Mr. Buck’s little problem.”  Mere moments later, I saw a half dozen Gatlinburg cruisers racing down Airport Road, lights twirling, sirens shrieking.  They were out to save Gatlinburg’s oldest player.  While the state patrols were reluctant to search for Grandpa at my behest, they were suddenly enthusiastic about this “Where’s Waldo” game.

The day plodded by.  Rick stopped at payphones as often as he could to call.  We’d have “married” conversations.

“Did you . . .”

The birthday cake I made Grandpa for his 80th birthday in 1986

“No, but  . . .”

“You’ll keep . . .”

Yeah, but you  . . .”

“I will.”

“I love . . .”

“Me, too.”

Later, once Rick reached the Kentucky border, he called to tell me he was turning around and coming to pick us up in Gatlinburg.  “If he got this far, he’ll make it home.”

Shortly after that, the call finally came.  The motel manager said soberly, “They picked him up.  He was getting on a six lane highway.” His tone was guarded.

“Is he okay?” I asked suspiciously.

“He’s fine.”  The man shared a knowing look with his wife. “But he was going the wrong way.”

Oh my God!  He killed someone?”

“Now, we don’t know that.  They’re calling it a hit and run.  The car’s pretty banged up, and they don’t know how it happened.  We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Oh, my God.  Oh, my God.”  I crumpled to the floor of the lobby, sobbing.

When Rick returned hours later, we packed the kids in the rental car, drove to Pigeon Forge, picked up a driver from the car rental agency, and headed for the Tennessee jail where Grandpa was being held.  As soon as we turned into the parking lot, we saw Grandpa’s big old Buick.  One bumper was dented and the passenger side was bashed in.  My eyes immediately focused on the red splotches on the front fender and windshield.  I didn’t mention them.    Saying the words out loud would validate my suspicions.

We climbed the creaking stairs of the jail, and there was Grandpa, sitting in a scarred wood desk chair, his face contorted.  God love him, I thought, then, I could kill you for scaring me!  He was agitated, confused.  “You know this is some government plot,” he hissed furtively.  “A real scam.”  The stress had activated the paranoia and hallucinations characteristic of Alzheimer’s.

The officer escorted the five of us out to the car and handed us the keys.  He first pointed to the dents, then to the red splotches.  “Those damned cicadas sure do make a mess on everything,” he commented casually.  Cicadas!  For the first time that day, I laughed out loud.  There has never been a clearer illustration of my characteristic pessimism.

The drive home was almost unbearable.  The kids, craving deserved attention, begged for storytelling, camp songs, and card games.  Grandpa muttered about imagined misdeeds at the jail.  Rick twisted the radio dial and tried to draw Grandpa into a baseball game broadcast.  My Rick, who never complained that day, who rarely complains, who is my hero, just drove.  It was his job, and he completed it with quiet, steady resolve.  I was totally spent.  I surrendered all responsibility and slept fitfully.

How had Grandpa, who struggled to unlock the car door, driven—in the right direction—for over one hundred miles?  Was this the last wish of a condemned prisoner who was locked up inside tangles, knots, and dead ends of brain matter?  The prisoner’s last cigarette, the granted steak dinner?  Did he relish his joy ride?  Was Grandpa like a car with a knock in the engine that magically and inexplicably worked itself out for a short while, only to return again?

We often anticipate and remember our “firsts”:  first kiss, first time nursing a baby, first time buying a house.  But often, more significant are our “lasts”:  the last Christmas of suspended disbelief, the last goodbye kiss, the last new car.  This was the last trip with Grandpa, and our family would never forget it.

I’ve been telling a love story, certainly a story of love for my Grandpa, but also a story about how I fell in love with my husband all over again that day for his kindness, optimism, resourcefulness, intelligence, but most of all, for his acceptance of the hand that is dealt.  And while it is the story of a last trip, it is also a story of a first—the first time I realized what should have been so obvious: the gentle qualities that I loved in Grandpa Gil were also a part of Rick.

*Grandpa died the following February, 1988.

CLICK HERE to see a video that shows how Alzheimer’s Disease affects the brain.