I call my grandfather every week and this past weekend, for the first time ever, he called me. It was almost surreal seeing his name appear on my phone’s caller ID. It’s never happened before. I thought something had to be wrong.
Anyway, he was doing alright. He spent the next 30 minutes asking me if I was able to photograph about 300 film negatives that he has and would like “blown up.”
As any grandparent does, he insisted on paying me and my stay-broke-at-all-costs approach had me, naturally, refusing to take payment.
We met in the middle and he agreed to buy my children a few gifts as payment. See, there are win-win situations.
He told me how much he missed baseball, how he can’t visit my grandmother (who is currently in a nursing home/rehabilitation center dealing with a few medical issues), how he’s getting some reading done, and he was very impressed by the capability of the internet’s ability to host a multi-camera zoom video call between a bunch of the family members.
He’s lives in New York, which, at the moment, is the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in America so he’s stuck at home all day and his human interaction is when people drop off his groceries.
I learn something new every time we talk and this time I learned that the few inconveniences that I have are small next to his empty house, inability to drive or get out, and being apart from his wife who is at high risk.
Despite all that, he sounded better than ever.