The Ways In Which Our Words Outlive Us

When my grandfather was eighteen or so, he was stationed in India during World War II. What he did there or what he thought about the experience had always been such a mystery to me. He passed away when I was young, and no one else spoke much about it.

My grandmother died a couple of weeks ago, and as we resigned ourselves to the task of going through drawers, shoeboxes, and musty footlockers long shut, we began to glimpse these two people who, to us, had more often been "Grandma and Grandpa" than Dorothy and Howard.

In our shifting, we found my grandfather's dogtags, newspaper clippings, discharge papers, and a curious one page narrative that he had typed. There were letters that had been typed over to change spelling--mostly "a" became "e." He had misspellings. He used the old method of typing "x" over lines he apparently felt failed to capture his meaning.

Here is what he wrote from the perspective of a young man from New England in 1940's India. Some of his observations seem rooted in that historical context. Others do offer a peek into the person my grandfather was.

"Todi"

By

Howard Rudd White

In the ancient, tired land of India, a great many souls are crowded together; not in the sense of living close together, but of living with so many other people in the same economical, social, and religious status. The poor are to be found everywhere. In every nook and corner of the country, a poor man is begging, always begging for anything. He is probably unable to work in the rice fields or the hemp mills because of sickness or age. His sons are working; dawn to dark, standing in stagnant, stinking water, tending rice, watching for the ever present snake, or working in long line in a rotting hemp mill. At the holiday festivals, they all pray to their God of Gods to make them happy by lifting age-old burdens from shoulders and hearts. Even in the height of the celebration when eyes are blurred and minds are filled with religious passion for Siva, hearts pump against hollow chests and stomachs.

Todi had been living in this world about sixteen years when our paths met. How he had survived disease and death that boost infant mortality rates in India is a mystery. Two or three of his brothers had been more fortunate. Cholera had singled them out when they were born, and they were burned on the crude wooden pyre near the holy Hooghly River. He was born in the country and lived in the country. Calcutta, mecca of the multitudes, was actually only ninety miles away, but to Todi, it might well be an eternity, for the few annas he received as payment for endless days in the rice fields were earmarked for food, just enough food to tantalize a starving hunger.

Our most important task in India, at Kandenpur actually, consisted of the storage and maintenance of high explosives for aircraft. Kandenpur, a large, barren American airbase was a starting point for air transports flying over the hump of China carrying heavy loads of bombs, shells, and all manner of aircraft artillery. These necessary components for aerial warfare were kept in one big “Ammunition Area” located just within the confines of Kandenpur Airbase. Our basha, with its thatched roof, alive with bugs, sat with its back watching this “area,” while the front served as a sentinel for the main base road and the roadway to the ammo dump. Below us, on the other side of the road to the dump, was a large tract, used for grazing land for the sacred cows and bulls. Many evenings our entertainment consisted of sitting complacently on our basha porch watching two rival bulls in the field below, fighting, not because they enjoyed fighting, but because the open, running sores on their backs and legs covered with black flies, drove them insane. Upstairs, vile vultures, impartial as to the outcome, sailed around and waited…………………..

The persistent enemy, Time, sauntered on, day after day, meaning only hot sun, sand, letters (sometimes), and French toast. Our first Indian “Fukaru” had proved useless; we were making our own beds, shining shoes, cleaning up, etc., and not liking it. There were three of us, and a great many times when it was unbearably hot, or something had gone wrong, there were three too many in the narrow confines of our little “home.” We unanimously decided, strangely enough, to ask the local Indian foreman to find us a good boy who would at least steal without immediately bringing it to our attention. The baboo foreman was all smiles. “Yes, sahib, yes, sahib, yes, sahib.” “Oh, very good man for you, sahib.” “The best for you, master.” “This man, very good man.” “Okay, master?” We said, “Okay,” and received one Todi Nokarajaha, Hindu, for forty five rupees a month, part of which went to Anthony, the foreman. Todi had to pay him back for the privilege of having Anthony get him the job with the white masters. He stood, now, behind Anthony, grinning, eyes sparkling, saluting each of us. “Salam, sahib,” he said to each of us. In that simple way, Todi came to “take care of us,” and to be kidded and also to teach us a bit about this heathen, sick, and strange land, a land he both hated and loved.

The Early Mourning

The most important thing my Grandmother White taught me—she never spoke in words.

If a person had put a glass in front of my grandmother and asked her if it was half-full or half-empty, I think she would've been too preoccupied by the fact that the glass was dirty and would have to be washed to answer the question.

To understand what she taught me, it's important to explain who she was and who she wasn't.

She wasn’t the stereotypical grandmother who baked cookies, made you cocoa, smiled sweetly and gave you big hugs. She didn’t wear button down sweaters, or floral print dresses. She wasn’t one to speak about feelings.

To describe my grandmother in one word, I would have to choose: pragmatic. She was a doer, not one to ruminate and spend hours in intellectual study. In her philosophy, you did things for the people you loved—words just got in the way of actions.

People often use the expression “words fail me.” My grandmother tended to “fail words.” She rarely could pick a good one and her blunt honesty could sometimes border on cruel. She never hesitated to tell me or my cousin when we had put on weight.

She assessed my backside one time, telling me, “You’re getting kind of a wide load, kid.”

But, I just think she didn’t know how to express herself. If she loved you, then she would criticize you because she wanted to help you be “better.” She was probably the harshest on the people she cared about the most.

When I finally received my first Master’s degree, I jokingly told my family one Easter that they would have to refer to me as “Master Sarah” from now on. My grandmother, brushing past me in the kitchen, told me that she wasn’t “impressed by titles.” That was the most she really said about my academic accomplishments. And, off she went to set the dinner table and put the meal of ham, mashed potatoes, and green beans on the hot pads she had crocheted.

I found out—though definitely not through her—that she was going around bragging about me, but she would never have let me know this.

One instance that defined my grandmother for me as a child was when she took my older brother Matt and I out to Big Boy for dinner. I don’t remember why she did. Perhaps it was a birthday. Perhaps she thought my parents should have a night to themselves.

In any event, the three of us sat down and ate our chicken strips, burgers, and French fries. My grandmother had ordered soup, and when the waitress brought it, some of the soup spilled over the side and onto the table.

When it came time to pay, we went up to the cashier, who asked us if we had enjoyed our meal. Now, my parents are not assertive. In the past, when dining with my parents, the response was automatic—“Yes, fine.”

Not with my grandmother.

“Well,” she huffed with a jerk of her head. “I don’t appreciate having soup slopped all over me.”
My brother and I stood aghast. We did not realize that you could say things like that.

She was also one of the first people I ever heard swear. She was telling some story about work, and she pursed her lips and cocked her one eyebrow (her signature mannerism for irritation), and remarked, “Wouldn’t he just shit a brick?”

Again, we sat there aghast. Did our grandma just say, “shit”? Could people talk that way?

She was fiercely independent, a trait I supposedly inherited. For many in the family, they claim that I am my grandmother’s granddaughter—at least in terms of spiritedness. We were different personalities, inhabiting different parts of our brain. But, we shared a spirit of independence that is palpable.

The one thing my grandmother taught me—she never put into words. As a younger woman, my grandmother was highly critical, judgmental, and no one would’ve ever accused her of being overly compassionate. She worked in a bank for years, rising through the ranks to Vice President. She used to terrorize the tellers—sort of a female Ebenezer Scrooge at times. There was no sympathy for sick days, personal days, or mistakes.

In her last few years, however, my grandmother mellowed. She worked as a volunteer at the local hospital—one of the “Gray Ladies” who volunteered in the gift shop and took flowers to the patients’ rooms. She spoke more kindly about people who were going through difficult times.

She would shrug things off and sigh, “Such is life, I guess.”

She taught me that the things that seem so important to me now won’t mean a thing when I am older. People are what are important then. When you asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she always said, “For you to come visit more.”

Dorothy Alice White had her faults, and she wore them like old battle scars from her younger years. Life is worth the living, she taught me. Never give up. Change what you can and realize the things that you can’t.

My grandmother suffered a massive stroke last week. She has not fully awakened. The decision was made this last weekend to forgo the feeding tube and simply allow her to drift off into that final peace. As of when I write this, she is still asleep, her mind gone, my grandmother gone, but that strong body of hers still clings so tenaciously to life.

The last time I saw her, probably the last time I will ever see her, she was lying in a hospital bed, a pink and red afghan across her frail body--knitted by a volunteer "Gray Lady."

With one last squeeze to her hand, I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Her blue eyes opened and seemed to focus on my face for just a second before she slipped back into sleep.

Then, and even now, I can hear what she would tell me:

Well, such is life.

And she would shrug her shoulders and give me that tilted smile of hers, as if to say that things are going to happen in life that you can never control, and that's okay. Things will work out the way they are meant to.

She never seemed to have the right words, but she always knew just what to do. Perhaps this is why I will always remember that phrase of hers. Finally, in the end, she had the words to express that sometimes "doing" means stepping back and allowing things to happen.

Someday, I hope I can be as eloquent.