24

On the theme of my last post, discussing my grandfather, I thought about this past 24 Hour Comics Day. In 27 hours (ah well... maybe next year) I went from, "What am I going to do?" to dusting off an aspect of a rather long story I started cobbling together in my late teens, to transforming that aspect into a 24 page exploration of human motivation & a fictionalized account of my grandfather's death.

Most of the pages amount to little more than scribbles with dialog, but it had its moments. I wanted to share one, rapidly sketched from a photo taken by my brother in my grandfather's hospital room.

I was not aware of my brother taking the photo, but he tells me that I was laughing at something my grandfather had said, which reads in the photo to be a moment of total collapse, and something entirely different from what it actually was.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Gramps

In April of 2009 my grandfather ended up in the hospital, and after three days the team of doctors, specialists, exorcists & janitors surrounding him determined that he was afflicted with being 93 years old.
A little over a month later he ended up back in the hospital, after a series of small strokes.

I spent the next several months living with & taking care of him, until his death on the morning of September 29th.

He would spend many of his waking hours working jigsaw puzzles in the dining room, and a rotating cast of weirdos, myself included, would participate in the hunt for pieces to interlock.

He would often have a bowl of snacks in there with him - Cheez-Itz being a favorite - and on one occasion he was terribly flustered, trying to find a missing piece. We looked for it in all of the boxes, on the floor, on the table, and finally, struck by a mad inspiration, I asked him, "Is it the piece you have in your mouth?"

"What?" And there it was, having been confused for a Cheez-It. "How the hell did that get there?"

This is a lengthy preamble to a painting I did of my grandfather, during that summer, using colored inks on watercolor paper. The image quality is not so hot (a quick photo taken a year-and-a-half ago), but I was just thinking of him, and wanted to put something out there for him.

I am working, slowly & carefully, on a graphic novel about the experience. Because he deserves it, and because the story deserves to be told.

It won't be done any time soon, because it deserves to be done well.