Lighthouses

I sent my grandfather into the light while smoking a cigarette with him.

The two of us never had much to say to one another in life– he tickled the skin on my face with his whiskers when I was a child and held me down and until I cried ‘uncle’ while growing up.

Lots of other grandchildren came along as life went on. I watched him play grandfather with them. I didn’t get all the attention like back in the days when there were only two of us grand kids. There were hundreds of us little rug rats on the day he passed away.

When he reached the end of his life’s line and came home from the hospital for the last time he sat at his favorite window in the kitchen with a bored look in his eyes. He hadn’t had a cigarette in days and wanted one badly.

For as long as I can remember my grandfather always had a Lucky Strike in his hand and a loving look on his face.

Everyone else was strong enough to make him stop smoking, but I smoked too and knew exactly the pain he was feeling.

His bruised murky skin showed lily pads of blood beneath, evidence of a life long addiction that had secretly offered him so much inner joy in all his days but a habit that cut the years short.

He looked like a frog wanting to catch a fly with his tongue when I came to visit him for the last time.

He knew I smoked and I knew that I didn’t want him to tickle me until I couldn’t breathe with his whiskers.

Who was I to tell him "No, you can’t have one of my cigarettes, it’s bad for you"?

Grandma couldn’t take the constant pleading for another smoke and she loved him too much to allow death to come at him again. But when the queer grandchild came back to visit again– the one who always told the family to mind their own fucking business and "I’ll do what ever I want to ‘ruin’ my life," grandpa felt a breath of fresh air again and removed his oxygen mask to say hello to me.

"I’m going for a walk, who wants to come along?" asked grandma with a fearful glare in here eye. Everyone put on their jackets and headed down to the crick.

"I guess I’ll stay here with Pap, pap," I offered.

"Charlie, can I have a cigarette?" He pleaded.

I pulled out my pack of Newport’s and replied "Sure, but these are menthol’s".

"I have my own-- they’re in the kitchen cabinet but your grandmother will not give me one."

"Sure Pap Pap, but you can reach it."

"I know, but I’m afraid."

"Afraid of what? Grandma yelling at you?"

"No, but please just get me a cigarette."

I pulled open the kitchen cabinet and wondered what magical powers I possessed that made it okay for me to light one up my fading father.

We inhaled simultaneously and felt that initial hit of pure inner peace.

"I don’t even know why I’m smoking it– I don’t really enjoy it or want it."

"I feel the same way. I wish I had never started."

"What do you think happens on the other side?" he asked me.

I stood there and thought long and hard about what I wanted to say to him.


Three weeks prior, my lover had died and I rushed home for respite only to find my grandfather heading into the light as well.

I walked into his hospital room and he called me "Ryan", the name of his favorite grandchild.

I felt honored.
Grandma was in tears and I suggested that we pray together.

Grandma, not the church going type, looked at me as if I knew Jesus personally.

"What would you like us to pray for Grandma?" I asked.

"I want him back home for our wedding anniversary, then I can let him go."

So we asked for it and our prayers were answered a few days later.

We returned to the hospital the following morning and my grandfather was somewhat better following a procedure he had undergone the previous night.

"I met Shawn last night. He said to tell you hello!"

It went right over everyone’s head but mine.

"He’s just a little delirious from the morphine," nurses assured. We all looked at each other in wonder.


I immediately returned home to New York to try and shake it all off.

My recently deceased lover’s name is Shawn.


Three weeks later, wore out from pure sadness and grief, I went home again, just to escape the madness of city life and the ghost of Shawn.

I hadn’t been home in years and everyone liked it that way. I lived my gay lifestyle out of sight and mind and it suited everyone’s schedule. Two trips home in the same year was unusual for me,

I thought I had written the place off as lost and homophobic.

We went to visit grandpa at home on my second trip back to the country of Appalachia.

Apparently the prayer worked and grandma and everyone else go their wish. He was released from the hospital and sent home.

"What’s it all about, what’s it all for?" he asked as his constant craving for calmness subsided after the nicotine took effect– as if I may know something about the light and how he can be sure he ends up in it.

"There is no secret to it. It’s all about how you lived your life."

"I think you are right!" he said while smiling warmly at me.

"I worry about your grandmother and don’t want to leave her yet."

"She will be fine. She has lots of family who will take care of her. Besides, you don’t really leave us," I assured.

"Do you know I can hardly see any more. Everything is closing in like a fog on a pond."

"Then let go and tell them you are with Shawn and I."

A few days later he walked into the light.

He sits in his favorite window watching the rest of us tickle each other with our whiskers.

I do too, and wonder why nobody else sees the fog closing in.