My grandfather went to the hospital last week with a bloody nose and ended up getting quadruple bypass surgery for good measure. Before the procedure, he was horribly depressed and forgetful, and when I visited him yesterday in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, he kept saying things like, “David, why am I here? Did I have an operation?” They must have him on every narcotic pain medication known to man—as I would want should my own chest get cracked open—but I’m not sure that’s the cause of his current dementia. Once I visited him while he was caring for my grandmother in the nursing home where she eventually died, and he had an hour-long conversation with me, convinced I was someone else.

My grandfather is a strange and complicated person, and a lot of people think he is more of a lovable old codger than he actually is because he is flirtatious and has a good sense of humor. When I talk to him, however, our conversations usually revolve around the following topics:

• How lucky I have been in my life, compared to him. This is true. My grandfather is a smart man, but he never went to college or had any hereditary advantages. In his early twenties, he fought battles in the Pacific theater of World War Two, where he mistreated Japanese prisoners of war and acquired from ear-splitting cannon blasts the tinnitus that bedevils him to this day. Later, he became a painter for government buildings in Washington, D.C. and even moonlighted as a streetcar driver to support his family. He did well for himself because he was disciplined and hard working, but he also appears to resent the opportunities I have had that he has not. I am led to believe this from a number of embittered and even nasty comments he has made to me when we are alone. These are different from the nasty comments he used to make about how I wore my hair or why I had an earring, topics I learned to head off at the pass by getting up and walking out on him. That response seems inappropriate now, but am still at a loss for what rituals of gratitude he wants me to perform. I do my best to make the world a better place, but I’m not about to start sacrificing goats and sheep to appease the gods of fortune.

• How the world is so much more fucked up today than it was when he was in his prime. My grandfather seems to think everything went to pot spontaneously one day in the nineteen sixties, conveniently forgetting the evil men of his own generation (Nixon and Reagan come to mind) who carefully set the stage for our current national nightmares. I can only agree with him about the problems we face today, although this only adds fuel to the fire of his indignation.

• His hand-lettered signs. When he was very young, my grandfather became obsessed with lettering, a hobby he passed on to me and a couple of my brothers when we were growing up. When my grandmother went into the nursing facility, he spent his days taking care of her and lettering signs with all the nurses’ names. He must have done dozens of them there, and he estimates he has done another eighty for the residents and staff of his current retirement home. He speaks about them at greater and greater length every time I see him. I think they are his last pleasure in life and the one reliable distraction he has from the siren wail of his tinnitus, but wars have been started over less intricate politics than those that accompany these signs. Although he increasingly can’t remember whether I’m his grandson or his nephew or even his distant cousin, please believe that he is ready on a moment’s notice to describe every sign he has made since nineteen thirty-two, as well as the level of gratitude of the recipient and with what prominence it was hung or framed.

I have several, myself, and I treasure them.

*

Here’s what’s new on the Goblin song front. I suppose we must now call it the Goblin verse front, as someone has sent a limerick, and Goblin looked up from her bone long enough to nod her acceptance. This is from Denise:

There once was a dog, Goblin Foo,
Whose uvula danced when she pooed.
Said her daddy, “Now squiggle
And make it all wiggle,
Wear your crown proudly my Queen of Poo!”

And this is from MzOuiser, who kindly submits a song with a tune I have actually heard before (unlike my husband, I am not a theater queen!):

To the tune of Sweet Georgia Brown:

There's a new girl on the block it's Sweet Goblin Foo
When her daddy walks her out, you wish you could too
Sniffing for the perfect spot for her dainty poo
A scratch and a sqat
She's got
a treat coming too

So if you see her, tip your hat to sweet Goblin Foo
She'll growl and bark, and break your heart will sweet Goblin Foo
All the doggies wanna run with Sweet Goblin Foo
But she's daddy's own
Sweet little girl
That's right,
Sweet Goblin Foo!

Goblin is happy to discover that people not only love her but are as obsessed with her poop as she is herself. Thanks, guys! Keep ‘em coming. God knows we can use them!