Member-only story
Flip the Script: Communal Living
Day Seventy-two
Communal Living
“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” ~Ruth Reichl
When I was thirteen years old, my great-grandfather Hawkins came to live with us for a few weeks. My mother didn’t want Hawkins there and understandably, this was my father’s grandfather and my father traveled for work and wasn’t really around to help with his care. My mother cooked the meals, ran the household and was raising me and my two siblings. There was also a renovation project happening in the house and there was talk of us moving from Minnesota to Pennsylvania which would all be added to my mother’s daily life tasks.
Hawkins really needed the kind of care an elder receives in assisted living and my mother wasn’t available for that. I remember my father and Hawkins playing cards in the finished basement that was also where the guest room, my bedroom, the pool table, and television were located. I remember playing cards, alcohol, and cigarettes. After a few weeks, he was relocated to California near where his daughter, my grandmother, lived, and he lived in an assisted living facility for a few more years.
Hawkins had abandoned his family during the early 1930’s and how he came to reunite with the family is unclear. It was an untold story like many of the…
