One More Banana Split
In the last months of his life, my grandpa had taken to calling me almost every day. I always answered immediately. I wanted to be able to help him if he needed something, even if that something was just entertainment.
It didn’t take me long to realize the phone works both ways, and we both had something to offer one another. At the time, I was working nights and weekends, and one of the things my grandpa and I had in common — besides our shared love of baseball and ice cream — was that we wanted someone to talk to on weekday afternoons.
We got into a rhythm of talking daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Usually, he would start our conversations by asking, “What’s new and exciting?”
Once in a while, I did have something new and exciting. My conversation starters were often about the Red Sox, and to my dismay, he was a Yankees fan despite being born in Manchester, England, and living in Rhode Island ever since he immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He was always quick to return any snark toward his team right back to me.
Sometimes, I wouldn’t have anything new or exciting, so I’d tell him what I ate for lunch. He always found a way to make our talks interesting, even when it was about something as mundane as that. As his health continued to decline, I cherished every conversation.
One of our last phone calls was on August
6 — his birthday. Several days before, he had tested positive for COVID-19 and landed in the hospital in isolation. When one of my frantic calls finally connected, he sounded tired. He told me he didn’t feel like celebrating, that he’d had enough and he felt like he was done.
Suddenly, it wasn’t August 2022, but 20 years earlier: My grandparents had driven me to the hospital in Boston to meet my newborn brother for the first time, and my cousins and I sat in the back seat of their car making animal noises the whole ride, much to my grandparents’ annoyance.
It was summer 2014, and my grandpa and I were sharing a banana split at one of my favorite ice cream spots — something we always talked about doing again, but never did.
And then there were scenes from the final summer spent with him, replaying over and over in my head: He was there cheering on the sidelines of my cousin’s high school lacrosse game, despite not grasping the rules. He was sitting in the sun, listening to Frank Sinatra and telling stories. Some may have been far-fetched, but the record shows Grandpa really did outscore everyone in his bowling league in 1957 when he rolled 174 in a single game. (We still have his award to prove it.)
He was in the passenger seat of the car as we broke him out of his assisted living facility for countless ice cream trips, lunches and dinners, and one last ride to Narragansett Town Beach. We packed so much into that summer, knowing that the next year our weekends would feel so much emptier.
I pictured my grandpa lying in that hospital bed, and I saw him so clearly not only as my grandfather, but as a husband, a father, and a friend whose greatest joy was being with those he held closest. I saw a life that had been so complete that the next “new and exciting” thing was whatever came next.
My grandpa, Howard M. Backner — husband to Joan, father of three and grandfather to seven — died August 16, 2022, 10 days after his 88th birthday.
In the year since, I’ve continued to be on the lookout for the new and exciting, especially the little things that he would have loved to hear about: a day spent with family or friends, black raspberry ice cream, or a Red Sox-Yankees game — regardless of the result.