Descriptive Essay

My Grandfather

              Pushing the wheelchair down the steep walkway while trying to keep it steady, the veins of my arms appeared.  I could feel and hear the cold winter breeze slapping my face. I couldn’t stop moving because of the low temperature there. With a heavy brown coat and two shirts on me, my body was steaming. But my hands and my face were frozen because they were not covered. I couldn’t cover my face, I needed to breathe. The air was very dry, and my tongue and throat got dry very fast when I opened my mouth. On the wheelchair, the person who was sitting on it was my grandfather. I was pushing him down to the restaurant just a stone’s throw away from the apartment.

              The apartment was very old. My grandparents had been living there since my mom was just a child. This was Hong Kong, which was my mom’s hometown. The surrounding area of the apartment was quite clean and had a lot of trees. The air was quite fresh, and I could smell the grass. The apartment was full of old folks. They lived there happily because they were friends for a long time. They talked, exercised, and played chess together. Their houses were very old-styled, and I could see them in the eighties’ dramas. The old folks were so used to their lives there, and they enjoyed it. They had a lot of friends there, and this could explain why they didn’t want to move to the city with skyscrapers and modern life.

              While I was pushing the wheelchair, I could hear the gasping for air my grandfather did. He had a lung surgery a month ago, and his lungs were too weak to respire as easily; therefore, he had trouble breathing. Maybe he had used to the weather there, he wore not as thick as I did. That was a cloudy day, and the sunshine was blocked by the clouds. I barely felt the heat. With two old cotton-made long-sleeved shirts and a flat cap, he just sat on the wheelchair and was not feeling cold. He still had a pair of eyes full of energy and joy. Maybe he was happy because my whole family went back to visit him. I thought every grandparent must be happy when they saw their children or grandchildren.

              My grandfather was very weak after the surgery, and the shapes of his bones were visible. He was very thin and didn’t have appetite to eat. We always encouraged him to eat more, though. Most of his teeth had gone and caused him to have a little difficulty to speak and eat. When he spoke, his lips would get into his mouth like mumbling. I could see that he was speaking with his throat, and the pitch was very low. While he was eating, he needed to use his tongue to soften the food, and he tried to use the remaining teeth to chew.

              Looking at his pair of wrinkled rough hands, it showed that how hard he was working while he was young. He was working in a grocery store, and he needed to move and deliver heavy goods around. He was not a very strong man, but he needed to work hard to earn money for a big family of eight. I knew he must be a responsible guy, for sure. He had wrinkles and age spots on his face. He was not bald. He had some hair but not thick and was almost wholly white. He always had a kind and gentle look, and I heard my mom said that he was a nice-looking guy when he was young. I could see those old photos in his apartment, and they were either black and white or old colored photos. He looked a lot like my mom’s younger brother.

              There were many red lumps on his joints because of his high uric acid and rheumatoid, a kind of disease attacking his joints. The lumps were big and mostly seen on his fingers, toes, and ankles. Some of them were burst, and I could see the clotted blood on them. They looked like little volcanoes that would erupt. He had several toes with blood on their nails. A funny thing was, my five year old niece, asked why my grandfather painted his nails red. Everyone laughed, and she still didn’t get it. She was too young. My grandfather was a smoker, and he drank a lot. That might be the reason why he had got lung cancer. We had been advising him not to smoke and drink, but he just couldn’t stop. However, after he had known he had the cancer, he quitted smoking and drinking right away.

              For a beginner at pushing the wheelchair like me, my mom would probably be worrying whether I would lose control or not. That was my first time to push my grandfather’s wheelchair. I tried my best to keep it steady. I grabbed the handles hardly, and I made it to the end. My mom wanted to push it, but I insisted to do so. It was thought to be fun, but I came to realize that I needed to think about how the person sitting on it felt. Looking at my grandfather’s back, I learned how to respect the person sitting on it. I felt proud to have a calm and gentle grandfather, and pushing my grandfather along the walkway gave me a sense of satisfaction and responsibility. It might be nothing for other people. But for me, a short distance of pushing along the walkway had meant a lot.