PHOTOS OF DEAF LOVE LANGUAGES - Dorothy Lennon

A week after my grandfather passed, I found myself going through a vintage, avocado-green, hard suitcase full of pictures. My eyes beamed with joy to see my father and Aunt Mary as small children; to see my grandmother as a young woman. In almost every photo, she posed like a model in the latest fashion. Her dresses were always knee length or longer—they were beautiful. And you can tell she knew it. It was the way she stared into the camera lens with her cat-eyed glasses, the way she slightly stuck one foot out to pose, the way her eggshell-colored hand rested on her hip. I knew my grandmother to be stern and direct, but the pictures proved that she was also fierce. She exuded the confidence that you find by admiring your mother getting dressed as a child. But her mother passed when she was only 8 years old. 

 My grandfather was a well-dressed, handsome young man. He looked as if he belonged in a singing group. The kind that made girls scream their heads off. The back of most of the photos were left bare. Some were labeled by city. Others were labeled by age or year. Philadelphia, 1954, Virginia, D.C., Canada, Detroit, 1959, age 23. My grandparents traveled and partied and lived their lives like any young couple. Except they weren’t just any young couple.

They were a young Black couple traveling through the South, alone and deaf. 

I recognized the young, tan faces in the photos, but I didn’t know who they were. I never knew my grandparents to travel and party. What I remember about my grandparents is the pear tree in the backyard. The small garden and the tall daisies. The grill my grandfather made on the back patio. The cantaloupe that I called orange watermelon that my grandmother would cut for me to eat on the back porch. We may not have had many words between us, but we had moments. The photos piqued my curiosity as to who my grandparents really were. 

After my grandfather’s funeral, I lay awake for days wishing I could ask what life was like traveling through the segregated south as a deaf, Black man. I wish I could ask my grandmother, were you nervous becoming a mother without having your own mother’s wisdom? I wondered if the circumstances of their lives made them be the sometimes-volatile parents my dad knew them to be. The photos proved a life outside of their home, a fun adventurous life. But what I knew of my grandparents wasn’t fun. I knew all sides of the story but theirs. I dared not bring it up. Besides, there was a language barrier that kept me from making too much conversation with them. 

When I was a little girl, I watched my father talk to his parents with his fingers. Then he would talk aloud to keep the rest of us in the conversation. Daddy was bilingual, and it amazed me. He never really taught my brothers and me to sign. I assumed it was nothing to be proud of. Perhaps it was a constant reminder of the teasing over having deaf and dumb parents. That was the term used to describe the hearing impaired. But Daddy equipped my brothers and me with the bare minimum to get us through the night if we stayed over. 

I knew how to ask for water, soda, the TV, bathroom, and to play outside. My brothers knew more. One time, I desperately needed my brother’s help. My grandmother thought she would amuse me right before bed. She pulled her dentures out and playfully opened and closed them in front of me. I had no idea what dentures were. What I saw was my grandmother taking all 32 of her teeth out, along with her gums, and holding them in her hands. I rushed out of the bathroom to the den where my brothers were.

“Tell Grandma I wanna go home.” My brothers looked confused. Grandma came out behind me. Her fingers moved swiftly explaining her joking around. My brothers laughed.

“She was just joking Dorothy,” my brother Chaud said.

“She pulled out her teeth and gums. I wanna go home,” I said as I began to cry. 

What was supposed to be a week’s stay with my bicycle, skates, hula-hoop and barbies, turned into a seven or eight hour stay. That’s right, I regrettably made my grandparents pack up all of my toys, clothes, and take me home that night.

That could have been the week the restraints of our language barrier were loosened. As time went on, I grew more intimidated by sign language. Grandma’s fingers moved so fast; I couldn’t keep up. And I focused on the size of Grandpa’s hands more than what he was saying. His hands reminded me of the Jolly Green Giant’s hands. 

When I was old enough to visit on my own, my grandparents would write on white notepads without lines. They had stacks and stacks of those around the house. My grandfather would write in complete sentences. My grandmother wrote as if she had just learned English. 

“Good. Your mother?” She would sometimes write. 

“Yes, my mother is good,” I would write back.

I recently found my grandparents’ school records, and it shows that my grandmother was born deaf. My grandfather was partially deaf by the age of two and they couldn’t determine why. I’m not sure what to believe. I found multiple birth certificates and spellings of their names. Being colored in the rural South, you were lucky if you received a birth certificate at all. 

When I visited my grandparents, I spent most of my time trying to remember signs I watched my dad do. When I couldn’t remember, my grandfather would chuckle. My father was the only one who could fluently communicate with them. But then my father died. There was no one left to translate for them. But my grandparents always had each other to talk to. But four months after my father died, my grandmother died, on my father’s birthday. My grandfather had a house full of people after the funeral and no one there to fully communicate with. My mother knew some sign language, so he mostly talked with her.

Not long after the death of my father and grandmother, I was accepted into graduate school. When I told my grandfather I was moving to New York, sadness accentuated the defined lines and strong features of his face. He almost looked like a young boy.

“I don’t want you to go,” he wrote.

“I’m sorry,” I signed. 

Grandpa swiftly walked to the back bedroom. He returned with a small white book and handed it to me. 

“Learn to sign,” he signed. “For me,” he wrote.

“Thank you,” I signed. “I will,” I wrote. 

Now, there was not a single living relative that could fully communicate with him. It never occurred to me how sad and alone he must’ve felt. 

As the years went on, my grandfather grew distant. He wouldn’t return my calls, and once, he left me outside ringing his doorbell for what felt like forever. 

Being deaf made my grandparents creative. My grandfather wired what looked like a porch light on the wall in the hallway. When someone rang the doorbell, the light blinked consistently. 

Though we lived no more than 15 minutes from them our entire lives, I could count on one hand how often we saw them in a year. So, when Grandpa didn’t answer the door that day, I didn’t think to try again for another month or so. 

When I moved to Atlanta, I stuck to calling Grandpa on his birthday and holidays. If I called more than that he wouldn’t answer. When he did answer, we talked about his constant headaches and his forgetfulness. One doctor told him that he had been suffering from grief. Even after 10 years, I could see that. He had lost both his children and his wife within a two-year span. I begged him once to slow down and limit his long-distance travel.

“I can’t,” he wrote. “I hate being in the house alone. I see my wife and children walking around.”

I understood. I had not seen them, but their presence is still strong. My aunt Mary likes to wrap her arms around me. My dad likes to put his hand on my right shoulder. The first time he did, I was at work, stressed. I almost dropped the container that held my green tea. It was strange to feel actual fingers rest on my shoulder only for no one to be physically there. But after almost 11 years, I find it comforting. When I don’t feel his hand resting on my shoulder, I worry that his spirit has moved on, and I’ll never get to feel him again. 

I still begged Grandpa to slow down at least a little. He didn’t like what I was asking him to do, so he avoided my calls again. Almost a year went by without communication. 

On April 3, 2020, he answered my call. He was in a good mood. 

“Hello! It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you,” the interpreter said in a chipper voice.

“I know I’m surprised you answered. Happy birthday!” I said.

“Thank you. Guess how old I am.”

“Uhh, 82?”

“Nope 86!”

“Wow, 86 no way.”

“Yep, and guess what I did.”

“What?”

“I bought myself a new car.”

“Let me guess—a red Buick?”

“Nope, not this time. I got a red Honda Accord.”

“Oh, wow that’s different for you.”

“I know. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to do it for my birthday.”

“Well, I’m happy for you.”

Our conversation went on with a couple of laughs and I love yous. I hadn’t heard my grandfather sound that happy in a decade. But that was at the beginning of the pandemic. Six months into the pandemic, Grandpa told me he was lonely, but that he understood that no one could come over and put him at risk. I begged him to stay in. He went out and got food every day. He said his headaches and forgetfulness had gotten worse. His health was failing. By Christmas I asked Grandpa to stop driving in his condition. I told him we would set up food delivery. Essentially, what I was asking him to do was sit in a house, alone, where he sees spirits and had no one to talk to until the unforeseeable future. His only human contact, his only way of getting sun was to go pick up takeout every day. And now, I was asking him to give that up. 

Grandpa never agreed to stop driving. He just changed the subject.

A few days before the new year, Grandpa realized his forgetfulness was becoming a problem. While paying his bills, he wrote the amount for the cable company to the electric company. He knew it had to be wrong, so he asked for help. When my niece arrived to help him, I walked her through writing a check, and then I told her to let him sign it. While on FaceTime, I asked to speak with him. Grandpa stared into the phone. His long, silver hair was covered up, his robe was tied tightly. I had never really seen him in lounge wear. Even while sitting at home alone, you could find my grandfather in a sweater or button-down shirt, dress pants, and shoes. His hair is usually combed, falling on his shoulders. Grandpa looked at me in confusion. He apologized for not knowing who I was, no matter how many times I signed my name. 

I watched helplessly as his tall frail body slumped over in exhaustion. He didn’t look good. My mother called 911 for us, but he refused to go to the hospital. 

By New Year’s Day, Grandpa seemed to be doing better. We talked a while. I begged again to let us help. He brushed it off. By the next day, my mother called to say Grandpa was in the hospital. It looked like he was just returning home from somewhere and his neighbor noticed he had collapsed in his yard. My mother and I didn’t know what decisions to make for a man we had only known on the surface. It appeared that his power of attorney for his health was me. I learned that my grandfather had congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

The doctor explained over the phone that she couldn’t predict when my grandfather would die but it wasn’t looking good. 

“My grandfather wanted to die at home,” I told the doctor. “If something happens while he’s in the hospital, revive him.” 

We decided on the DNR once he was home. My grandfather lived in North Carolina along with the rest of my family. So much fell on my mother. She went by his house two and three times a day. She cleaned and fixed him food, gave him his medicine. But Grandpa needed round the clock care. He was too weak to bathe himself, but he didn’t want my mother to do it. There wasn’t much I could physically do from Atlanta. I spent most of my time on the phone with Hospice, new interpreters, and other facilities. 

Over the next couple of weeks, Grandpa began to forget his only means of communication. He was signing things we had never seen before. He wasn’t saying anything. It frustrated him that we couldn’t understand him, and his frustration intimidated my mother. He once forgot that he was deaf and frantically pointed to his ears, trying to explain that he couldn’t hear anything. My mother reminded him that he was deaf and had been for years. Then, Grandpa grew too weak to hold up his hands to sign. He wanted to speak but couldn’t; wanting to tell my mother something. The last thing he was able to sign was, “Am I going to die?” 

“Yes,” my mother told him. He wanted to be alone after that, I assume to make peace with this confirmation.

On January 29, 2021, my grandfather was gone. Again, my mother had awakened to a man named Harvey dead in the bed, in her room almost 11 years apart. 

I cried knowing that he was the last of that side of my immediate family. I cried wishing I had used our time wisely. I cried knowing I would never get answers to things only family knew; Aunt Mary, Harvey Jr., Grandma Gay, and now Grandpa Harvey Sr. were all gone.

Now, I sort through pictures and imagine their stories. The good stories. I get to look into my father’s three-year-old eyes and see there was a beautiful life before the volatile one. I imagine he, along with the rest of them, are living a beautiful afterlife of peace, forgiveness, and understanding. I imagine them living with a new, welcoming love that is always there to greet them.

Dorothy Lennon is a North Carolina native residing in Atlanta, GA. She teaches Introduction to Theatre at Georgia State Perimeter College. You can find more of her writing on Medium @DorothyLennon.

*Photo depicts Lennon’s grandparents.