question of morality

My grandfather is dying.  Well, let me back up.  A month ago he called me because he was sick, he needed to get some tests run.  He thought it was a hernia; his body was ‘leaking’ blood somewhere.  He had some test run and they told him he had esophageal cancer.  He had more test run to see how far along the cancer was to determine his next steps.  He found out the cancer was not just in his esophagus, but in his lungs, lymph nodes and bones.  It was decided that he’s go through two rounds of chemotherapy to see how or if he responded.  He didn’t.  The doctors are making him ‘comfortable,’ he doesn’t have long to live.  All with-in the span of one month.

I have a morality issue.  I <heart> my grandfather.  Okay, I admit it, I love him.  He’s a good man, I am sad that he is passing.  He’s only in his mid-sixties.  Young.  I will miss him. 

But.  The only times he’s attempted to establish a relationship with me has been when he thought he was dying.  A few years ago he had major heart surgery and for a couple months post-operation, he called.  The brush with his own mortality made him want to re-connect.  We had forced conversations about baseball and weather.  It’s difficult creating a grandfather/granddaughter relationship via phone after over a decade of no communication when you live twenty five hundred miles apart.  And again a month ago.  He had called me a few times, left voice messages and I finally remembered to call him back the day before his doctor’s appointment.  The first one, when he found out he had esophageal cancer. 

In my defense, I hate the phone, hate talking on it, hate getting phone calls, hate getting voice messages, hate checking voice messages, hate returning phone calls, so I put it off until the last possible moment, and his phone number wasn’t in my cell phone so it was an unknown number.  Excuses, excuses.

And now, via email, I find out he didn’t respond to the chemo and he’s has “a short amount of time left,” verbatim from my Ma’s email to me.  She did call me yesterday, but refer to the previous paragraph.  Short amount of time.  My morality issue is: visit him prior to passing or after his passing or neither.  Yes, ‘neither’ is an option in my book.  While I had spent a few summers with him, he hasn’t attempted to pursue a relationship with me, or my brother.  And he DID manage to pursue a relationship with his other grandchildren, even so much as putting them through college.  Without sounding whiny, I didn’t get birthday/Christmas/Halloween cards/phone calls/smoke signals from him.  What is my obligation?

I don’t hold the above against him.  My family is not a close-knit family; we all have a cool indifference to each other.  A sort of backwards family approach.  I hate (who doesn’t?) and don’t agree with the idea of a funeral as honoring the deceased, I also don’t necessarily want the last memories of my grandfather to be those of him as a shell of himself, in extreme pain.  But if I bore children and was very nonchalant about my children’s children, I wouldn’t expect them to visit me prior to my passing, and I don’t want a funeral, so I wouldn’t expect them to attend that either.  The logical alternative would be to not attend his funeral nor to see him now.  And that could leave me looking like the cold-hearted daughter/granddaughter/great-granddaughter to those still remaining, a title I think I already, pretty much have secured.