Grandpa

A friend's Grandfather died today. A man I never met, but through my friend, knew he must have been an amazing person that without, the world is a little less of a beautiful place. It is so hard to let go of that person who is your history and who for so long was your future. My heart goes out to one of the most caring people I know, it is so sad to know that he experiencing such a deep personal loss.

My Grandpa died unexpectedly the weekend before I started my first teaching job. He had been my absolute favorite, favorite. I had also always been his. Every summer he had watched me trap bugs, look for bunny holes, hide in the "woods" behind the house, and then at night, after being forced to take a bath I would watch the Cubs play on TV with he and my Grandma. As I got older, every August I would make the trip down to trim his front yard bushes and work in his garden. He called me his "favorite little boy", because he said he often didn't really know if I was a girl with how "tough" I was.

I took the second day of school off to go to the funeral and wrote the following in my head on the drive down, which was then read the next day at the funeral. I was nervous about writing something like this, but I am so glad I did because to this day it is a lasting glimpse of how I remembered him and what his loss felt like at the moment it hit me.

There'’s a saying that goes, “when an old person dies, a library is lost.” Grandpa was
always a source of much information and advice to those around him. As we grew we began
to see the true value of what he had to offer.

As young children, we saw Grandpa as someone you didn'’t dare cross. Although he never
punished us, his gruffness seemed to promise a much worse fate. Grandpa was a man who
listened religiously to the stock quotes on the radio, who played eighteen holes of golf,
and who rode his stationary bike for miles.

As we grew up, Grandpa became less mysterious and much more real to us. He began to
express his love for the family that surrounded him. He was the man who sat outside at
dusk, who walked around the yard and watered his flowers, and who made neat inventions in
the backyard. Grandpa seemed to have an infinite amount of knowledge about many
different things. We began to understand what a unique and interesting person we had for
a grandfather.

As we got older, Grandpa offered stories of his life and we began to see him as someone
who was once young himself. Sitting at the kitchen table, watching him play cards or
just talking to him, was no longer a chore, but a special time. He wasn’'t moving so fast
anymore, but he still always had his two cents to contribute to just about any
conversation. He knew and could tell you exactly what he thought was right and wrong.

As life began to speed up even more for us, a chance to sit at the kitchen table became
even more valuable. Even though Grandpa still made his daily trip to the Post Office, it
became harder for him to make it to the bank or the coffee shop. Although he was a man
of the twenty-first century, now playing solitaire on the computer and checking his
email, he was taking life more slowly. Now when we left there were always hugs and
kisses- a side we hadn'’t seen as kids. He also began to offer more jokes and the much
appreciated “"beer money"”.

Most recently, Grandpa had become someone with a lively engine but a broken down body-
he was a young man in an old man'’s shell. He was never one to be too sentimental and
believed that when you were done, you were done. He had seen many seasons pass from the
kitchen window at 915 Brinton Avenue and was ready to move on to where no one could take
away his damn driver’s license. Grandpa left us with many reminders. One of the most
important being: to enjoy your life and to accept when you’'ve played your last card .