Remembering Grandpa

Grandpa, when you were on your way out last week, when your breathing had stopped but your heart was still beating, slower and slower, I wondered if I felt you, hovering over us. I looked up, near the ceiling, and of course saw nothing but the edges of the walls, the inside of a box that contained our family in a huddle around you. But it seemed to me that you were already gone from the shell on the bed and yet had not quite been whisked away, that you paused for a few minutes to watch us there. I could sense your concern for us, especially for your daughters, and your reluctance to leave them. But you seemed content, too, almost eager in your own quiet fashion to be on your way. And then you were gone. Was that really you I sensed there yesterday afternoon, at ten minutes of two, as you made your way out of this life and into the next? I guess I will never know for sure, or at least not until it’s my turn to go through those gates and I get a chance to ask you, face to face. But right now I choose to believe that it’s true. At the very least, it seems like something you would have done.

I’ve been thinking a lot about your life the last few days, Grandpa, and the way it overlapped mine. I know people always seem to focus on the positive at a funeral, packing away the negative like it never happened, making the person seem like some kind of saint we can barely recognize. I don’t want to do that. You weren’t a saint. Off the top of my head I can remember one moment when you made me grit my teeth in utter frustration. I was a teenager, and we lived with you for the summer. I had thrown something away, and you retrieved it from the trash. I can’t remember if it was destined for the recycling, or if somehow it was worth a couple of pennies, but I do remember receiving a very quiet reprimand and feeling a very unquiet surge of annoyance. But you know what, Grandpa? As I look back over my life, I truly cannot remember any other times when you rubbed me the wrong way. None. Maybe it’s post-deathbed amnesia, but I don’t think so. Because, see? In my mind, you are beauty. You are humor. And you are mystery.

When I think back on my childhood, I always picture your house on Carmen Drive. I know there were other houses before that, and one after it as well. But to me, that house IS you. It was simple and solid and surrounded with a beauty that was as quiet as it was vibrant. My favorite place in that backyard was the boulder by the fish pond. That rock was great for climbing on, and it was just far enough from the edge of the deck to make jumping from one to the other feel like our own mini-extreme sport. (That, and walking from one end of the trailer bed to the other, trying to keep our balance as it tipped. Wow! Who knew a backyard could hold such excitement!) But I was talking about the rock, wasn’t I? Sometimes, we also just sat on it. See, we learned early on that the fish were afraid of our carousing, that they would only show themselves if we were still. What a thrill that was to see them poke their golden heads out from beneath their little fishy bunkers, deciding whether or not it was safe to proceed back into the sunshine. You were like that, in my mind. I can’t really know what you were thinking all those years. Maybe it was the generation gap, or maybe it was just your personality, but I never really got much of a glimpse of what was going on in your head. But you seemed to me like a wise child, one who knows that life’s golden moments come to those who are willing to sit quietly and wait.

You weren’t just quiet though. Beneath that tranquil surface was a fabulous sense of humor. I never had the privilege of seeing you onstage. I am told that your public humor was a bull in a tea shop, over the top and hysterically funny. I’m sorry I missed it. Your dinner table humor was, by contrast, a deer by the side of the road. One had to be alert or the moment would slip by, unnoticed. But when it was seen? Ah, the rewards of spotting that graceful and elusive beast!

But your humor didn’t confine itself to moments around the dining room table. It manifest itself in what you produced as well. I remember your Christmas tree substitute one year – a frame of metal wire, decorated with garland and glittering balls. I remember, too, the gift you made for Kathy’s boys one year. A rocking horse would have been a perfectly suitable gift, of course, but a rocking chicken … Now there’s a statement!

But your creativity went far beyond Christmas tree substitutes and ride-able chickens. Your whole place was a testament to your artistic nature. Life happened there. It was captured on the walls, in your paintings and photographs and woodwork. It was portrayed in your colors – green mostly, a reminder of the personal growth that you never abandoned. But personally, I felt it most in your garden -- in the lush green yard, in the fruit trees and the flowers, in the precise rows of raspberries and corn, even in the agates sown among the gravel beneath the living room window.

I know you moved on from that place, that you created a life with Grace that was deeply rewarding to you, but in my mind, your spirit will forever live in that house on Carmen Drive. When I need a moment of quiet or a bit of creative inspiration, I can go back there in my mind. I can sit on that brown rock, listen to the breeze in the grape arbor, and wait for the golden fish to appear.