It's just another day, but grandpa is dying. Bad news. He won't be kind if I call, isn't really himself. Can't consider him like he was when I was a kid. It is times like these we have to be grown up.....I am a grown up, but when you think of Grandpa, I still feel like a kid. How to deal with it? It isn't as if it wasn't expected and I could cope but he was so angry the last time I heard from him. He was getting ready to sue me? What would grandma think if she were here? Is that the real grandpa or the new grandpa?
He was the only man I really thought I could trust, what happened? I will miss just knowing he was there, even though he really didn't show much interest over the years, I never stopped remembering that he treated me kindly when I was little, he stood up for me. When we went to their house, the rules changed and he got to say what we could do, and eat, and say. My parents couldn't yell at me and they certainly couldn't spank us there. Grandpa would say "If you think you're gonna do that at my house, you are wrong. You'll have to take her outside for that!"
He was always laughing and smiling, he loved to work and he smelled like trucks and gas and dirt. I loved that. His hands were big and strong and chubby. We would wait for his truck to pull up the long driveway and clap and run after him when he came home. French fries, always a trip for those, riding in the back of his pick up to the french fry place, all you could eat, even if we just finished dinner
That is the person I will remember and mourn.
Just another battle to fight; sadness, reflection, depression, the big giant WHY?
1 comment:
I know how you feel. I last visited my grandfather in June 2003. He died in October 2004 while I was in Iraq. Of course I missed the funeral.
On my last visit, he was different. Grandma had been gone for 6 years, and the house was not the same. Grandpa was not the same.
I maintain a website of family recipes and I asked him for many. I went through his stack and then he told me I couldn't have them. I would have to go to Kinko's to copy them.
His personality wasn't the same. He was more irritable. He didn't want all the family coming over for a BBQ, but he was still grandpa and I still love him.
The last thing we did together before I left for the airport was bake traditional Swedish bread with him from where he grew up. That is the memory I will remember from that trip, and the others will be of childhood.
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