I still love you my Grandfather

When it finally happened I couldn’t stop it, the tears started and didn’t stop through the entire service.  In Billings, MT on April 29, 2006 I attended my hero’s funeral, he was my grandfather and I had lived my entire childhood with him as my hero.  It was him who taught me to see the world, him who taught me how to form a moral code, him who taught me how to use my god given talents.  I wish I could always remember him as I saw him as a child.  A giant of a man, a hard worker with a smile and a laugh that echo’ed for miles.  A kind man and great public speaker.  A man who people trusted to talk to and divulge their inner most feelings and ask his opinion.  A good and honest man.

I had been oddly unemotional from the moment I found of his death to that very moment sitting at the funeral.  One week earlier my mother and I were shopping with my niece at Fry’s in Wilsonville when I got THE CALL from my father telling me to come home for my grandfather had lost his battle to cancer.  Walking through the large aisles of Fry’s with my mother, I told her I wanted to go home.  She wanted to keep looking around and I told her I didn’t feel good.  When we got into the car and she asked what was wrong in, what I consider, to be my most heartless moment ever in a pure deadpan I replied,

“I just got the call, your father died this morning”

She cried and wailed beating her hands against the dashboard.  Myleah, my niece, started crying not because she understood what was wrong but her grandmother was crying and wailing and she didn’t understand.  I calmed Myleah down and started the drive home with my mom crumbling right next to me.  We made the 17 hour drive to Montana the next morning, I drove the whole way.  When the kids slept I put in a dip of Copenhagen to keep me awake for the drive.  My mother saw me dip for the first time that trip.

When we got to Montana we met with my grandmother and my aunt and uncle, and their respective mates.  My mother and grandmother went to weep together and mourn.  My aunt, uncle, and myself went drinking.  We drank a lot that week, but none of us cried.  My mother and grandmother shed an ocean of tears that week.  I spent time on the phone arranging flowers and reception plans.  I met a beautiful young lady named Alicia my first night there at a bar that I spent every night on the phone with.  The church folk, in a very midwest way, brought us food all week and shared their stories of my grandfather with us.

It struck me, while at his funeral that the last time I had seen him was 5 years earlier almost to the date.  The kind man known as my grandfather was screaming at me.  He screamed at me until he clutched his chest and was taken to the ER because of his first heart-attack.  A heart-attack brought on by screaming at his first born grandson who’s marriage was falling apart.

“JEHOVAH GOD INSTITUTED THIS DIVINE ARRANGEMENT OF MARRIAGE AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF MY GRANDSON WON’T UNDERSTAND THOSE VOWS HE TOOK.  YOU ARE KILLING YOURSELF AND YOUR WIFE BY NOT BEING THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE OF YOUR FAMILY.”

He clutched his chest and the family, sans me, went to his side.  I walked out the door flipping him off and never saw him again.  He recovered, but we never talked again.  He felt the need to “show” me his love and care by not talking to me.  He decided to go to battle with cancer without support from me.  He decided to live his life without me.  I was told by many that he talked of and thought of me frequently, as I thought of him frequently.  That wasn’t enough, though, for him to want a relationship with me.  My aunt and uncle had similar experiences, he was such a stubborn man.  If you didn’t live his way, you weren’t living period and there was no reason to talk to someone who wasn’t living.

I’m not sure if I cried for the loss of his life or the loss of our relationship at the funeral.  I just cried and cried and cried, I cried until it hurt and then I cried some more.  The funeral was on a Saturday and I literally cried until Sunday morning.  I had the worst headache I have ever had, my face was sticky from layer and layer of dried tears, and I still had no answers.  Oddly enough, I didn’t need any.

I don’t think of him often, but then again we hadn’t talked for years before he died so his death really didn’t change anything.  When I do think of him, though, he now does have a solid 50/50 chance of it being a good memory.

Him and I walking across his land
Tilling his personal garden
Picking raspberries
Reading the bible
Eating waffles at Elmer’s Pancake House
One of his heart felt country

sermons
Going to the auction and him always finding some great deal
The way people from the congregation would just come up and talk to him with ease
His moustache
His smile
22 years of great memories

– or –

Him screaming his displeasure at me until he had a heart attack
5 years of painful memories

It makes me realize how important what we say is to others.  How we say it and if what we have to say is really worth the pain it can cause and the rifts that might occur.

I still love you grandfather