heart still there, crumpled a bit...
"2. GET PAID FOR WORKING AT THE PRIMARY ELECTIONS
Monroe County needs poll workers for the primary elections on Tuesday, May 2. You would attend a brief training, then work all day on May 2. You will be paid ($80 for "judges" and "clerks") and receive meals. If you do not have an exam scheduled for that day, please consider working for the election."
--e-mail from the Polsci advisor
It made me full of tears; one of the many, many ways my grandmother has shown her support for this country in spite of her frequent and harsh criticism is by fulfilling her civic duty and working every single election since she retired, and many before that. She was supposed to go in last week and be trained on how to operate the new voting machines. My grandfather told me softly, sorrowfully, that he wasn't going to go to that meeting and he didn't think he would work this election. Maybe the next one.
Sixty years of marriage. Sixty years, two children, many jobs, one home built from the ground up, four grandchildren, much happiness. I worry most for him; they were the spitting image of old-time commitment, love, and support. It was so hard to be in their house without her; I can't even imagine how he does it.
He is selling it, something they considered together last year, but the advent of spring and summer and flower and gardening and fresh vegetables distracted them. At least they're mostly cleaned out, and dad and I helped a little more. I don't want him to sell the eco-healthy-anti-corporate-petrochemical-energy-efficient-geothermal-heat-house.
But I know he has too. It's too much space to clean and take care of for one old man. Even if he's an active, healthy, and fabulous 83, still ballroom and square dancing, still attending funerals as the flag-bearer in the American Legion honor guard, still driving and gadding about the town, mowing his lawn, being Mr. Fixit.
He attends multiple funerals every month, in either his Navy uniform from 1946 or the generic American Legion uniform (if the veteran is Army or Marine, not Navy), carrying the flag. He sees people suffer and cry and hurt and miss those they love. He does it to give the dead the honor they deserve in death as in life. He does it because he loves his country and respects its armed forces. He carefully schedules around these events, and drives several hours round trip to the new cemetery, (National something or other in Holly, Michigan, newly built in 2005 to accumulate the glut of WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War vets that will soon expire.), dedicating himself to help these families find closure, to offer a certain sense of a send-off in a way veterans deserve. My grandmother is buried there; one day my grandfather will lie next to her. Every grave is marked by a white cross, all the same size, the same shape -- even though it is new (circa 2005, permanent buildings still under construction), the lines and patterns reminiscent of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia can already be seen.
He picked her out of a crowd of women; the ratio was 10 to 1 in DC in those days. All the non-battle-esque positions were occupied by an influx of ladies from around the country. This migration included my great-aunt Dorothy and my grandmother Hazelle. He chose her because she stood a head above the rest, and as a tall gentleman who loved to dance, he noted that she stood the right heighth to be a good dance partner. When all the new post-war buildings made her ill, he stuck by her side in figuring out the problem (a sensitivity to petrochemicals due to a total lack of exposure in childhood), even though a divorce and a remarriage would have been easy and even acceptable at that point in history.
He's such a man of outstanding and unusual virtue, of a moral compass that does not waver. To even be half the man he was would make a person a saint. He's never mentioned god or jesus to me, ever, but he is possibly the only truly Christian person I know. To teach by example is the most powerful and difficult of tasks, and oh, how he has done it.
I'm an extraordinarily lucky granddaughter. I can only hope that the powers that be give me a few more years in his company.
They were still dancing three or four times a week in the weeks leading to my grandmother's death. They were still dancing.
Monroe County needs poll workers for the primary elections on Tuesday, May 2. You would attend a brief training, then work all day on May 2. You will be paid ($80 for "judges" and "clerks") and receive meals. If you do not have an exam scheduled for that day, please consider working for the election."
--e-mail from the Polsci advisor
It made me full of tears; one of the many, many ways my grandmother has shown her support for this country in spite of her frequent and harsh criticism is by fulfilling her civic duty and working every single election since she retired, and many before that. She was supposed to go in last week and be trained on how to operate the new voting machines. My grandfather told me softly, sorrowfully, that he wasn't going to go to that meeting and he didn't think he would work this election. Maybe the next one.
Sixty years of marriage. Sixty years, two children, many jobs, one home built from the ground up, four grandchildren, much happiness. I worry most for him; they were the spitting image of old-time commitment, love, and support. It was so hard to be in their house without her; I can't even imagine how he does it.
He is selling it, something they considered together last year, but the advent of spring and summer and flower and gardening and fresh vegetables distracted them. At least they're mostly cleaned out, and dad and I helped a little more. I don't want him to sell the eco-healthy-anti-corporate-petrochemical-energy-efficient-geothermal-heat-house.
But I know he has too. It's too much space to clean and take care of for one old man. Even if he's an active, healthy, and fabulous 83, still ballroom and square dancing, still attending funerals as the flag-bearer in the American Legion honor guard, still driving and gadding about the town, mowing his lawn, being Mr. Fixit.
He attends multiple funerals every month, in either his Navy uniform from 1946 or the generic American Legion uniform (if the veteran is Army or Marine, not Navy), carrying the flag. He sees people suffer and cry and hurt and miss those they love. He does it to give the dead the honor they deserve in death as in life. He does it because he loves his country and respects its armed forces. He carefully schedules around these events, and drives several hours round trip to the new cemetery, (National something or other in Holly, Michigan, newly built in 2005 to accumulate the glut of WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War vets that will soon expire.), dedicating himself to help these families find closure, to offer a certain sense of a send-off in a way veterans deserve. My grandmother is buried there; one day my grandfather will lie next to her. Every grave is marked by a white cross, all the same size, the same shape -- even though it is new (circa 2005, permanent buildings still under construction), the lines and patterns reminiscent of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia can already be seen.
He picked her out of a crowd of women; the ratio was 10 to 1 in DC in those days. All the non-battle-esque positions were occupied by an influx of ladies from around the country. This migration included my great-aunt Dorothy and my grandmother Hazelle. He chose her because she stood a head above the rest, and as a tall gentleman who loved to dance, he noted that she stood the right heighth to be a good dance partner. When all the new post-war buildings made her ill, he stuck by her side in figuring out the problem (a sensitivity to petrochemicals due to a total lack of exposure in childhood), even though a divorce and a remarriage would have been easy and even acceptable at that point in history.
He's such a man of outstanding and unusual virtue, of a moral compass that does not waver. To even be half the man he was would make a person a saint. He's never mentioned god or jesus to me, ever, but he is possibly the only truly Christian person I know. To teach by example is the most powerful and difficult of tasks, and oh, how he has done it.
I'm an extraordinarily lucky granddaughter. I can only hope that the powers that be give me a few more years in his company.
They were still dancing three or four times a week in the weeks leading to my grandmother's death. They were still dancing.