An American hero.
My Grandfather died this morning.
It hasn't fully hit me yet, I think. I cried a few tears while I held my Mom's hand for awhile, and she told me the last words he'd said to her on the phone ("I'm tired. I'm just tired of being in this bed.") and how now she knew why he -- a characteristically unemotional man -- had cried when she left on her last visit ("He knew it was the last time I'd see him.") but I'm not feeling the full weight of it. My first classes of the semester start in less than three hours, and I'm afraid I'll break down in the middle of Calculus. Or worse, while I'm driving. But I'm more afraid that it won't hit me at all. I can already feel myself shutting down a little.
My Mom asked me to write something for her to frame and give to my Grandmother, the way I wrote a poem for a student of hers who died of brain cancer years ago. I'm not really sure what I'm going to say. What words are adequate to honor him? To stand as a monument to his incredible life?
For now I'll just say this:
Somewhere there's a bar where you're young and beautiful again, drinking an eternal round with your fellow glider pilots: the ones who died around you in the fields beneath our flag, and the ones who died slowly like you. You're playing poker with Little Abner, who's got beer dripping out of a hole in his lip from a fight with some asshole who got him with brass knuckles. You're smoking and laughing and telling tall tales. Perhaps God wouldn't allow such vice in his Kingdom, but that's how I choose to envision your passing. A return to the days you were most proud of in your life. The farthest escape possible from your final, bedridden years.
Thank you for enabling my life with your valor and luck in battle. Thank you for staying with us long enough for Nana to get better. Thank you for every delicious meal, every uproarious anecdote, every time you asked about school. You were a fine one, Papa.
It hasn't fully hit me yet, I think. I cried a few tears while I held my Mom's hand for awhile, and she told me the last words he'd said to her on the phone ("I'm tired. I'm just tired of being in this bed.") and how now she knew why he -- a characteristically unemotional man -- had cried when she left on her last visit ("He knew it was the last time I'd see him.") but I'm not feeling the full weight of it. My first classes of the semester start in less than three hours, and I'm afraid I'll break down in the middle of Calculus. Or worse, while I'm driving. But I'm more afraid that it won't hit me at all. I can already feel myself shutting down a little.
My Mom asked me to write something for her to frame and give to my Grandmother, the way I wrote a poem for a student of hers who died of brain cancer years ago. I'm not really sure what I'm going to say. What words are adequate to honor him? To stand as a monument to his incredible life?
For now I'll just say this:
Somewhere there's a bar where you're young and beautiful again, drinking an eternal round with your fellow glider pilots: the ones who died around you in the fields beneath our flag, and the ones who died slowly like you. You're playing poker with Little Abner, who's got beer dripping out of a hole in his lip from a fight with some asshole who got him with brass knuckles. You're smoking and laughing and telling tall tales. Perhaps God wouldn't allow such vice in his Kingdom, but that's how I choose to envision your passing. A return to the days you were most proud of in your life. The farthest escape possible from your final, bedridden years.
Thank you for enabling my life with your valor and luck in battle. Thank you for staying with us long enough for Nana to get better. Thank you for every delicious meal, every uproarious anecdote, every time you asked about school. You were a fine one, Papa.