I'm at my father's house until Wednesday. At this moment there are two planes in the air. One carries my grandfather's casket and is headed for Tampa, Florida, where a hearse from the funeral home will be waiting. The other carries my father, who is on his way to Orlando, where my brother and sister-in-law will pick him up. They will drive to Inverness tomorrow to bury my grandfather. He didn't want me to go along, instead he asked me to watch Lucy and the house. It's okay. I said my goodbyes to my grandfather a long time ago.
It took many years, but I finally brokered a separate peace with my grandfather. Maybe I should say I brokered peace with myself, because I doubt he knew there was any difficulty between us. He might have wondered, but knowing him, I doubt it. He probably thought I was just thoughtless, if he thought of me at all. Frankly, I doubt anyone knows the extent to which --- or how long --- I have wrestled with the problem of where and how my grandfather fit into my life or didn't.
He was a colorful man who had tremendous impact -- sometimes positive, sometimes negative -- on people's lives. But then, don't we all? He was also a solitary person, even in crowds of people. Even when he was the center of attention. If he didn't isolate himself, then my grandmother insulated him or us from him.
At his 100th birthday party, he was -- at least from my experience with him -- uncharacteristically quiet and I watched him observe the activity around him. I watched as he sat quietly with one or more great grandchild. They chattered. He watched and listened. He seemed bewildered at the caring they exhibited. And grateful for our celebration of him. He didn't say much that day, except thank you, which he said a lot. How much of that was age? Growth? How much had he changed during the years after my grandmother's death?
I asked my father last night if he was sad about his father's death.
"What?" he asked.
"Are you sad?"
I wasn't limiting my question to whether he was sad about Grandpa's death, but rather, I left it open... a chance for my father to respond to whether he was sad about anything unresolved between him and his father,
"No, he was 104, lived a good life and the quality of his life was getting worse," he responded. Then he thought for a second and and said, in a rare moment of emotional intimacy, "If this had happened a few years ago, I'd have been sad and mad, I think. But, in the end he was an old man. And a human being and my father." A child of God my mother might have said.
After Dad went to bed, I thought about whether I was sad or not. I am not. I've decided to remember all the good things about Grandpa... the times I played Dale Evans and would ride my imaginary Trigger up E. 12th Street to meet him on his way home from work and he'd pretend to be Roy Rogers (despite his Brooks Brothers suit). His stories about growing up in Brooklyn. His odd little Christmas tradition of buying himself plum pudding with hard sauce and a jar of pickled herring. Why? The unending and random trivia he picked up from his reading as a typesetter/proofreader and shared with us. The many things I learned from him... baiting a hook, crabbing, and a love of horses. The time he and my great uncle, a little lit and doing some sort of dance in the kitchen in his summer home, almost fell through the kitchen floor. His funny stories about my eccentric Uncle Arthur.
The rest I'll let go if I haven't already. I guess I can hope that when I die, people will choose to remember positive memories of me and let go of my negative aspects.
On to today... I don't believe I reported this, but the last time I was here there were two geese on Dad's pond. We saw the first -- a solitary gander -- floating. Lucy flushed out his mate who was guarding their nest. I arrived last night to a lot of honking. When I let the dogs out this morning and walked the front yard, there was more honking and I looked toward the pond. No goslings yet, but now it appears we have at least one more couple nurturing a family on the pond. I'll take a look later.
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