A New Appreciation

I wrote this a few weeks ago and wasn't sure if I wanted to post it. I decided to.

My great grandfather died a few weeks ago. He was 94 years old.

 

He lived through the great depression.

 

He fought in WWII.

 

He was a functional alcoholic for a good portion of his life.

 

He had to bury 2 of his own children and 2 wives.

 

He was the most grateful person I have ever met.  I don’t know if it was the hard times that made him appreciate life so much, but he had a unique way of realizing how much each day really meant and how much of a gift all the people in our lives really are.

 

He may have been the single funniest, most loving man I have ever met. There is something about seeing a 90+ year old man crack jokes that never gets old. I don’t know if it was the delivery, or maybe how he said words that started with w-h. H-whisky. H-when. I don’t think he understood the whole silent H thing. He moved like a tortoise, but he was so quick-witted he could have held the stage with anyone.

 

He has seen so much of the world, most of it this side of 80 years old too. He and his first wife Eula, hiked the Grand Canyon together…and they were oooooooold. He traveled Europe, old. He went to Peru, old.

 

I only knew him as old. But I remember thinking he was a titan. When my brother and I were little, he would wrestle both of us in his back yard. Until the day he died, he kept the best garden I have ever seen. Never say you don’t like a vegetable until you’ve tried it out of Grandad’s garden. He built a rocking horse when I was born, it is in my dads house to this very day. I’m 18, so he was at least 76 when he did all this. Old.

 

And when I think about it, I know so little about him. I have heard about maybe 4 months of his life before I was born if you add it all up.

 

He used to be young.  Who knows what he has done? This is the part where I think about what could have and should have been.

 

I’m the first man in my family to not go into the military, which never seemed strange until now.

 

Have you ever seen a book that you really wanted to read but didn’t ever get to it? Go read it.

 

Love You Granddad