Gramp

Some of you may know that I lost my grandfather on September 2^nd of this year and, even though he had been sick for more than a year and had lived a pretty full life, it really took a toll on me. He was the person in my family that I aspired the most to be like and he was the center of what makes our family what it is. A hard worker, a lover of the outdoors and one HELL of a great guy. I could go on and on, but I won’t… I just wanted to share an excerpt from the speech I gave at his memorial service, it’s a realization I came to at a time when most of the people reading this will understand, when I was thinking clearest… when I was standing on a rock in the ocean.

…In this last week we have all had realizations. In the most naïve corners of our minds we have been hammered with the sudden fact that he is gone—and that this is final. But not long after coming to that conclusion on my own, I began to realize that this is nowhere near the actual truth. I called one of my closest friends that night and we made plans to go fishing—something that Grampa and I shared a love for. Later that evening I found myself standing on a rock surrounded on all sides by the dark ocean as I began my usual, mind numbing, routine of casting, retrieving and hoping for a bite. In those first few minutes, I forgot that he had been ill, I forgot that I’d said my last goodbye, I forgot all of it—and for those minutes, life felt normal again.

Then I remembered.

But I wasn’t crushed by the weight of his loss or the sadness of its supposed finality—I felt like I could talk to him. I felt like I could finally take him with me. I had described this very moment to him probably 10,000 times but now I felt like he was there. It was a eureka moment—I actually said out loud to the waves, “Oh, Gramp! I can take you with me now!” This may sound like my grief had taken over a large portion of my brain and that a course of strong meds waits in my not-so-distant future. But the fact is—and this is the truth—in that moment, my head was completely clear, my memory was purring like a Cadillac and all of those feelings of love and pride that I’ve described as something tangible that I could feel, almost hold in my hand, for all of the years of my life until now… Guess what? I could feel them again. I could see his smile. I could see his plaid shirt, his glasses, I could see him smirk with a mix of astonishment and approval. “Yup, this is what I do Gramp” I said out loud I again. I could feel our minds working together as they had so many times before when I needed help building something or when he was explaining “the right way” to trim out a window. We were surveying the situation together. And all of the things that I knew he would have seen—a shooting star over the southern horizon, a single seagull’s black silhouette against the dark plum sky—had more meaning because I knew that the fact that I always notice those things comes directly from him. To me that’s goosebump material it’s like unexplained magic, living in a Fairy Tale.

Am I trying to say that Grampa came to visit me that night on the rock in the ocean? I don’t necessarily think that this is what happened. I think that a person’s spirit lives on because they are remembered and I believe that when you’re close to that person, you carry some of that spirit with you, always. That spirit is embodied by the memory of the feeling that the person gave you; and that feeling you felt is their love. And it is so familiar because it was always there, you can’t forget it—you didn’t have to be talking to them to feel it, it was understood, the tap was always on. That feeling is much too strong to go away—he loved [this family] so much that there’s enough left here to last all of our lifetimes. As long as his memory lasts, his love still exists. I have learned that you can call upon these feelings simply by remembering with your heart. Those feelings we all felt from Grampa are still there, we’re never going to forget him and because of that, his love will outlast us all.

Love is an unexplained energy and it lives on in anything that makes you think of someone. No one questions its existence, everyone feels it and you should never let it go. We’re all going to miss you Gramp, but since we can all carry you with us we’ll never feel like we’re without you…

These words came from the center of everything that makes my life worth living, I wanted to share them because that night in the surf really showed me that, no matter what your religion, beliefs or spirituality happen to be, we’re all human and we all suffer these losses. Keeping the memory of your loved ones alive will not only bring you comfort whenever you need it, but it will keep your familial ties strong and it will help you pass along that strong core of family values and self-understanding that older generations seem to have a much better grasp on than what we see on a regular basis today. We all have great men and women in our lives and I couldn’t be more thankful that I had my Grampa around for more than 35 years of my life—every second of that time helped to make me who I am.

Editors note

Please look into the author heading and you will realize that it was Dave Anderson who lost his grandfather and wrote the blog

Zeno