My grandpa took me ice “skating” on the old pond, helped me dig a 100 year old turtle out of the mud, took me swimming in the creek after a hot day in the field and I spent afternoons on the back porch with my cousins drinking pop and eating Little Debbie’s while my grandparents drank coffee.
I snuck in the old bed across the hall every morning, was asked if I needed an allowance when I’d come through the door and I cried if my parents didn’t turn off the highway to their house.
My grandma is my best friend. She has been since birth I think. I was always “theirs” probably because when your baby has a baby at 17, you help raise her daughter as you finish raising her. My grandma helped raise me. When the first few years of life were so unstable, my grandparents were our calm in the storm.
My best friend lost her sweetheart yesterday. Even though her heart prayed, believed and begged for the opposite, my Grandma’s sun browned, gravelly voiced, hard of hearing sweetheart was finally able to let go and find a place to rest. My whole heart is broken over the loss of a man who helped fill the role of Dad for me, but my heart is shattered over my grandma’s loss of her “honey.” My brain can’t quite comprehend that he won’t yell HELLO!? in the phone when I call on my way to work every morning, he won’t be sitting in his chair waiting to scoop up McCoy and put him on the kitchen table but the thing that hurts the most this morning is thinking about my Grandma drinking coffee and her glass being the only one to clink on the kitchen table.
She’s called me on the morning of my birthday to sing to me for 36 years but if she didn’t do it this morning I wouldn’t blame her. My heart had hoped he wouldn’t die today and it got its wish, but instead my precious Mama and my Grandma have to plan his funeral. No...today’s not really a “Happy Birthday” kind of day.
He was tired. His old body was worn out. He worked hard, he loved his grandbabies and especially his Sweetie, my grandma. But he was tired. It was his time, his way but he leaves a Grandpa shaped hole in our hearts. We are thankful his struggle is over, but now we pray for my Mama, her brothers and my Grandma as we go through the next few days and learn to live without him.
Rest Grandpa. Find you a cup of coffee and a field that needs to be baled. Get you a four wheeler and take a ride around your new home. Hopefully you can find the baby boy who was named after you and take him for a ride this morning.
