As a child, you don't realize that your family structure is different until you start school and hear other children share their family stories. But after meeting your classmates, you soon realize that not all of them have both parents, grandparents, siblings and other relatives.
For me, I didn't know about grandfathers until I heard my classmates share stories of theirs. I'd hear about holidays, about fun family outings or passed down war stories. But my grandfather passed away six years before I was even born.
As a child, I didn't understand. To me it just felt unfair. Everything that I know about my grandfather, I've learned through stories, the same way I learned of historical figures in a textbook.
But I've heard enough stories of my grandpa over the years to now imagine some of the ways we would have bonded.
Many weekend afternoons would've probably been spent by his favorite fishing holes, I would have discovered my love of Johnny Cash much sooner in life and instead of inheriting his many LP albums, we would have appreciated them together.
My sister was a month shy of three years old when our grandfather passed away. Though he was there for her first steps, first words and all the other firsts in childhood, he missed the much bigger accomplishments of her life, as well as mine. He never saw us graduate high school or college, never saw the adults that we grew into and all the other moments in life that grandparents take such pride in.
At so many of times in my life, my grandma would say, "Your pap pap would be so proud of you." Though I know she meant well by saying so, hearing that always made me want to cry.
It's so strange to love and miss someone that I never even met, but not having a grandfather in my life left an unexplainable void.
Still, I think of my grandfather so often.
Earlier this year, I was in the car when Cole Swindell's "You Should be Here" came on the radio on the anniversary of my grandfather's death. There have been many times over the last 25 years that I've thought the exact words of this song — that he should be here.
Many other songs often leave me in tears as well. Brad Paisley's "When I Get Where I'm Going" gets me every time at the line, "I'm going to walk with my granddaddy, and he'll match me step for step. I'll tell him how I missed him every minute since he left, and then I'll hug my neck."
I'm hopeful for that day, when I finally get to meet the man I never knew. I know he's been watching all the things he couldn't be here for.
