Recently, I lost my grandfather. He was an 86-year old who used to be an ox of a man but was reduced to very little by a mixture of dementia, congestive heart failure, and so on. For nearly six years, I watched a man that I looked up to for a large amount of my life whittle away, and that was painful. Very painful. It took a huge toll on the rest of my family; my grandmother, mother, and aunt were by my grandfather’s side until the very end.
However, now that I am older and understand death to a certain extent, I don’t see it as being a bad thing. Again, you have to realize that I spent six years watching him waste away, transitioning from a spry and heavy guy to someone that weighed nearly fifty to sixty pounds less than his original weight. He gave me a lot of things, such as my first real vehicle, and he taught me many important life lessons. I still have vivid memories of my childhood, like when I gave him my “Clifford the Big Red Dog” toy from Wendy’s when I was five; he kept that on his dashboard, and it turned from a Big Red dog to a Big Pink dog over a span of eleven years. I also faintly remember my grandfather picking me up from school one day and not telling anyone else in my family. They were so mad at us for the longest time.
The point that I am trying to make here is that death isn’t always a bad thing. In some way, it can free you. I know that, after these six years, he is finally able to rest peacefully and that he does not have to fight anymore. I know he lived a very long life, longer than what most people who have what he had live past. Still, it takes some time to adjust to his death. Ever since he passed, I walk into my grandparents’ house and expect to see him sitting in his chair, smiling at me. But he isn’t. All that is there is the American flag they draped over his coffin in a mahogany flag holder. Every time someone asks why the Sissonville High School emblem is crooked on my back bumper, I just tell them, “Well, a while back, my grandfather put it on there…” and yet again I am reminded of him.
I know he will never leave my thoughts. He was such a big part of my and my grandmothers’ life. I was and still am, their pride and joy. I know he wanted nothing more than to just see me succeed. He didn’t get to go to my high school graduation, and I think I was in denial that he was going to be able to come to my college graduation. Now, everything I do is in memory of my greatest motivator, my grandfather.
