My Grandfather

This is quite a way to resurrect this blog, with a tribute to my Grandfather. The picture pretty much sums up the image of him I have to this day. That was him doing the things the rest of us couldn’t quite do. Gutting fish… not quite necessary on that day to make sure we would be fed, but he could do it better than the rest of us. If we wanted to eat fresh fish that day, it was up to him to do the job.

Just as I said, that is the image I had of him. Working, doing the type of things I never had to do. I honestly can say that he never had much or any advice to give me, but just being the person he was, watching him as an old man, still working, is something that had a huge impact on me. I remember him walking out of the woods with freshly cut wood on his shoulder, past our house to his own next door. I remember seeing him walking down the road to go to the church to go to work. Never driving, since he never had a license, never asking to be driven despite the fact that there were plenty of family members around who drove.

It was about 10 days ago when I found out that he had finally passed. After the toll the Alzheimer’s took the past few years, then a more recently a blood clot, stroke and bout with pneumonia, it was almost a relief to hear. Almost. It still doesn’t feel right that he’s gone. But, then I realized a few days later that with the mental deterioration he has undergone, I had mourned him about 9 months ago, when I spoke to my parents on the phone. My parents told me that he was in the hospital, but he thought he was in the logging camps that he worked in many years before. That tore me up, I got off the phone and just cried for the loss. Then the last time I saw him, about 6 months ago, he looked the same, a little plumper, but it was my Pop. But he didn’t know me. He didn’t know where he was. And it was just a really sad time for me, since he was lost to me and himself

That is the worst for me. I’ve been away from home for almost 8 years now, and in that time, that appears to have just flown by. I left with home with a quiet, happy, rock for a grandfather and then during the snippets I’ve had over the years, the changes were too drastic. But it is what it is. We make our own paths. Unfortunately, I lost my grandfather too quickly along the way on mine.

I love you Pop. I hope you are whole again upstairs and will have some fish waiting for me.