My grandfather turned 98 last summer. That's as old as he will ever be, and I am over 6000 miles away, unable to have been there in the final days of one of the most important people in my life.
I wrote about my grandfather once before, when he was 92. I wrote about how in his youth he had hopped the trains to go to California. How he had worked in a ski factory in Minneapolis. How he had worked on a turkey farm, had raised and sold Christmas trees, had hunted and fished and trapped all over Northern Missouri. How he'd hunted and fished and rode his four-wheeler right up into his 90s.
He knew more about the land than anyone still living. With fences and No Trespassing signs, I figure he knew more about the land than anyone will ever again.
But I've written about that. Today ... the day that I found out that he is no longer going to be there for a hug and a hand squeeze, for a story or advice ... I want to share some of my own memories of my grandfather. Of Pa. Because in my life, he has always been there. A fixture. Immortal.
My earliest memories of him are ones of action. He was always moving around, always going somewhere, always doing something. Maybe it was working in his garden, or mowing the lawn, or helping to build a treehouse. If we had a plastic pool set up in the front yard, he was the one hauling the hose over.
I used to stay at my grandparent's house on weekends when I was young. I always thought of it as a treat; now that I'm older, I'm guessing that it was so that my parent's could spend time alone, without a wee brat waggling his nose underfoot, but when I was down there, I remember him helping me to build vast and sprawling sheet forts -- forts that covered the couch, the coffee table, chairs and chairs and more chairs.
Later on in my life, he'd take me hunting and fishing. Hunting was never something I got into all that much. I've always been more of a mind to take pictures of the critters than to shoot them, but I enjoyed being out in the woods with him, our feet crunching through dead leaves, the smell of the forest all around us. I'd watch his back, not wanting to get lost, and then realize that all the crunching leaf sounds were coming from me. He moved through the forest -- or along the railroad tracks, or across a frozen lake -- silently, in a crouch. Like the scouts of the 1800s must have.
We'd fish from the banks of one of the small ponds on his property, or we'd take the boat to the river or the Tank Pond and throw our lines in. We'd catch more crappie than I could count; more than I could ever catch when I went fishing by myself.
One time, a friend and I went out fishing on the City Lake with Pa. A thunderstorm built up fast in the west. Lightning started zipping and zagging through the dark clouds. Our boat was in the center of the lake. We were fighting waves to paddle back in, since we didn't have an outboard. Pa jumped in, started pulling us to shore as he swam. We made it before the first lightning strikes hit the lake.
He collected arrowheads. He had dozens of beautiful specimens, most of which he'd found while on his walkabouts, but some that he'd made himself. He gave me a few. Whenever I look at them, I think of him pointing to one or the other and telling the story about where he found it, what the circumstances had been, what deer or turkey he'd shot in that same spot not more than a year before.
When I was in 4-H, Pa helped me with my garden. Together, we hoed and picked and cleaned, raising prize-winning cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin, squash ... whatever sounded good.
I remember hot summer days, the doors open at my grandparent's house, all of us gathered around the kitchen table, slathering butter on corn on the cob that had been grown just down the hill in my grandfather's garden. Or sitting on the front porch, shucking peas and swatting at flies. I remember all of us, parents, grandparents, cousins, all swimming down at the pond on evenings around the Fourth of July, setting off fireworks and watching the fireflies.
Not long ago -- I think it was even after his heart attack at age 90 -- we went fishing. It would be the last time that we would go together. We took the boat to the Tank Pond and as I was levering it up over the fence, it suddenly got a lot lighter. I looked back and there was Pa, helping to push. Then he was clambering over the fence with more ease than I could manage.
He didn't get rid of his four-wheeler until he was 95.
I thought he was immortal. He should have been. Pa loved life and he loved living in the world. By his example, I learned how to love life and how to live in the world, too.
Before I left to travel 6000 miles away from him for a job, I promised him that when I got back, we'd put the top down and take the convertible out for a drive in the country. He couldn't get around very well at that point, but liked to go for rides.
My friend Carin believes that, some day, I'll be able to keep that promise. I hope so. Until then, I've just got this one prayer to offer up: Lord, wherever Pa is, let him be hale, and strong, and young, and traipsing around a vast, endless wood where the deer and the turkey are plentiful and the lakes are as blue as the sky.
Goodbye, Pa. You will be oh so missed.