He had been sick for awhile. The man I knew to be unstoppable had gotten old, and frail, and stricken with cancer.
He was only 2 years older than I am now when I was born, but my earliest memories of him were of a grandfather. White hair, white mustache, and spots on his hands. I cannot remember him looking to me the way that I must look to my granddaughter.
To a little boy, he was legendary. He had gone to war as a young man, just after falling in love, and returned from war to meet his first born child.
He was a police officer for awhile before I existed and somehow had learned to build or fix just about anything by the time I was a child.
I would learn a lot from him through observation; especially how to deal with pain and injury, which is to say I learned how to ignore them.
I can remember countless times when he would smash his finger with a hammer, or cut his hand wide open, then just patch it up and carry on. He didn’t have much use for physicians, at least not until he had no other option.
I would also learn story telling from him. I can’t be certain how much of the stories he told were true, but they were always captivating and certainly entertaining.
He was often grouchy, especially when you bumped his feet while he was napping, but he was also caring and considerate.
He was often in charge of discipline for my brother and me when we were young and his stern approach got the point across, but it was never mean or hurtful.
I never heard the man utter a hateful word or purposefully tear someone down and I appreciate him for hiding that part of himself from me as I’ve heard tell that he sometimes did.
I knew him to be a fast friend to everyone. A nearly toothless smile (a lifetime of smoking a pipe had worn his teeth to nothing) and a quick story (well, they weren’t really very quick) drew everyone into his circle.
He loved to drive. This wasn’t evident from the amount of trips he took, but more from the long, meandering routes he would call “a shortcut” (there was nothing short about them).
Supposedly he had difficulty hearing (a side effect of war), although I’m convinced he heard everything he needed to hear and just pretended to be partially deaf so he could ignore grandma’s constant chatter.
Of the things I remember most about him, the smell of Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco always brings him back to me. I keep an old tin of that tobacco near my tattooing station for that reason.
That smell reminds me of his worn and toughened hands, flannel shirts, trucker caps, and Indiana University basketball.
It’s been 19 years since he left us and I remember the day he went like it happened yesterday.
He had been sick for awhile. Years and years of smoking that pipe had caught up to him and he was confined to a bed at the VA hospital.
There was no cause for alarm that day, I just hadn’t seen him for awhile. Upon entering his room I knew what I was witnessing. Years of seeing people go made the signs very clear to me.
I told my aunt and my cousin, who were also there to visit, that they should say what they needed to say, and then I kissed his forehead and whispered “I love you” into his ear.
He was unconscious at this point, but I would swear that I saw a brief smile flash across his face, and then he was gone.
Even at his weakest moment, when he could no longer carry on, he still looked like my legendary, unstoppable, grandpa.
If he were still with us he’d be 102 this year and what I will remember is a man who loved with his whole heart and never turned away a new friend.
