Bull

The Story of a Grandfather 

“Keilee girl” his voice echoes in my memories. 
“I love you” plays on the saved voicemails.
“Write it all down before it fades” a voice whispers in the back of my mind. 

I can’t write it ALL down. Not all 23 years I lived or the 67 years I heard stories about before I was born. 

The country born baseball loving boy who was in the army and got scouted by the Milwaukee Braves and met the love of his life and married her 6 weeks later. The father who loved and provided, the funny and generous friend, the reliable coworker, the meticulous collector, the bird watcher, the coach who loved his boys, the expert golfer, the carpenter or the caring Grandfather. 

I can’t begin to write it all down. The memories collected like his thousands of marbles in jars. I hold tight to each one praying they don’t melt away like the ice cream sandwiches he always had for us grandkids in the summer. 

I loved him in his bright green and blue shirts and the way he rested his hand on his chin. He mischievously winked and even at 90 you could still see the child in his blue eyes. When I was little I was always fascinated by his Donald Duck impression. I loved the way he loved to find a deal at an estate sale and then sell his finds. The way he would always hum, sing or whistle “The cat came back”. Oh how I wish he could too. 

I wish I could inherit his memory like I did his restless need to be productive. He remembered dates, times, numbers, places and faces as vividly as I remember the way he always said “cheese” when he took a picture. I’d ask him to tell me the stories again. Tell me about your dog named Spot or the lightning striking the hill. Tell me about the road trips you took, tell me about that golf tournament, tell me about your father’s meat market. Tell me again where you bought that, tell me about your baseball boys. Tell it all to me again. 

The radio plays a throwback song and suddenly “I’m the Man” transports me to Christmas shopping trips and eating lunch together with him singing every word. And whenever I smell lemon or coconut, his two favorite flavors, I smile. When I open a pack of Sweet ‘N Low and grin because I got my need for sweet coffee from him. My hair whips in the wind and suddenly I’m sitting in his golf cart with him, riding through his neighborhood, under the summer sun. 

He took me to see old beautiful trees, to roll down hills, catch fish in the river and to show me the ocean. He took time to care about the little things. Even the things I did that he didn’t quite understand he still celebrated with me. 

Love is built in moments; from the bird house on Grandparents day in kindergarten to sawing a board with him just last spring. It was strengthened in all the times he was proud of me, all the times he never treated his granddaughters as less capable than his grandson and all the times he never asked us about our relationship status or never tried to nudge us into lives we didn’t want. 

Love lingers, it sits on the shelf of the book case he made me and it’s tucked safely in a drawer written in every card he’s ever given me. I hear it in the songs sung by the blue birds, in the beating of hummingbird wings and floating through wind chimes. I taste it in vanilla ice cream, Christmas ham, zebra cakes and sweet tea. It echoes in the sentimental stories my Mother tells me. 

Love is a tangible thing like the bench he made me that sits at the edge of my bed. It was his last big carpentry project and I’ll cherish it forever. It’s in Huckleberry who is currently laying at my feet, whom he loved very much. Love is carved in his handwriting into the Beech tree along with my name. It’s in the weight of the watches and jewelry he’d always let me have my pick of. 

His entire life can’t be written down just like it can’t all be packed into his buildings of antiques, preserved in bubble wrapping and boxes. His impact can’t be measured like the number of those who came to say goodbye. But the memories can replay in my mind like Bonanza we watched together on his DVR. 

He was all the little moments I spent with him and all the big milestones. He was good. A good man. A good father. A good friend. A good husband. 

But most importantly to me, a good Grandfather. 

“And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other, has ever, known” ~ In The Garden