Granddaddy

My grandfather died when I was a freshman in college. I'm not sure I ever completely got over it. He'd been sick and in the hospital at the time he finally passed on, but that was nothing new. Having been a four-pack-a-day smoker until the '60s, he paid for his addiction later in life with regular trips to the hospital for emphysema-related illnesses throughout my childhood. He'd been in the hospital and come back out just as healthy as before so many times that it actually felt normal.

Still, for some reason this time I knew before I even picked up the phone. My dorm room was next door to the bathroom and I was in the shower. I could actually hear my phone ringing through the cinder block wall and instantly I knew that he was here no longer. I missed the call from my mom with the news, but she called K's room and had K come to tell me the news in person. I'm not really sure how I made it home; I have no recollection of the trip.

* * * *

My grandfather was far from a perfect man, although most of what made him so occurred before my birth. He was a gambler and there are family stories of my grandmother having to go to the "unofficial casino" where he went to play poker and dragging him home. Of course after he once lost her car in a poker game, I don't blame her. When I moved into his house a year and a half ago, we had to repatch the hole in the wall above where he sat for as long as I remember and probably much longer. The hole came from my grandfather and a friend were drinking and got out the shotgun Granddaddy always kept on a rack over the kitchen counter on the dining room side. The friend accidentally discharged the gun and blew a hole in the wall inches above his head.

His sense of humor could also be called a bit mean spirited at times. He lived for torturing my grandmother with constant verbal picking. He was the first person in the family to warm up to my mom because she was fun to needle and she didn't take anything personally or get upset. When he was a kid, he and the neighbor's son pretended to be ghosts in the tobacco barn to scare my neighbor. Apparently they put on a convincing show because Clell came out of the house shooting. I think he may have caught a couple pellets of bird shot for that prank. One of my favorites involves a much older version of my grandfather. My uncle, his son-in-law, had dressed up for some charity cross-dress pageant and my grandfather decided to pick up the town drunk on their way home. My uncle, at my grandfather's prodding, pretended to hit on the drunk, which freaked him out so much (he would have been quite the homely woman) that he didn't wait for the car to come to a complete halt before exiting.

* * * *

What I do remember is standing in the carport of his house (now mine) looking out across the field having turned my mourning into anger directed at the farmer who leased my grandfather's fields for his temerity in plowing the fields on the day of the funeral. The winds picked up and it had been dry so far that year and the air filled with the gray dust of the fields and the farmer was forced to pack up and head home before the day before we had to leave for the church. At the time it seemed that God himself was angry at the disrespect shown to this man who I loved so dearly even though now I know it was simply a coincidence. The farmer never worked our land again. After his harvest he was politely asked to find other fields to lease.

* * * *

Memory and scent are closely linked in the brain and I always associate the smell of tobacco with memories of Granddaddy. He quit smoking the day a doctor told him he'd only live another few months if he kept going. He was the type of man who had incredible will power when he decided that something needed doing. He never gave up tobacco permanently, though. When my dad was young, he chewed cigars, the big Winston Churchill types. He never lit one, just chewed on the end. Later, he switched to chewing tobacco, Redman or Levi Garrett depending on which one was the focus of his current passion. He always had the smokey-sweet smell of the cured leaves about him and his truck. The habit was filthy. It's not like spitting the juice is always going to be neat, but for some reason it never seemed disgusting when he did it. It was just normal. I'd never known him to be any other way. I never picked up his penchant for tobacco, maybe because of seeing what cigarettes had done to his lungs even decades after he put the last pack away.

I did pick up his obsessive tendencies with food, however. He was known to get on a kick with one food where he'd eat it constantly before tiring of it and moving on to something else. He wouldn't burn out on the food. Some of these food obsessions were one and dones that seemed to be random. One of those food loves came on an annual basis. Every year when the peaches came into season, he'd buy them by the bushel from the orchards and he'd eat them until the acid from the fruit burned sores into the inside of his mouth. When the peaches phased out of season, he'd put the pocket knife he used to skin and carve the fruit away and wouldn't think about them until the next summer.

* * * *

The funeral was especially traumatic, and I struggle in dealing with funerals under normal circumstances. The family had asked that all of the grandsons be pall bearers for the funeral, so instead of being able to quietly mourn and attempt to come to terms with my loss in the mass of faceless family members under the tent, I had to haul the box containing the remains of what had been my favorite person and stand in front of the crowd. After placing, along with my male cousins, his coffin on the stand over the hole that would soon house his body, I broke down and sobbed, something made more painful by my prominent position in front of the assembled mourners.

* * * *

The version of my grandfather that I knew wasn't the wild child who partied with professional wrestlers and took off for road trips to Mexico and California the same day he thought about going for the first time. My father was born late in my grandparents' lives. Granddaddy was already 40 when Daddy arrived, so by the the time I came around, he was already well into his 60s and had finally mellowed. His poker games had turned into small affairs involving a handful of friends sitting around the kitchen counter and no longer involving my grandmother's car or all-nighters. The drinking was a thing of the past, although he still lived to drive. The man I knew was one who picked me up to go riding and would buy me a coke and a candy bar at the country store every day he was able to from the time I was couple of years old until I was in middle school. He was the guy who watched the Game Show Network on a 50+ inch big screen TV. He was the guy who tripped over his dog in the carport and severely broke his hip and then picked himself up, got into his full-size pickup truck and drove himself to the hospital. He did his rehab on his own in a hospital bed he bought and put in his bedroom and got himself back into good enough condition to return to his mile-long walks down the dirt road on which he lived so fast that I his being bed ridden never registered in my memory. He's the man who never let a sick friend go unvisited. He's the man I never saw attend a church, but exhibited more of the qualities of a Christian than most people I've ever met inside a church building. His eyes never stopped taking on a mischievous gleam whenever he found something humorous, however.

* * * *

After the funeral, I left for my parents' car and after we passed through the gates of the cemetery that day, I have only returned to his grave site once, for the funeral of my grandmother about three years ago. After her services were over, I peeled back the green cloth that covered the plot and saw for the first time the engraved slab that covered his grave and I broke down again. I drive past the cemetery every day now on my way to work, but I have never returned to view his grave. I prefer to stick to the memories of him in life and not think about what lies under that marble marker. Thinking about his life reminds me that no one has to be perfect to be good. Thinking about his death does no good at all.