Camera Eye (1)

The Camera Eye (1)

            one blue house for two generations with the cabin in the backyard he built for us and watched us play pretend and paint and hide and run and breathlessly go back and see if he saw

vanilla ice cream chocolate syrup and dress up in clothes when they were young and rummy and dominos and Shirley Temple and birthday shopping and Christmas eve and cousins and Doublemint gum

            after school and on school nights

           

            remembering his stories he reluctantly told about the war more valuable than the business he started himself while drinking black coffee and how he met her the importance to be kind how he was proud of me his laugh his chair at the end of the table and matching leather easy chairs and when he was fat and jolly and could go anywhere

            the summers were the best with the warm air easy for him to breath and go outside on the concrete porch and look at the flowers and hold his new grandson he didn’t get to know were the best times that rapidly came to a close

           

            oxygen tanks

            pajamas

            tubes

            medicine

           

            old enough to know something bad was coming but not old enough to know what to do when it did at am that Saturday being woken up when it was still gray outside and only being told the condensed version that the rest was only told recently not knowing when to cry or what to say or if it would be okay when the sun came up

            so many people cousins aunts uncles old friends and well wishers that weren’t doing any good at all because only could family know all that was lost at 5 am when it was still gray writing the last long letter to him that wasn’t enough

the angel pins

the long line of people waiting to see him one last time

            saying hello and thank you and hugging strangers

            knowing now how important he was and is and he built everything coming from nothing and realizing everything he said meant something even when he was being funny and desperately wishing he could tell one last story before he went or see his newest grandson one last time because he has the same laugh and he could teach him the importance of being kind like he did the rest of us

            missing him privately because it has been so long and should not be hard anymore but after eight years it always will be but not everyday and after eight years remembering the good times that were too good and made that gray morning worse because it was all because of him.

I wrote this blog post about my grandpa that passed away when I was eleven. I have so many fond memories of him, and he was influential to me in so many ways. He built our home, and he also built the business my father took over after he retired. We were very close, and he was the first person close to me that passed away so after he died I had a difficult time dealing with it. I never talk about him, so this was the perfect assignment for me to talk about the way he shaped my family and I.