This is a follow-up to a piece I wrote shortly after my grandfather's death five years ago in an attempt to process his death. If you haven't already read that, then don't go any further until you've done so here.
It’s the moment when you’re pushing yourself to your feet to go grab
something from your bedroom and that old familiar quack fills your ears like
you never thought it would again. You look over in the direction the sound
comes from, and find yourself staring at your fourteen year old nephew’s
gleeful face from across the room. “That sounds just like…” is what you find
yourself saying once you’ve overcome the shock and the tears pricking at your
eyelids, and the laugh of wonderment that leaves your lips is one every person
in the room understands. “I know,” your older sister replies.
Months later, it is followed by a similar quack from your sixteen month old nephew who happily experiments with any and all possible sounds. It catches you in exactly the same way as the last time you heard it.
The Moment, Part Two
Months later, it is followed by a similar quack from your sixteen month old nephew who happily experiments with any and all possible sounds. It catches you in exactly the same way as the last time you heard it.
It’s the moment when you have a space moment to pop in and visit
Grandma. And maybe finish another picture page or two for the family history
while you’re at it. As always, you find yourself sorting through one stack of
pictures or another, because Grandma and Grandpa took thousands of pictures in
their sixty-five years together. It’s some of the best amateur photography you’ve
ever seen.
The first is a stack you’ve been through a million times, but you like
the familiarity of the motion, so you don’t immediately comment about it. You
pause at the picture of Grandma as a young woman bent over to coax a deer into
coming close. This one always makes you smile. When Grandma asks which picture
you’re looking at, you hand it over to her. Before you know it, she’s happily
recalling a trip with Grandpa to Yosemite in the early days of their marriage.
You don’t tune it out because there’s always a new detail that emerges when she
retells it. Usually it’s about Grandpa, and Grandma was always the one to tell
stories (even his). You turn in your chair, lean forward, and give the story
your full attention.
It’s the moment when you roll over in bed to turn off the alarm, and
the clock says 4:15 AM, not PM. You don’t turn it off and go back to sleep.
Instead, you pull yourself out of bed and get yourself ready for work. Keys in
hand, you glance at the clock on the stove on your way towards the front door.
4:45 AM. The crazy part is that this isn’t crazy anymore. It’s what you do so
that you can go do the work you love (and do it well). Just like he did, you
tell yourself.
It’s the moment when your sister comes into your room to show you
something on her cell phone. The conversation veers quickly away from that and
towards that day five years ago. The day the news came with the touch of a
shoulder (for you) and a commander at the door (for her). You laugh and you cry
because the memories are hard to share, but it is so good to hear at the same
time. As she gets up to leave, you finally find the words that have been
sitting on the tip of your tongue for months now – ever since the moment you
first heard that quack fall from your nephew’s lips.
Because this is the moment you finally realize that even though Grandpa’s
gone, pieces of him are still here.
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