Remembering My Grandpa… Grandma told me once more a few days ago about how when I was little bitty (before my age of recollection) that I loved to walk with her or Mom from my home to the high school where Granddad worked. I would get so excited that I would begin calling out at the tops of my lungs, “GanGad! GanGad! GanGad!” a full block before we even got to the high school. Then, as we stepped into those empty halls of that school, my voice would echo out so loudly that where-ever Granddad was, he would hear me and come running! My earliest recollection with Granddad was getting to sit on top of the floor buffer as he waxed the floors of that high school. I thought that was the absolute greatest ride ever! That was when we all lived in the wind-blown, dusty, little Western Kansas town of Elkhart. My family left Elkhart when I was six years old. For many, many years after that I always promised myself that when I grew up I would go back to Elkhart to live. I couldn’t think of any place better to live…until Grandma and Grandpa moved away from Elkhart themselves. It was Grandma and Grandpa who had made that place so special to my heart.

Soon, my summer destination was Clay Center instead of Elkhart. Grandma and Grandpa had moved there to be near my Great Grandfather. I got to spend weeks each summer staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. So many of my best childhood memories are of those times. Many are just simple things…like the time Grandma and Grandpa took me out to the company that they cleaned. The employee lounge was sparse except for some chairs and a table. On that table was a cardboard box with various candy-bars in it and a can that you put your dime in to pay for the candy bar. There were Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups in that box. I had recently discovered that Reece’s were pretty good. So, Grandma and Grandpa bought me one. Those Reece’s weren’t very filling, though, and before we left that evening, Grandma and Grandpa had bought me THREE of them! I had never been allowed to eat three candy bars in a row at one time in my whole life. As I savored that third one I reflected back on Mom’s childhood stories about how as children the four girls had had to share a single stick of gum between themselves. Knowing that made my third Reece’s even more amazing. I was in awe that Grandma and Grandpa had actually bought me three of them! Now, as a mother, I fuss at my childrens’ grandparents about spoiling them so much…but I never object too loudly, or too strongly…because I know what a special blessing it is in the lives of children to have those few people in their lives who always think they are the sweetest, cutest, brightest, funniest most wonderful child that ever graced the earth. That is the gift Granddad and Grandma lavished upon their grandchildren. A gift I have treasured all my life. A gift that I am so thankful my own children have been given. I am so busy having to correct them and instruct them and corral them…but, I know that the hardness of my hand in their lives will always be balanced by the grandparents who love them blindly. Just as my grandparents before me loved me…blind to all my shortcomings.

Sixteen years ago, in a Sunday School class at a church I was visiting, I met a young man with twinkling blue eyes and a quiet smile. He was such a quiet person and so quick to smile. He reminded more of my Grandfather than any person I had ever met. My heart was lost to him from the very first time I set eyes upon him. Soon we were dating. I told Grandpa all about him. He was not an impulsive young man, and so, it took him much longer to decide we should be married than it had taken me to figure out that fact. I remember Grandpa agonizing with me. He wanted that young man for my husband as much as I did! Like that young man, my Grandpa was easily brought to tears. I remember a few tears slipping down his face as I told him about that young man that my heart so pined for. Eventually, the fella did get around to thinking about marriage. And I have had the fifteen best years of my life, married to the man cut from the same cloth as my grandfather.

Looking back, that was the best gift of all that my grandfather gave me. Better even than the self-esteem and confidence that his love built into my life and the safe place his heart always provided for me, was the pattern he drew on my heart of what I wanted and needed in the man I would spend my own life with.

From the beginning, Grandpa was extra special to Grant. He didn’t have any grandparents of his own still living. He had lost both of his granddads a long time earlier and his memories of them were few. Grant told me more than once over the years that followed what a blessing it was to his heart to have my grandfather in his life…our grandfather. Grandpa filled a void in his own heart.

We will miss you, Grandpa…until we see you again in the presence of our dear Lord.  ¶ 5/07/2006 05:17:00 AM