A Man to Write About

I haven’t been outside yet today. It’s raining; the sky is silver and the trees are bare and dark, soaked to the core with water.

And my grandpa died yesterday. I know that grandparents tend to die, as do 93 year olds, but death is always sad.

Separation. Incomplete certainty. The End.

It’s a day for being at home.

Of all my grandparents, this grandpa was the one I had the least amount of relationship with. I remember meeting him only twice. He and my grandma divorced when my dad was in college, and he remarried sometime after. He leaves behind this wife and a son who is 27.

This grandfather was my sometimes pen-pal, always full of intriguing stories and unmatched perspective on life. He was a man of military background; he served in WW1, WW2, and Vietnam, and was the chief psychiatrist for the army toward the end of his service. He continued in psychiatric work for the rest of his life and, toward the end, began to teach it.

I am proud to call him Grandpa. Can you tell?

But I wish I knew more about his life.

Do we all wish that we had talked more to our lost loved ones?

I think so.

I wish I wrote more to him. I wish he had had the time and the strength to write more in return. I know he wished that, too. During every letter or phone call I ever received from him, he brought it up.

What is the best thing I know about Grandpa? His CV. I believe that if it were published, it would sell millions. He begins it by saying “This avoids most non-essential degrees, promotions, publications, awards and medals but reveals how poignant learning and teaching occurred.” He goes on to recount how, at age 3, he “wandered away to explore the world,” and couldn’t remember his house number to tell to the people who found him. He tells about the time he and his brother set the chicken coup on fire by trying to keep them warm. The newspaper said they were spanked, but in fact they weren’t. “Thus we had a lesson concerning the Media as well as pyrotechnics.” He writes a very short story which he calls “Mystery”: “Once about age 4 I watched a teen age boy and girl stroll down our back alley with a paper bag. At every pile of horse manure they picked out some little sliver and put it in their brown paper bag. What were they up to? I never knew. I still wonder.”

More than my wish that I had written to him more, I wish that I still could write to this man.