Tribute to my Granddaddy

Very early this past Wednesday morning, my grandfather died. I got up pretty early, and my mom told me. It was so early that I was not fully operational in the arena of consciousness, so it hit me with surprising force. There were no defenses up against it, and I was glad. I actually felt a small void, a loss, a little human-sized emptiness. It was the first time I can remember feeling that. I haven't lost very many people close to me, and so I always wonder what grief is like. I'm glad I can feel it now, even in that small way. It's easy to take feeling for granted, but I've lived a lot of my life walled away and callous, so I know I'm blessed to be able to feel at all.

So Wednesday I went to work as usual and didn't mention it to anyone until I was taking a break. A coworker spoke about his grandfather, that he needed to visit him more often, and I shared with him that my Granddaddy had died early that morning. He asked, "What did he leave you?" I interpreted it materially, so I laughed and said probably nothing. He reiterated the question; I got it, and answered immediately with a big smile: "Laughter!" We chatted a few minutes about it at the Earth Fare bar and finished with a kombucha toast to life, laughter, and love (who needs beer when you have kombucha?).

YES! My Granddaddy left me laughter. He always smiled, always laughed. What a blessing! He had an immeasurable wealth of stories to tell at anytime. He loved to talk, despite a speech impediment he acquired from a stroke earlier in his life. And we loved to listen. He was an easygoing Mississippi native, having grown up in the heat of the Deep South amidst pines & pecan trees. He would only eat PET brand Butter Pecan ice cream: he said they were the only company who didn't use stale pecans. If you wanted to get him a good gift, pecans were a good bet. Or pecan cookies. Pecan logs. The man loved pecans. I must have inherited that from him.

Tonight was the receiving of friends at the funeral home. Many people came, even family from Mississippi and Kentucky, and honestly... it was fun! There was a lot of laughter. I never know, going into this sort of thing, what it's gonna be like. Will I cry? Will there be heaviness there? The answers tonight were no and no. (Tomorrow may be different.) We were remembering him, laughing, crying, and the overall energy was enormously positive. The life he led was enormously positive. He went at a great time without too much suffering and lived a very full 91 years. We are so blessed by that.

The whole thing's really shifting me in an awesome, invigorating, galvanizing way. This has never happened to me before. The experiences tonight really have opened me to see the impact of a life well lived, seasoned with much laughter and very little worry. And tonight I felt like I received this blessing of laughter, passed on from grandfather to granddaughter, like it's mine to carry now. Only it is truly a burden that is light, a yoke that is easy. I am rich!