The last time I saw him was the 4th of July. We went over to their house to visit. I sat upstairs and talked with Tante Annie and Oma and Mom, and Hannah played on the floor. And Opa was somewhere else. In his barn working, or in his pick-up truck smoking a cigar, or in his chair downstairs reading the paper. We went out to eat at the A&W restaurant. We had hamburgers and rootbeers and whatever else. I had a fish sandwich and lemonade. He had a Papa Burger. Well, he just had a large Hamburger, but he kept talking about how he used to talk Oma and the kids to the drive-in and he’d get a Papa Burger and a large soda. He made comments about how I was fixated on Uncle Peter’s Blackberry. He told jokes. As soon as I remember one it’s going in here. That day, when we got back to Oma and Opa’s house after lunch, he told me to call and I could come visit. I’ve been visiting Grama and Grampa’s so much. But I’ve hardly ever stayed over at Oma and Opa’s. I didn’t call. I had a whole fucking week.
Actually, that wasn’t the last time. The last time was at Hannah’s birthday party. We went to King Buffet for dinner. I sat next to Opa. I sat NEXT TO HIM and I barely talked to him. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???
I know he lived on a farm as a kid, but I don’t know where that farm was. I know he wanted to teach me how to drive. I know he was in the air force. I know he worked in the barn on tractors or… something. I remember always loving that typewriter in the office in his barn. I know he used to own ESSEX steel. I remember the cigar smell in his truck. The one-eyed spider named simon hanging from the rearview. I remember the day he came to our Public Presentations and I convinced him to buy donuts. We went to the Dunkin Donuts down the road that he remembered from something and he bought us donuts. He was listening to Atlas Shrugs.
He had a croquet set in his garage that we only played with once. He had a “secret door” in his barn that I loved as a kid. I hardly ever went up to his barn when I got older. He used to grill hamburgers and whatever on his grill out of the back of his barn. One time he took us to the woods on his tractor and the trailer behind so we could dump something. Brush I think. (The we included Maggie and Beth, my cousins, and I think Tante Cindy. Maybe other people.)
Has anyone ever told you that someone was dead? When I was told my Opa was dead, it was like this numb shock. I was on the deck. My mom yelled to come quick. I was griping in my head about how am I supposed to come quick with all these magazines on my lap. I get inside and she says that Opa is dead and she’s going up to see Oma. He went to the bathroom and he died. And she’s talking and she turns around and I’m staring at her. I’d followed her through the kitchen in the hall in this numb shock, and all of a sudden this wave of feeling crashes through my body and my eyes start to tear up. And Mom says oh honey I’m sorry and gives me a hug and and I start crying. So I have to find pen and paper to write down phone numbers to call my Uncles and tell them, and I’m crying, not heaving sobs, but crying. My Uncle Barry already knew. I couldn’t keep my voice from wavering. My Uncle Peter didn’t. And I called him and said that Mom told me to call him and he asks if somethings wrong and I say yes, Opa died, and he says someting along the lines of Oh no and he’d have to call me back. He is upset. And then Dad comes home and I tell him and then I call Kathryn. And she seems like she can’t hear me. So I’ve told her that Opa died three times. And she doesn’t get it. She goes Open What? And so I yell at her that Opa died. And if she can’t understand me to get a different phone. Hannah is bawling, Dad had said that’s too bad. Mom surprised me. She wasn’t upset at all. Like, she was upset, and a little frantic, but not crying, and altogether relatively calm. I wonder how Oma’s doing. She was always complaing about Opa. What he did and said and stuff. And now he’s gone and she found him and she was the one who was married to him.
I told my siblings I want to make a memory box. A box that can be any shape or size and decorated (or not) any way. About a person or event. Obviously, this would be about Opa. You put items inside or pictures or writing or anything that reminds you of him, or something you did together.
He told me what fruit salad (officer’s) was and I felt so knowledgable.
If you think that I am sounding very calm for someone whose Opa just died, realize that while writing this I have been almost constantly crying, and have spoken with Kathryn several times on the phone. We deal with things differently. She doesn’t cry. She shuts it out, or whatever. It used to bug me. I don’t mind right now. I know we deal with stuff differently.
I miss him, and I’m mad at myself for not missing him more, and not spending more time with him. Half of me wants him back, half of me wants to go to my other grandparents and spend time with them so the same thing doesn’t happen, half of me wants to go to his barn and walk around remember him, half of me is furious with myself that I didn’t spend more time with him. And if you are going to make some comment about my math that would me funny and sarcastic normally, don’t, because it’s just stupid and insensitive now.
Hah. Like people actually read this blog. Which is good, because it’s not like everyone needs to know right now.
He had melanoma and prostrate cancer and he smoked cigars all the time, but he died naturally. Thank you Lord.
I remember once I went up to his barn, the first time in a long time, and I went into his office, and it was just him (maybe the dogs were there). All the lights were out except a small one in the next room. He was sitting in a chair with an attatched (I think) ashtray smoking. In the semi-darkness. And I was going up to tell him it was time to eat or we were leaving or something. And he said he’d be down. And I told myself I should stay. And I didn’t because I couldn’t stand the smoke.
Do you know what I was doing when he died? I was looking through my Seventeen magazines. Totally shallow. Stupid me.
