My grandpa died yesterday morning. I wanted to write something about him, but I just didn't know what to say. I figured that this is one of those times where a picture is worth a thousand words, and so here are as many pictures as I could dig up in the archives of my digital photographs.
My grandpa used to give us kids ice cream for breakfast. I remember him hiding my bowl behind a propped-up book, and blatantly lying to my mom, telling her that I was eating cereal. What boldness!
He always made me feel special and grown-up, especially when I was an insecure teenager, and desperate to be taken seriously. It's probably for the best that my mom has the photos from those years.
But I do have lots of pictures from our wedding...
We had an inside joke. He'd always say, "I'll meet you with bells on." When he came to visit, he'd bring a bell, and ring it loudly. When I was little, I thought this was really cool. When I was older, I thought it was really uncool. When he gave me a bell on my wedding day, I cried.
And I cried again when he asked my grandma from the other side of the family to dance with him.
He was a man of many stories - all of them funny. I once tried to get him to tell me about his experience in World War II. He told me about five funny stories. Nothing serious at all.
He has many grandchildren, and all of us adore him.
He loved baseball. He tried to get some of the rest of us to love baseball too, but I'm not sure if he ever succeeded.
He also has an impressive coin collection. I remember him buying me albums to put pennies in. I collected a very large jar of pennies, but I don't think any of them ever went into the album. (Hannah seems much more fascinated when money that I was. Maybe that's a good thing!)
He loved babies, and just wanted to hold and hold them.
My grandpa was an amazing man with an amazingly generous heart. I can't even begin to say how I miss him.
No comments:
Post a Comment