Grandpa's Spring

Seeing daffodils feels like Grandpa saying 'hello'.  Have a photo of him in his Sunday suit in his yard by one of the flower beds he kept up among all the other beautiful flowers in the yard.  It was round.  He stood over a circle almost a dozen deep of rich and pale yellows, or so it seemed.  He was using a cane, or a single elbow crutch, smiling as wide as ever. 

He had been a tough guy in his day, a police officer, Greyhound bus driver, real estate agent, coal miner (leaving school after second grade), among many other things.  The true definition of a 'pillar of the community', more loved and respected than the local, state, and national politicians who knew him well.  He was honest, to a fault, and authoritative in a way that is extremely rare.  When he gave a command, you followed, knowing it was only and truly for your benefit, not his.

He passed nearly eight weeks to the day his 'sweetheart' left us, strong willed to the end, and deciding when he would go to join her, as he did.  Toward the end of his wife's days on Earth, she had declined and to say she was not resembling the young girl he had fallen in love with would be an understatement.  And yet, in a way I can understand, when she passed he saw only that young girl and their best of times, as if who she had just been had not happened at all.  This was who he 'returned' to, and who could blame him?

Neither of his daughter's daughters succeeded in finding a mate that could even begin to come close to who he was and represented.  He became an impossible act to follow.  The great grandson he never met said he missed him; the legend remains strong decades later.  The presence is still felt at times.

In these days, the family legacy continues in his memory.  He is smiling down on us in ways we can often feel, while holding the young hand of our grandmother, and hanging out with our other grandma as well, another legacy in her own right. 

If only all children could know and enjoy such people, the world would not be what it is, or our society would be much further ahead.  They are the ones sent to show us how it's done, and there seems to be always too few of them.