Memorial Day 1983

My grandpa bill died on Memorial Day in 1983.  I was twelve, and my family was spending the weekend at Sherwood Hills, near Logan, when we got the news.  I remember it being surreal, unlike anything I had experienced, as we drove home in silence.  Driving, we saw the most remarkable thing:  a car with a license plate that said "TRAJAN," my brother's name.  On a regular day, we would have been beside ourselves marveling at the coincidence, but on this day, nobody said a thing.  Grief is no fun.  It's selfish and smothering, annihilating everything that is light and good, normal and right.

I missed my grandpa so much that day!  In the car on the way home, I thought about the last time I saw him.  It was in his driveway as we were leaving for our trip.  He gave me a hug.  My dad joked with Bill that he looked too thin.  They said good-bye and we drove away from Bill, with his fluffy white hair and loving wave.  As the oldest grandchild, I was in the unique position of perhaps understanding Bill's death a little bit better than the other kids.  I remember my brother Josh and my cousin Sarah tearfully fighting about whether it was really our grandpa in the casket.  My grandmother Golda kept repeating the story of Bill's death over and over.  "He didn't wake up, and I let him sleep.  Finally I went to check on him and he was gone."  Interestingly, I was hyper-vigilant about detecting weight loss in anyone I loved for awhile after that.  I thought it might be a precursor to death.

When the funeral was over, I still missed Bill.  All the time.  That summer, Memorial Day stretched out to the last days of August.  We went to the cemetery often, dragging our feet through the wet grass, brushing bugs off the tombstone, getting Slurpees with my aunt on the way home in the sad twilight of another day without Bill.  That is the most surprising thing about death, that the sorrow isn't something that you get through.  It's something that you adopt and find a place for in your heart.  You make room for it.  It changes with time, but it is a permanent resident once it finds you. 

I will see my grandpa again.  For now, I can smile as I miss him because I knew him while he was here.  I saw him almost every day.  He loved me and always kept up on exactly what I was doing.  All my grandparents did.  His death left a vacuum, but one that I have been able to slowly replace with good memories.  My grandpa's gift to me, though I didn't know it at the time, was showing his love for and pride in his family enough times and in enough ways to last us until we meet again.  He got it right.  He got it all right.