He loved locomotives and pocket knives. I suppose that stemmed from the era when men wore suits and hats and the ladies dressed like, well… ladies. I was fascinated with that period and listened to antiquated music with him.
“When you die, I want your stereo cabinet and records…”
When we’re young, we sometimes view death as some faraway notion and talk with ellipsis as if it is something to ponder but not commit to the emotions.
“Papa” was what I called him. He was old enough to be my grandfather but stepped into a father role. He had never had kids of his own and had lived nearly an entire life when he married Mom. He had wisdom, and that drew me to him.
“You don’t think about CONSEQUENCES,” he’d say.
That word became my mantra, much like we use a “word of the year” today. Consequences was a word I not only wanted to learn how to use but to apply it to my life. Because he was right. I had made decisions without thinking ahead or the results they would cause.
Papa was right about so many things.
He wanted to teach me the value of a dollar, integrity —another word I liked, and many character-building life lessons. I wasn’t the son to carry on his name and had none of his DNA, but somehow, I had part of Papa in me.
It was vital for me to teach my sons INTEGRITY.
“Granddaddy” is what they called him. My Dad passed away early, and my sons never really knew him. Granddaddy made them his own, even more than he had me.
They enjoyed going through his pen knives and looking at his locomotive model atop his chest of drawers. One day, they would each receive a knife.
His era —he was a CeeBee in the Navy and remembered Pearl Harbor well. He could not hold back the tears whenever he talked about the attack, so he chose not to mention it very often. The music. Oh, how Papa loved music. He was a crooner —sang the likes of Bing, Dean, and Frank and would tap his long, narrow foot in those leather shoes with a buckle to Big Band and Swing.
That became my music. Billie Holiday, Etta James, Satchmo —and I knew every beat of a Glen Miller melody. Papa was my mother’s life for 30 years, and he watched my sons grow up and become men.
“You need to hurry and get here. They are saying he may have only an hour left.”
Distraught, I raced to the hospital, rushed through the doors of the ER, and asked where I could find him. I had gone to the wrong hospital. I sped across town almost as fast as tears fell from my eyes but made it five minutes too late.
His era was decades before mine, yet I feel more a part of it than at any period on this earth.