Twenty one years have passed since my Papa died. Twenty one years.
And still I get all choked up over him.
My Papa was born in 1909. He grew up on a farm out in the country. He and his brothers used to tell people their family had eight brothers and each of them had a sister. He wasn't able to attend school beyond the sixth grade. That amazed me.
When I was really young--maybe 5 yrs old--he retired from his main job. He had worked for this company since the 1920s and even after he was involved in a debilitating accident at work, he continued to work for them. Many thought that the company guaranteed him a job because he was handicapped and couldn't do the kinds of work he had done before; however, his only guarantee for keeping his job was to keep showing up and working hard. He lost the use of his right arm and all of his teeth were either destroyed or had to be removed. He was a young man--strong and determined. He continued to work to take care of his family.
So when he retired, he was able to relax and enjoy his grandchild and luckily, I was one of the younger ones so I got a lot of quality time with him. I remember sitting in the La-Z-Boy chair reading the funny papers out loud to him. He always said he enjoyed listening to me read them. Only once did he read to me and that was the time my sister and I spent the night with our grandparents. They gave us their bedroom. Before we went to sleep he read And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. He read it to us by the light of a (tacky) aqua colored (plastic) lamp. The next day he took us for a drive down Mulberry Street and retold the story. We were delighted!
Shortly after that my grandparents moved back out to the country. There my Papa put in a strawberry patch. Oh my the time and energy he put into his strawberries. And they were oh so very delicious!! There is nothing quite like strawberries still warm from the sun. I don't know that I have ever had strawberries that were quite as sweet, juicy and delectable as the ones he grew.
As I got older, we began to play cards. Often it was just the two of us so clabber was not a good choice. So we played Canasta for hours on end.
The day he died my mother got a call that she needed to get there in a hurry. I had to get to work myself so I got my keys and headed out the door. I remember the moment when I just had a dull empty feeling. I just knew he was gone. I was driving down the road and suddenly everything was just different. And empty. It was probably an hour later that my mother called and told me that he had died. I told her I already knew.
He was a hard-working man who loved to be outside in the sunshine. He wasn't afraid of anything. And to me it seemed he could do pretty much anything.
Oh Papa, you would have taken great delight in playing with my children. You would have loved watching our house be built. . .and no doubt you would have had some very common sense ideas for us during the
process. You would have loved sitting on my front porch watching the world go by, or maybe sitting on the back deck or even the downstairs patio watching the wildlife in the woods.
Miss you Papa.
No comments:
Post a Comment