Goodbyes…

I’m not really good at saying goodbye, I never have been.

My grandpa died last Tuesday in the morning. My family had been expecting it, he had had lung cancer for quite some time, and somehow kept beating the odds. I wasn’t very close to him, and I’m sad that I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

I went up to their house in Indiana on Tuesday afternoon with my dad, meeting my brother and mom up there. Even though I hadn’t been to their house in some time (9 years or so I think), a world of memories rushed in the moment we pulled into the driveway. The smell of a warm home with a tinge of cigarette smoke. The way it sounds when you walk from the front living room, to the kitchen, down the step to the back room where my grandpa would sit on the corner of the couch, cigarette in hand, watching TV, usually some sort of car race.

He didn’t want a service or anything like that, so we didn’t have one. We gathered as a family and hung out at the house. I didn’t say much, I didn’t know what to say. It seemed so strange without him there. The TV was still on, and the sounds and smells were still there, but he wasn’t. I loved my grandpa very much. He always wanted me to visit more, but I was always busy. Isn’t that the way life is? We are always too busy. Too busy for hello, how are you? Too busy for, I’m sorry, just too busy.

When I was little we used to visit my grandparents quite a bit. My grandpa built old cars. He had 2 thunderbirds from the 1950′s and a 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang. Every time I went to visit, we would get in one of the cars, he always let me choose, they were all convertibles, so it made the choice quite difficult, and off we would go to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I remember one time I think it was my mom wouldn’t let me ride in one of the cars because they didn’t have seatbelts in it. He was upset because the car was not originally made with seatbelts, but he installed them anyways so that we could ride in it. When I turned 16 he gave the 64 1/2 Mustang to me as a present so that I could have a Mustang to drive like my mom did when she was young. My parents thought better of this and purchased a slightly updated version of the car that was probably more reliable. The Mustang was by far my favorite of the 3 cars, it was the one I requested the most. I took one of my senior pictures with it, don’t laugh….

When my parents bought their Harleys up in Indiana we all went to the bike shop together. He tried to buy me a motorcycle because he thought I should have one. (My mom raced motorcycles when she was younger). My mom talked him out of this one, probably a good thing since I seem to have issues riding bikes into stationary objects and I fell off of my road bike no less than 5 times while trying to figure out the dang clips. But he tried. He loved me a lot, he loved all his grandkids a lot. He had his own way of showing it, and I forgot that for awhile, but he never changed he was always the same grandpa, and I miss him.

Goodbye grandpa, I’m sorry it took me so long, I love you!
Linds

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