During this time, my grandfather was nearing the end of his life. He was a wonderful man that I shared an easy, loving relationship with. Here is what I wrote of him and read at his funeral:

I believe that in life we are granted soulmates. Not only in the form of lovers. They can be found in friends or in your family if you’re really lucky (it’s harder to lose them this way). I feel that I found a soulmate in my granddad, and I know that I’m not the only one who feels that way. A fact which says a whole lot about who he was as a person: so open that you could talk to him about anything, so nonjudgmental that it truly didn’t matter, so warm that it was easy. He radiated this positivity so contagious that you couldn’t help but catch it. He had an unwavering confidence in the people that he loved, and you couldn’t help but want to try to live up to it.

All of his life experiences created a man of the strongest integrity and character, an ox as I once heard him described. Experiences that would’ve easily broken a weaker soul: The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, World War II, and losing a child, to name a few. But somehow none of it hardened him. He remained soft enough to express compassion, but strong enough to never compromise himself or his convictions.

I once asked him how he got through some of the most difficult times in his life. With barely a thought, he said faith, unshakable faith. It was apparent to me that a great source of his happiness stemmed from his trust in God, as well as from spending time with his family.

I was lucky enough to have shared the experience of traveling with him to his hometown in Oklahoma. Having witnessed my grandfather with his siblings and meeting our extended family, it became astoundingly apparent how this man came to be...

And at the very end, there was one person he spoke of and yearned for the most…his beloved wife…

And with these three things, I realize that he taught me everything I think I’ll ever really need to know about life and what truly matters: faith, family, and love.

I miss him.

My grandfather was in and out of the hospital his last months. He started losing his cognizance. I remember one time I went to see him, he didn’t know who I was. I sat with him and decided I would stay the night. I pushed my chair right beside his bed.

He was still in there somewhere. I just knew it.

He awoke in the middle of the night in a panic. He looked at me blankly. He seemed scared and out of sorts and like he didn’t know where he was.

I reached over and grabbed his hands and squeezed them tight. He squeezed mine back and blankly stared into my eyes. After a moment, he softened, and I could actually see the fear slip away. I knew he still didn’t know who I was, but that he recognized something deeper in me. Something that he knew loved him and made him feel safe.

I said, “I love you Granddad. Everything’s ok.” And we fell asleep holding hands.

~

Another time I went to see him was in the middle of all the chaos with my love.

It was nighttime. When I walked into his hospital room, he was alert and sitting upright in his bed. I said, “Hi Granddad.” And he just looked at me. He didn’t know who I was this time either, but I was initially hopeful that he might.

I sat beside him, and a nurse walked in. She said, “Oh! How nice you have a visitor! Is this your granddaughter?” He looked at me curiously as if searching for the answer but couldn’t quite find it.

He was talkative this time. And he was acting out the scenario that he was experiencing in real time…we were in a store, and we were shopping for towels. My great Uncle Fred who had passed a few years before was there, which I thought was interesting since they had a bit of an uneasy relationship at times. He was showing Fred towels using the blankets on his bed as props. He really liked the yellow towels he said as he was holding up his white blanket. “Yellow, huh?” I said. He looked down at his “towels” and said, “No. It’s white you dummy!”

I found this hilarious as this was very much unlike the him that I knew.

After a while, we started talking pleasantries the way strangers do. He asked me how I was doing and what was new in life. I told him that I was having love problems. He said something like, “Love is never the problem. We are the problem.”

Am I the problem? Is he the problem? Are we both the problem? Why did I still love him? What is wrong with me?? Why did I hate myself again? Why was I comparing myself to other women in ways that I never did? Why did I feel completely weak and inadequate? What would Betsy say? Why did I let him make me feel this way? Can someone make you feel this way about yourself? Or is it already in you to begin with? How do I go back…Back to feeling confident…Back to knowing that everything’s going to be ok? How do I un-love him?

It was getting late. I had to get back to my daughter. I told my granddad that I had to leave. He looked sad and asked me, “Why?” I was still a stranger to him, but he didn’t want me to go…I told him that I loved him. He didn’t respond. Instead, he looked out the window and said excitedly, “Wow. Have you ever seen so many hawks in all your life?!”

Henry? I stood stunned for a second before I turned to see that it was dark outside and the blinds were drawn…

“The destiny of man is to awaken from their spiritual amnesia and to realign with the original intention of their soul. When the Hawk gets a hold of us in his powerful talons, we will be asked to evaluate who we have become and to shatter our self-created illusions. This will help our inner truth to come out into the open and for it to shine…”