Today we laid to rest my grandfather who preferred to be addressed as Gramps. Gramps had a bit of a rough start to life, and his parents weren’t confident he would survive very long after birth. His resilience was palpable and what unfolded was an incredibly full life of 96 years and 47 days between his dash. (1927-2023)
I believe I always got the best of Gramps. Our relationship was light, warm-hearted, hysterical, and in the brief moments of seriousness the wisdom shared was always quite profound.
The tone of this relationship was set when I was about 12 years old. On a regular, routine night I was getting ready for bed, looking forward to crawling into my cozy, soft, comforting bed after a day of school and activities. But instead, as I began to crawl into my bed I felt something cold, hard, and foreign rub against my skin. Saying it caught me by surprise is an understatement, and I threw the covers back to discover the wood and aluminum baseball bats in my bed!
While we were out and about at our activities that day, my grandparents had stopped. We lived about 45 minutes away from one another so this was not a regular occurrence. Neither was having baseball bats in my bed. How dare he! Why would he do that to me? Of course, my initial response was of upset and offense. And this is when I learned one of the first valuable lessons Gramps ever taught me: see the loving actions from others as what they are and then express love back to them in their love language.
Or more simply put: trick the trickster.
It was a deliberate and careful operation which took patience and planning to carry out. But several months later at our family’s Christmas celebration, with Gram knowing of the special gift I had in store for Gramps and with the help of one of my parents, we snuck away from the family gathering and short-sheeted Gramps bed. I had never heard of short sheeting before, but I learned at that time it’s tucking the sheet in at the top of the bed instead of the bottom. When the person attempts to crawl into bed they are pulling the sheet back up toward them and are never able to extend their legs and lay all the way down.
If only I could have been a fly on the wall that night to witness the calamity. Gram has laughed about it for nearly 30 years with tears filling her eyes from the laughter when the story comes up so it must have been quite the show! The warning shot had been fired, and Gramps’s tricks with me didn’t surpass his witty humor, greatly reliant on one liners, from there on out.
You just never knew when the one liners would drop, and I think he used the unsuspecting moments to make them even funnier. A couple years ago I phoned Gramps as his age was increasing and his health was beginning to reflect it to ask his permission to play taps at his funeral in honor of serving in the Korean War whenever that day came. I had never had a conversation with Gramps about death or dying and had no idea how he would respond. Honestly, I was very nervous when making the call, and it took me several weeks to get the courage.
His response will stay with me forever. Slicing straight through any nervous tension and without missing a beat he said, “You’re saying you want to toot your own horn, are ya?” This quick witted humor shone through to the very last time I saw him just a couple weeks ago.
I celebrate his life today, and he will continue to live on through my quick witted humor and writing skills. He was very ready to leave this life having felt as though he had done all he had come here to do. His going home feels like a wish fulfilled. A wish he had wished for over a year.
I also feel heavy grief, but not for Gramps. For my husband. Because Travis has to walk this path alone, removed from the family, the services, the shared memories, and the healing that comes as a result. Because Travis’s only way of honoring Gramps is to reread the letters Gramps wrote him earlier this year.
I knew at Travis’s sentencing this would be part of our path, part of the story, part of the many things we would not get to experience as a traditional family unit. Even though I anticipated it, I could never have imagined the feelings it would stir within me. The raw hurt, grief, pain, and angst. Feeling relief for Gramps and grief for Travis. I could have never foreseen it or prepared for it. And now that it’s here it makes one of the more challenging chapters in life even harder to process.
It also sours the joys in life as well. This past week I stretched myself to celebrate a very dear friend of mine, Brandy, who deserves to be celebrated as she turned 40! It was the first social event I have attended in a very long time, perhaps since Travis received the target letter. Brandy planned a delightful event with food, friends, of course cake, and even a lake front view.
I wanted to celebrate Brandy the way we always had over the many years we’ve been friends, and I wanted to show up with a warm jovial spirit! But truth is, celebration feels different when your husband is in prison, not there to celebrate with you, or simply experience the ups and downs of life together. I’m certain the death of Gramps added to the intense sorrow that accompanied the joy of celebration. A perfect storm of the bitter burn of injustice and death.
The moment I stepped out into the cool night air to get in my car to go home, the dam broke and the emotions poured out. How ironic the celebration was held at a lake. My mind floated back to the final conversation I had with Gramps a couple weeks ago while helping with his care during a tender and sacred time of transitioning from this world to the next.
It was one of those brief moments of profound wisdom. He said to me, “You know you’re in a really tough situation that doesn’t have too many solutions, and I’m in a tough situation that has no solution. What we can do is accept it though. Just like being at war, the sooner I accepted the circumstances the sooner I could adjust to what life was and get through it. You come out the other side better for having experienced it.”
Gramps didn’t just say it, he lived it. He was his very best in his final days. Despite his body growing weary and the great discomfort he experienced of having a body that could only do a fraction of what it used to, he was expressive of kindness, gratitude, humor, and love. He was gracious, encouraging, and understanding.
I can see that Gramps was right. In this situation, it’s in accepting my feelings and thoughts regarding the pain of the separation and all of the messy, wobbly, and complex responses that come with it which allows it to become a strength. Releasing how I think I should show up for others, how I should feel, how I should celebrate, how I should grieve gives me the freedom to be true to myself in each passing moment of now.
As you already know, I made a promise to Travis to become better and not bitter through this entire experience, and I deepen that promise to Gramps to carry on in his honor.
Accept. Transmute the pain. Grow. Embody the best version of yourself to share with others.
A recipe for success!
I felt it was important to share this blogpost in real time. Rather than getting a glimpse of my reflections of a difficult time many months after it happened, you’re invited in to the real, the raw, the in the moment experience of life. After all, isn’t that how we all experience life anyway?
Next week, we’ll swing back to the topic of the reality of the world we live in and how our systems came to be what they are today: not broken and working as they were designed to function.
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Peace & Love,
Janessa