My grandpa on my mother's side died yesterday. He was 89, almost 90 - his birthday was in August. He was the last tier of his generation to leave us, grandma died a few years ago, so I don't know what all his passing will mean for the family.
It's always sad when someone dies, but it hard not to be glad he'll no longer be stuck in a dingy hospital room, hooked up to tubes and machines. But what really makes me sad is not that he died (he said many times he was ready), but that he was not able to die at home. Surely he would have died much sooner there, but home is where he longed to be. But in the end he could not eat. He could not drink. He could not swallow. He had no choice.
My mom's family has 8 children and the family farm will be divided among them evenly. It was grandpa's wish that the farm be kept in the family. But only one of the children even farms now and he has his own farm. It was never a prosperous place, just a field with a couple of barns, a few cows, an ancient farmhouse, and a big tree with a swing in it.
We always went to his house in the hottest part of the summer or the coldest part of the winter, so my memories of Illinois are very extreme - biting bugs or biting wind. I remember those sore eyed kittens grandma couldn't help but feed (and the one summer my mom, an aunt, and I gathered many of them up to take to the pound - I didn't see her, but I'm sure grandma cried). I remember that macrame owl that hung by the out-of-tune piano, the 8x10 of my cousin who died as a child, the painting of Jesus in the living room, the old blue sofa, the rusty toy tractor hidden under the benches, the dusty stacks of Reader's Digests, the smell of musty pipes in the bathroom, the antique (but still used) clothes washer in the back hall, the old well that "Aunt Josephine" jumped in (and drowned), the aluminum cups, the sweat bees, the stinky pigs, old Princess - the pony, the squeak of the front door, and great grandma Webb's trailer.
Grandpa always shook your hand - shook it like he would shake it off - and laugh at you as you let your hand go limp in his big one. He wasn't the kind of grandpa who took you fishing. He had 26 grandkids, I'm suprised he knew my name. Honestly, besides the handshaking, I don't have a lot of personal memories of him. But my mom told me that he would often do farmwork for his neighbors - and often enough they would neglect to pay him. "Hall," someone asked (his name was Hall), "Why don't you ask them for your money?" And momma says he would always say, "If they can live with it (cheating him), then I can live without it."
I suppose there are times we should not follow my grandpa's example. Sometimes justice must be done. But there are other times when no justice is needed. I guess we all have to choose when those times will be in our own lives.
Grandpa was born in 1916. He my grandma in high school and they got married at 18. They lived in the same house he was born in...the same house my mother was born in. They had 9 children - Don, Nancy, Peggy, Stanley, Patty, Philip, Randy, Michael, and Danny. Michael had severe downs syndrome and died as a toddler. Grandma died in 1998.
