From the Mouths of Babes

I grew up in Small-Town, IL. Anyone from Non-Chicago, I'm sure, can relate. My family lived in this town for more than 5 generations since finding their way here from Germany. My parents lived in the family farmhouse where my grandpa was born. After WWII, my grandpa brought a wife back from Australia and built a new home next door to the farmhouse.

I grew up making the 100 foot walk to and from that house. Grandpa took me on walks back in the woods behind our house to look for mushrooms after a spring rain. He drove us down to the end of the road to wait for the school bus with my brother and sister and I. He'd take me out into the corn fields to show me how the farm has changed throughout the decades that he'd lived there. He'd sit me on his lap, bouncing up and down while riding the John Deere. I can still smell the freshly cut grass. I can still feel the warm sun on my neck. And I can still feel his arm wrapped around me tightly. He died on May 17th, 2004. I had left the night before to L.A. to make the drive back with a high school friend who was lugging stuff home from college. I was out for lunch with my aunt when my mom called.

I had just started dating my current boyfriend a week and a half before this happened. We were in the midst of that awkward first days when I called him and asked him if he could pick me up from the airport if I flew home that night. He assured me that he'd be there. I got the red-eye out of L.A. with a 2 hour layover in Vegas. I found my terminal in Vegas and laid down in the hallway next to the seating area. With my bags wrapped around me, for fear of having them stolen, and my cell phone alarm set for 15 minutes before boarding, I tried to fall asleep.

Grandpa was no spring chicken. He would have celebrated his 89th birthday that November. But grandpa was about a 50 year old in an 88 year old's body. No one expected him to pass away so suddenly. And he never let on that anything was going on. A heart attack took him home to his Heavenly Father that Monday afternoon.

A week before the visitation and funeral had passed, my boyfriend took me fishing with his brothers, the youngest of which, Caleb, was 10. The following is from a note I wrote to Caleb's mother.