- a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; -
Seventy-seven. That’s the life expectancy for a male in America.
Women get an extra four years.
My grandfather didn’t make it.
He smoked like a train. I remember leaving his house, him waiving goodbye, and the glowing end of a cigarette, absent during our visit, already trailing smoke up into the night sky.
He drank like a fish. I found out when I was older that his coffee mug never had a drop of coffee in it.
Then one day, the obvious happened. Doctor pointed to a spot in his lungs. “That’s cancer, Mr. Carl.”
Funny thing? Man stopped smoking immediately. What’s the point after you’ve gotten the cancer?
It was a couple years of battling the disease. I was too young to understand, but I knew the chemo sapped his energy.
I watched as Pop-pop’s, that’s what I called, hair thinned, grew skinny, and became pallid. The man that made me laugh when he called me a little girl looked weak now.
Near the end, we took a trip up to his hunting club. It was a week or so of fishing and playing Gin Rummy.
Two things happened that week that I cannot forget.
One, I caught a fish by the tail. Drove the hook right through its tail on accident and reeled her in. My grandad beamed telling the story.
Two, I cussed for the first time in my life.
There was a bench near the pond, and I sat down without looking at it to work on my line.
I missed, scraping the side of my shin on its splintery end and busting my butt on the stony ground.
About then is when I got the hook jammed underneath my thumb.
In fear, I yanked my hand, driving the hook deeper. I calmed down, breathed, and then eased it out of my nail.
I put a worm on the end of the hook and cast it back into the pond.
“Damn it.”
I whispered it. I said it so quietly, I could barely hear it.
I didn’t for a minute say it because I was hurt. I said it because Pop-pop was dying, and I knew it.
It wasn’t long after that we were rushing to his house in the middle of the night. Tu-tu, what I call my grandmother, had found him.
I remember at the viewing everyone laughing. They talked about what a good man he was. I sat in the corner in furious grief. Could no one understand Pop-pop was dead!
Someone took me up to see the body. He looked tired, resting from all his pain and suffering.
My fury left.
These thoughts didn’t leave me. I thought about them all night and sitting in the pew during his funeral. What in the world could justify my grandad dying?
My father gave the eulogy. I don’t remember every word he said, but I remember three things.
One, my father was more upset than I was.
Two, my father knew, in the future, we would tell stories and laugh.
Three, my father spoke of the Kingdom to come, that Pop-pop was already there.
Now was the time of tears, joy, and hope; it was good to be all three.