My grandfather ...

My grandfather died 8 years ago today, almost to the moment. It almost passed by without a conscious thought - until the date on this blog reminded me that it is April 1st. I guess that's a good thing - it's one of the first times it hasn't loomed over my day. I am his namesake, and he and I spent many weeks together, often in the summer in his garage. He was an auto mechanic as his "hobby" - his job for the last decades of his working life was as an electrician for Griffin Pipe. He did not have an easy life - not that too many people in his generation did - but I rarely heard him complain about anything. He did not finish high school, but he was a very intelligent man who loved to read and learn. He knew my wife, a doctor, for the last decade of his life, and on at least one occasion, said that he would have liked to have been a doctor. He called my wife (whose name is Liz) Lil' for some reason - we never asked why. He was a very strong man and though he had open heart surgery in 1983, he still was stronger and faster than I was for the next 4 or 5 years - probably until I was in college, wrestling and working out at a much higher level. I have his large, strong hands and I remember looking at his while we were in the hospital as he lay on his death bed. I knew I would miss those hands, hands that were playful yet could be rock solid when they needed to be. I was very thankful that as I matched up my hand with his for the last time, that my hand was virtually identical in size and shape and structure. Of course, mine were not weathered with 85 years as his were. I remember his scar on his hand where the fan from one of the cars he worked on flew out of the engine and sliced deeply into the back of that pad of skin we have between our thumb and forefinger. His hands were not calloused somehow, yet they withstood working on all those machines all those years. His nails became brittle, and he often used clear nail polish to try to add strength to them, otherwise they would split down to the base. We always joked with him that his body was well preserved from the amount of gasoline he took in as he started siphons by sucking on the tube in a gas tank - not something I'd recommend for any mere human!

I remember one time, I was angry with my parents for not letting me drive down to see my friend in southern NJ - I was 20 or 21 at the time. I went anyway, but it was a really hot summer day and I did not check the radiator fluid in the car. Needless to say, the engine overheated on the Garden State Parkway and cracked the engine head. Of course, I couldn't call home - so I called him. Without saying a word, without ever asking me what was going on, without ever berating me for such a choice, he came and picked me up, had the car towed to his garage, where we spent the next week taking the engine apart and fixing it. I enjoyed times like these with him, but I was never into cars the way he was. None of his 6 grandchildren were. I spent many hours out there with him, but I would have spent them with him whether he was fixing a car or mopping the floor. The task wasn't the key. Consequently, I soaked in little of his knowledge of cars - even though I loved science and physics and engineering. I think that was a disappointment to him, but he never lamented it out loud.

Another time, when I was teaching in Baltimore, my car stopped working. I forget why - maybe the fuel pump went. But he and my dad drove down from NJ to fix it on a Saturday in the school's parking lot where I taught. He was just that type of person - he wouldn't say much - he'd just be there when you needed him.

When my high school wrestling career was over and didn't end the way I planned, he took me out for dinner. He didn't often do that with anyone - just go out to eat with them and no one else. But he took me out to "Ponderosa" - one of his favorite places. Again, he never said much and I don't know what exactly spurred him on to do that, but it was something I won't forget. Neither of us knew that I would wrestle again in college, and perhaps this was a way of celebrating (or consoling) the closure of that part of life. Or perhaps he just wanted to cheer me up.

The week before he died, he knew something was wrong. He was popping nitroglycerin pills like candy, but he would not go to the doctor. Later, we found out that he had a doctor visit in the past year, after which he wouldn't even let his wife go with him. He was probably told that his heart was failing and that the very small vessels of his body were blocked and only given so many months to live. He never told any of us, but looking back, he was busy getting all his affairs in order - we found all his bills and papers easily and secured in appropriate piles in his office. I think he wanted to die at home - the house he and my grandmother lived in for 60+ years, the house he and my great uncle built in the 30's in the aftermath of the depression. He hand dug the well in his back yard, with my grandmother hoisting the buckets of mud up from the bottom, dumping it and lowering it back down to him. But my grandmother called me that week and said he refused to go to the doctors - and she knew he wasn't well. I urged him on the phone to go to the doctor to get help and pleaded with him to go until he gave in. He left his house later that day, never to return. The doctors did what they could, but there was little that they could easily do - and he didn't want extraordinary measures used. I remember thinking that this could be prolonged and so my wife, my mom and I got a hotel room to try to get a good rest in that night. My dad was on a business trip to Europe at the time, but he was summoned home. Unfortunately, the next morning, we were called and asked to get to the hospital right away. We got there, but within a couple of hours, he died. My dad arrived at the hospital about an hour after he died, but everyone else had made it. I had not lost someone this close in 20 years - since my other grandfather died - and I was sure that my heart couldn't take it (I have a defect in my valve). I fully expected to have some sort of issue when he died. I had passed out years earlier at my ex-best friend's funeral in 9th grade, and I just expected the worst. He was the first person I ever saw die, but he went very peacefully. The last act he did was hold up the "V for victory" sign - something I wonder about.

My grandfather was not what I would call a religious man, and he did not go to church. The church my grandmother attended for years could come across as quite judgmental, and he could not deal with the blatant hypocrisy. I remember trying to talk to him about faith in Christ, but it was a very scary conversation for me at the time. I was a relatively new Christian, and I did not want to hear that he rejected Christ because of the experiences he had. One day we talked a little about faith in Christ, and he talked of an earlier time when he was baptized and professed faith (after his death, we found a number of very old booklets talking of putting your faith in Christ and it seemed to indicate that he had read them and taken it to heart). While he was not perfect, he was an honest man, a hard-working man, a man who found joy in the simple pleasures of life. He seemed to have a trust in God's sovereignty - though he wouldn't use those terms - and he did not worry about tomorrow. He learned to play the organ in his 60's and he would often play tunes from the faith, which makes me wonder if the gospel truths weren't more precious to him than we realized. It is interesting that songs tend to be the way many, many people actually learn about Christ - through the lyrics and the repetition. I don't know about the faithfulness of that church to the gospel, but I have hope that despite the chasm that developed between him and that church for many years, that he put his trust and faith in Christ alone for salvation. The more I grow in the faith, the more I look back and wonder if he did not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in so many small ways. I would be angrier at that church if not for the grace God has shown me that I, too, am a hypocrite (as are you), and that God's grace is greater than all our sin - though he calls his children to a lifestyle of change and growth. Christ is my only hope - and he is the only hope for my grandfather and anyone who wants to spend eternity with God in heaven. Someday, I'll see him again - and he won't be an old man hobbled by a broken body. And it will be glory and joy if on that day, we can go together and worship the Lord of glory for the first time in His presence, with the joy of never leaving it again ...