the grampa who would not be
by bam
it started so unsuspectingly the other day. the phone rang. a woman was on the line who thought she might have a story for me. a sweet story. a story about how her husband, a retired plumber, has been out in his garage workshop for months, building a playhouse for his youngest batch of grandkids.
i really should come by, she thought. it was quite something. even had electricity so they could hang a lavender chandelier, and, in december, a lighted christmas tree, just like one she’d seen when she was little and never stopped wishing she too could own.
now, those who knew and loved my papa might never take the double twist in mid-air that i’m about to take–knowing that not in a million years would my papa be one to lift a hammer, or, geez louise, string a chandelier. it remains to this day a question of much debate: could he change a lightbulb or did he need to call in an executive assistant (who would be, of course, my mama)?
but as i pulled my notebook off the shelf, headed out the door, en route to see this grandpa who was building dreams for his little grandkids, i was washed over in missing for my papa. specifically, for the grandpa who would not ever be.
it’s odd. my boys are 14 now, and almost 6. so it’s not as if i suddenly realized they were growing up without their grandpa. there were moments when i was awaiting their arrival that i’d felt that twinge, or worse, the deep throbbing, for the truth that they’d not know his belly laugh, or his hot-wired wit.
and over the years, grandpa geno stories have come to slide into conversation almost as if they’d just unfolded the day before.
almost.
but spinning stories, recalling tales that make you laugh more deeply than they should, only because you are hoping that in the deep rejoicing you can sink down into a place where you can almost bring him back again, so you plumb the bottom of your belly, hoping, half expecting.
all of that, after a long while, is only fumes.
it is not flesh and blood. it is not his left hand, the way he wrapped it around his tennis racket. or the indent on his bald head where the farm dog, long long ago, raked its claws through his moppy curls, dug right to his skull, forever left a long comma up where hair had been. it is not the glint of his gold wedding band, the way it always caught the light when he was typing, flashing, shining, with every other downstroke of an “a” or “s” or “d.”
there was something about thinking of this grandpa who was very much a fixture in his grandkids’ lives, who could haul out a jigsaw and cut a heart in the plywood door, who had struggled through the construction of four paned-glass windows, who would hole up in his garage, country-western tunes crooning from the radio, that made me ache for all the hours that had not been.
that made me miss the grampa my boys did not know.
the one who never got to do the 100-yard dash across the front yard, and beat them every other time, just so he could prove that, even with his, um, expanded gut, he could do it.
the one who didn’t teach them how to watch the wristwatch, and make sure to flip those eight-and-a-half-minute burgers at the precise and pre-anointed moment.
the one who didn’t get to teach them prestidigitation, just one from his long list of tongue-twisting words that he used the way most folks use catsup and mustard. on top of everything.
grief is like that. it comes up, sometimes, and taps you on the shoulder. you think you are merrily riding your bike down the gravel lane. but then all of the sudden, the pulsing breathing shadow is there. is right beside you. brushing up, whispering in your ear. you turn to look. and that’s when all of a sudden, your wheel goes wobbly. you tumble. you skin your knees on the bumpy gravel. and it hurts. for a while.
you clean the bits of grit out of your bloodied knees. you put on the mercurachrome, that stingy rusty stuff the school nurse would always drip from her evil dropper. you slap on a band-aid. and off you go.
only, for a while there, it hurts to bend your knee.
and so it was, that as i drove to see this grandpa, my very own little one, riding along behind me, out of the blue piped up about his grandpa geno.
“did grandpa geno ever embarrass you? i mean bring out baby pictures when you were 16?”
i held the wheel, but wondered mightily how his thoughts had drifted in the same direction as mine.
it was my turn to ask a question: “do you ever think about grandpa geno?”
his answer: “not so much. i can’t hear him. i can never hear him.”
ouch. i blinked. blinked and tried to drive for the big lump i was swallowing.
he, apparently, was still interested in the subject: “is he funny? very? would grandpa [he means his beloved new jersey grandpa] like his knock-knocks? [he and his new jersey grandpa have a rolling knock-knock joke routine; it’s been going on for a good year or so, it seems].
“do you remember his knock-knocks? [apparently he thinks all grandpas are synonymous with the telling of really corny knock-knocks.]
“even one?” he asks, insistently. hoping just the way i do, i suppose, for just the tiniest hint of something to hold onto.
he wraps it up, there in the back seat, with this: “i never saw him, before when he died.”
he was born, the little one, a full 20 years after his grandpa died. all he has of his grandpa geno are his mama’s stories. stories that over the years he’s made his own. as has his big brother.
but he has no knock-knock jokes. and no chandelier hanging from a playhouse in the backyard.
and some days, out of the blue, that makes the hole feel very big. it makes the tumbling from your bike, and the skinning of your knees, sting like nothin’ you have felt for a long long time.
sweet friends, i know i am not alone in missing a papa or a mama who is no longer. who is not a part of the everyday of all the others we have come to love. we’ve talked before about missing a parent for who they were to us, but what about to little children who grow up not knowing. only holding onto wisps, but not squeezing a hand that you can feel even now. just closing your eyes. do you get caught out of the blue some days, if it’s been a while? or is it still too new and every day brings a wobbly moment, where you can feel yourself going down, onto the gravel lane?
pull up a chair 
Oh, Barbara, you hit deep emotions with this story. My Mom died shortly after my 16th birthday – 30 years ago this coming October. I can barely believe that it has been so long ago. So, my children never knew their Grandma Adelaide. But they know her through stories told by me and Pop and their aunts and uncle. My sweet little Gracie’s middle name is Adelaide in honor of my mother and my darling Sarah chose Adelaide as her confirmation name without any prodding from me – what a gift that was. The ache of missing her is still great – though not constant – all these years later.
oh boy, if you just didn’t reach right in and get me today. yes, grief is just like that, it hangs around shadowing, it becomes a whole other relationship to tend. save this entry especially for todd and me won’t you? we will need it again someday. in reading it, i grieve not only the past, but the future too when we have little ones who will be without the flesh and blood of grandfathers on either side. not even one. maybe we can adopt some kindly, older male guides, but as you know, you can never replace particular hands or laps or glow.
Oh bam, I marveled at your son’s both knowing and unknowing of his grandpa geno. He knows he is real… even if he does not know his voice.My Finnish grandpa died when I was almost 6. I remember his dusty sandwhich bag that he would open in church, it was always filled with lemon drops. Those lemon drops could keep me quiet for a very long time. I remember him, yet I do not remember his voice. This may be attributed in part to the fact that he was a quiet and reserved Finn who showed his love more than he spoke it. I wish my parents in their preparing me for his death would have told me to remember how he said my name, because the little 5 1/2 year-old me did not hold onto his voice. My parents tell me that when I was 7 and my brother was a newborn, I told them that I thought Grandpa Wilfred would have really like Andrew. My parents easily agreed with my assertion.My other grandpa was with me till the middle of my senior year of high school. He prepared us for over a year that he was dying of cancer. While he still had the strength, he went out to his workshop and made wooden treasure chests (or tabernacles as his hospice chaplain named them) for the five grandsons and sewing chests seven granddaughters. He died two weeks before Christmas, but we celebrated Christmas early that year around his hospital bed in the living room, so that he could present us with these gifts. He also met with each family member one on one in the month leading up to his death. It was at that time that he presented me with a fisherman knit sweater that my mom had knit for him in the 60’s and his dented up canoe which had dipped in the cold boundary water lakes summer after summer. I don’t wear the sweater all that often, but some wise woman once told me that when I do wear it, I will be receiving a hug from my grandpa. I hope that I can one day give my children a hug from their great-grandfather.On another note BAM, when I work with parents, I often tell them that the big questions about the things that matter, will usually come from the backseat while one is driving. It seems that the daily meanderings are showing that this theory is true.
Yes, you are not alone in longing for your papa and the pang growing larger when wishing he was there for our Lifes pearls. What a loss to the wee ones, I remember my grandpa hugging all of us so hard and we just knew he was crazy about us grandkids. We brought each other such joy. Knowing my children will not have that feeling leaves, pools in my eyes.What a compliment to Our papas that we miss them so. signing off, Walking around with scabbed knees for 18 years.
Tucking my 4-year-old daughter in bed just the other night, I found a stone amongst her covers. I asked why she had a rock in her bed. “I hold it to help me think of your mommy,” she answered simply. My mommy whom she never met, who died 10 years ago this summer. And, I might add, whom I rarely talk about, actually.One of those moments when all the skinned knees I ever had came back all at once.Even though that mommy wasn’t that into being a grandma–wouldn’t babysit, never changed a diaper (“Look, I’ve done my time,” she’d say with a wry smile to her second son, the one with all the children), and found her grandchildren to be charming brief diversions from her current novel–I miss her, sometimes ferociously. She would never have been able to answer my anxiety-wracked questions about parenting (after all, her generation didn’t really “parent,” and anyway, her only answer to any such questions was always, “Oh, I don’t really remember, it was so long ago”). She would not have had the patience to sit and listen to either of my children’s breathless stream-of-consciousness endless stories and ruminations. She would have quietly (and non-judgmentally) gaped in wonder and puzzlement at my difficulty with the whole mommying thing. But I miss her, miss her, deep down to forever miss her. My kids miss her. My children have a grandma they never knew, free to construct her just as they wish her to be. Memory is like that too. It smooths over rough edges, like slj’s lake stones get rubbed smooth by the force of ancient waters. Now in my mind I remember the grandma that my children might’ve had in a smoothing and generous light, someone for them to lavish with their goofy love and someone who may even, as she did for us, read to them all the wonderful stories that there are. I miss her, we miss her, but in some quiet miraculous way we have her still.Thanks for everyone’s beautiful stories and comments.
I skin my knees whenever I tell my fiancee about my Dad (who died 26 years ago), and my heart aches because I just know how he would celebrate her today. No doubt he would refer to her as “a dish”, a term you don’t hear much anymore.I played lots of tennis with him when I was a kid, and when he lunged for a shot at the net he would create a sonic boom, yelling as he hit the ball… (this was embarrassing for me AND very cool, because his pipes were so powerful…he was the loudest tennis player around!)
my beloved niece (and only godchild) is named for my dear mother, who died years before my brother’s daughter was born. he made a habit early on of telling his little girl stories of his mother with the same name, infusing her with the essence of the grandma she would never meet. i mentioned to her one day when she was only four years old that she was named after my mom, who was her dad’s mom, too. “oh, i know”, she replied wisely, “i’m his little girl now, but i used to be his mother.”
!!!!! I love that!!! What is it about four year olds?!
What a readership you have, Ms. Barbara Ann; one story more moving than the next. My stepfather died 29 years ago, leaving a 12-year-old son, two stepchildren in their twenties, and a stunned 45-year-old wife. One doesn’t typically die of cancer the same week as the diagnosis. Richard Ross was a character, and people love hearing stories like the one about the day in 1958 when he pretended he was Phillies left-fielder Harry Anderson to a baseball Annie who excitedly approached him after a Cubs game.”Did you get the cake I sent,” she asked?”Yeah,” he said, “It was great. Send me another.”I smile a lot when I think of him, but more I loved his giant intellect and how I learned how to approach a problem and think bigger from him. I loved how he got it about people and how he loved me by really seeing me. Even though he was known as a funny guy, I still hear stories about what he did for others when they hit bumps in their lives. Now my little brother, his son, has four boys of his own, the oldest of whom is another Richard Ross. He asks four-year-old stuff that makes you want to cry about his Grandpa Dick. I was with those four boys tonight — four under four — and wondered what Dick would have thought of all of it. It goes back and forth for me, for whom I feel more sorrow: We who miss him for our children and ourselves, or what he missed by going so early. Man, it’s nice to reminisce here.
Your post came on the birthday of my mother, who died nearly four years ago. All day at work when people greeted me with the routine “How Are You?” I answered, “Watch–I am going to cry right now. It is my mother’s birthday.” And I teared up. My mother’s eldest granddaughter is marrying in two months and we miss so much her presence, because she would have been helpful with every little wedding decision.
ahh blessed carol, i am so sorry for the huge giant hole, and the heartache that fills it. and how it spills, especially, at times like weddings. which is not a day but a season. i hope some solace comes in being able to say out loud how very much you miss her. even more i hope you hear the sound of her whisper as you make some decision, inspired by just the thing she’d have done. blessings….and, yes, jan the stories that fill the table are each and every one heaven sent. bless us all who miss the ones we loved so dearly and so deeply…..