It is actually past my bedtime, but something is keeping me up even though I have had a very busy day. There is always a first for everything, and I feel lucky to have lived here for as long as I have before this first decided to come around. This morning my 95 year old grandfather passed away. It is the first time since I got married and moved to America that someone close to me has died back home.
Farfar was, as I mentioned 95 years old, he and my grandmother would have celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary next month. Imagine that, 66 years, it is 30 years longer than I have been on this earth. We have known it was coming for a while now, and I think everybody were as ready as they could be, but it still isn't nice when someone you love passes away.
I was briefly wondering what was keeping me from going to bed, but it is obviously because I have not yet allowed myself to start my grief, I have not shed a tear, and it has all seemed unreal. When I came home from a long day at work, all I wanted was some retail therapy, and I went shopping. Did you know that retail therapy is much like peeing in your pants when it is freezing outside? At first it warms you up and makes you feel really good, but once you start cooling down it is not nearly as much fun. Ok that was off topic but I just had to throw it in....Shopping helped me keep everything at a distance, but now, home on the couch, I am beginning to understand what has happened. It is a bittersweet day, the world lost the only person I have ever met, who might be even more stubborn than I am, it lost a person who has seen more than most of us ever will, just think about the differences between 1915 and now. I don't think the world will ever again experience that kind of development in a person's lifetime. The sweet part is that farfar now has the peace he deserved, and for the past month he yearned for it. I don't know how strong he was in his faith, but I do believe that he had a personal relationship with Christ even though he rarely let it on. I am pretty sure I will see him again when my time comes.
Farfar wasn't always the warm teddy bear you expect a grandfather to be, but you never doubted that he loved you. Much like me his two strongest but at times also weakest personality traits were his stubbornness, and his lack of patience. Right now I can imagine him impatiently sitting at the table next to Jesus waiting for his nightcap, consisting of an open faced cheese sandwich, which cheese bought down at the market, half a beer, preferably the cheap one with the picture of the fly on it, and a shot of snaps (Akvavit). It was his bedtime routine, and if it is not offered in Heaven right now, I am sure it will be soon, if for no other reason, because Christ either has become tired of listening to him, or Jesus himself has taken up the practice :-)
I found a quote in 2 Timothy 4:7, that explains how I feel about his death even though it is written if first person rather than third. "I have fought the good fight, I finished the course, I have kept the faith "
Rest in Peace farfar, you will be missed.
Peace!
P
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