He is at rest -

Today I made the trip to the cemetery and saw my grandfather (and step-grandmother) lowered into the grave beside my grandmother - it was a sad ceremony - but it in a way it was a healing one - while waiting for the service to begin, I thought about how my grandmother has waited twenty years for her "tardy" husband to "arrive." I waited patiently.

My step-grandmother's ashes were in my grandfather's coffin and she was buried with him - they shared twenty years together and they were both truly good for each other.

The scattered family (both in terms of geography and in blood-marriage relations) came together, albeit briefly - it was touching to see my second cousin lend support to my step-aunt - they are about the same age - and have two very different view points of my grandfather - view points that merged at a common junction. Complicated family dynamics makes them both "sisters" in a way, as my second cousin was raised by my grandparents (she called him Uncle "Bud" since he was her buddy.) And my step-grandmother's daughter went through some hard times and moved in with her mother and my grandfather - and my grandfather adopted her in all but name.

Seeing them hug each other both at the viewing beside the coffin and at graveside - made me ponder on the odd twists and turns that it life. So - unexpected.

My father got up and spoke during the funeral - and expressed a couple sentiments that had everyone in the audience nodding in agreement. My grandfather loved to work (he retired at the age of 92) - and he was an honest, very much respected businessman. While in attendence at the funeral were some that worked with (and for) him for decades - none of them were of my grandfather's generation. He truly was the last of them - out living all his sisters and all of the sister's sons and daughters - it seemed my grandfather was the "old man that worked with my father" to many of those I shook hands with at the funeral.

And one of those people recounted how, after my grandfather had sold his grandfather thousands of cast brass ship fittings over the course of nearly thirty years - my grandfather discovered that he had originally set the price wrong and too high, and the error had gone unnoticed - That very week, he had all the sales receipts for thirty years dragged out of very dusty storage - and he set about recalculating the "right" price - and then after double-checking his work, he drove many miles to give the customer a "refund" check worth tens of thousands of dollars.

That was my grandfather.

And that is why his customers "always came back" and many became my dad's customers.



As emotional as the week has been - remembering all the memories my fifty very active and very full years shared with my Grandfather brings me (my head actually overflows with them) - I have a couple things to fall back on - and one those is the kindness of my friends (that means you!) and the knowing no one could ask for more - either me or my grandfather. My grandfather had a long, busy, very full life doing everything he ever wanted to do. He was surrounded by people that respected, admired, and loved him. He saw the world - literally four dozen or more foreign countries - and how it changed over a hundred years (which is to say, just about everything since the horse and buggy days).

I had a couple surprises too - two collections of old photographs were discovered - photographs I have never seen...


I will scan them in and write about them - when I can. I've a lot of blog reading to catch up on too.

Some of you will remember my writing about my grandmother's father would was killed when crossing some railroad tracks by and oncoming train... there will be an update -