Lessons learned at a sad time.

My grandfather died eight days ago.  He had been so ill for so long, so his death was not a complete surprise, but it is still a sad experience.  He was a great gentleman, mentor, and a lot of fun.  The saddest days are over.  Visitation, funeral service, flowers and cards have all had their usual places in the grieving process.  I don’t want this to turn into an obituary though.  That has already been written and published on a funeral home website, in a newspaper, and read over a local radio station.  Instead, I want to talk about things I learned and observed during the past week.

My hometown is not entirely rotten.  I’ve been overtly critical of the place where I grew up and have lived most of my life.  True, I dislike a lot of its traits, but I love a lot of the people there, and I even find some of the more bizarre traits amusing.  I concluded that if one has to spend four days dealing with death, a small town is the best place to do it.  Caring and praying people are easier to know in places like that, it takes little time at all for a concentration of them to appear when needed most.  There was profound proof of this in the wonderful support shown by so many people through their calling by the house, bringing food because we didn’t feel like cooking, or helping with the organization and unexpected logistics the situation caused.  About 70 people visited the open house held by my parents.  We would have been lost without the help from church ladies who looked after catering and a dentist who gladly allowed guests to leave their cars at his parking lot.  I walked around my hometown one day and was quite thankful to be in a place where friends and neighbours do these kinds of things.

I would be hiding the truth or lying if I didn’t admit there are some incredibly unpleasant, belligerent, and outright toxic relations among extended relatives in the branch of the family affected by this recent loss.  Knowing this, some wonderful people who are not actual relatives were there without question to assist and offer support beyond imagination.  There is the couple who drove an hour to pick me up at the airport, took me to a restaurant for lunch, and helped my family every day, even accompanying my tired parents on the long car trip when they returned me to my Gatineau home.  There are friends who have had similarly bad relationships in their own extended families that provided support.  There is a couple who drove four hours to be there for the weekend and had routinely visited my grandfather and prayed for him daily during his difficult final decade.  Another couple drove two hours from their cosy vacation home on Georgian Bay to visit on Saturday.  For what I lack in extended family, I am richly blessed with what I call my “family of choice.”  These are people who over 25 years of my family being connected with the same small community, have become friends of infinite value.  I am so thankful that each of these people have made the choice to be friends of my family and I, and that we in turn chose each of them as our friends.  I love my family of choice and even made sure I said that during my remarks at the funeral service.  Many of these people had also become my grandfather’s family of choice over the recent years too.  Each of them enriched his life and I hope he enriched each of theirs.

During the four sad days at home, I was again reminded that children bring hope of life continuing when the life of someone old has ended.  At the funeral service, my niece, occasionally referred to in this blog as Buttercup, accompanied her sad Grandma and Grandpa when they made their remarks.  Just seeing a happy little girl reminded me that youth is evidence of the continuum of life.  A thoughtful staff member at the care facility my grandfather had been living in gave my Mom a small, carved, wooden bird to remember my grandfather.  Mom told Buttercup the bird had no name and she responded with “How about Joy?”  What a perceptive and thoughtful three year-old to come up with that!  I told her that her Uncle James was sad because his Papa was gone and she said “I know.”  Anyone who thinks children don’t understand situations involving death is very mistaken.

Buttercup’s six year-old brother, Mr. Six was no different, but offered some entertainment as well.  While his sister and grandparents were at the front of the funeral chapel for their remarks, I saw his head appear from under the chair next to mine.  He smiled and then began to inch his way like a caterpillar across the floor to the lectern where the other three were standing.  Normally, this sort of behaviour would have been stopped immediately by supervising adults, but on that sad day, it made us all happy to see a happy little boy enjoying life.  Later on, Mr. Six and I were looking at old photos of our late Papa.  He especially liked the ones of his curly mustache and the one where he is sitting in an old wheelbarrow having a drink by an outdoor garbage fire.  Mr. Six made me cry a bit when he started talking about those because they were reminders of Papa’s love for life and his eccentricity.  I hugged him and told him I loved him.  Mr. Six responded; “I love you too Uncle James.”  The innocence and positivity of small people is large and powerful.