My Poper

Poper is the one person I think of the most when I think of my childhood. He was the kind of grandpa that every kid wishes they had. He fixed me hot chocolate every morning, and would listen to me playing like what I said was the most important thing in the world. Sometimes Now I wonder what went through his mind while he sat there under the oak tree on that old faded picnic table. He always seemed to be thinking almost all the time. I know when he was younger Poper did a lot of things that were bad. But I saw the care he had for grandma the way he tended to her flower gardens. He didn't do it because he had to he did it because they made grandma happy and that was all he seemed to want out of life.



I use to follow him out to the garden his shoes left huge marks in the freshly plowed dirt. There was a smell to Poper that I always loved when I hugged him. Much later I realized that smell was sweat and dirt from his garden. The smell of hard work. I can't remember once before he got sick that there wasn't a garden growing inside the chain link fence. I never had a problem eating my vegetables because Poper Grew them. And anything that my Poper grew was wonderful in my eyes. To me he was about a half a step below Jesus on the holy scale. I remember when he'd catch a baby chicken for me to play with and get pecked by the mother hen. sometimes his hands would bleed from it but he didn't seem to mind. He just washed off the blood with the water hose and went right on with whatever it was he had been doing. He made me a small hoe out of a piece of water line and the end of a garden tool. So I 'd follow him around in the garden he'd show me which plants were weeds and I would try to get rid of as many of them as I could before he'd get the water hose placed and start clearing out the rows. It seems my childhood was spent stepping into the large foot prints he left behind. No I realize those weren't the only ones he left.



Poper taught me a lot about love, about life and about how it's not the big things that show someone you love them. It's the little things done with all the love that you can feel for them. Despite all his faults and flaws to me Poper was the model for all things good. He was there for me when I had no other friends. of course at the time I didn't need any other friends because when your grandpa is that awesome why would you ever want to hang out with anyone else.



When I was in the third grade there was a pet show at the fair. I really wanted to enter one of the new puppies into it. because they were so fat and cute and fluffy that I just knew for sure that if it was entered it would win. But mom had to work so no one could take me. I was sitting out on the trailer hitch attached to the house crying and Poper came out there and said "T.J. Don't cry, I can't stand to see you cry." I told him what I wanted and then I have no idea how he managed it but I ended up entering the pet show with my puppy. It won the cutest part of the competition. But thinking back that no longer matters. All that matters is that when I needed him Poper was there for me. He made it happen when i thought that it was impossible.



I won't say there weren't times he didn't embarrass me. He did quite frequently. Like when my dog was hit with the fire truck he told the driver that I was going to kick his butt. I never said anything like that, Later I realized Poper had known the guy and they were trying to make me feel better. Or when the "mentally handicap" Retarded kid moved in up the road. I wasn't sure how to react to that. I was all of 4 and I hid my face in pops shoulder. he said "Well there's no sense in crying for him" right there in front of the boys parent. I wasn't crying I was being shy and unsure. But that was pop always joking and picking on people.



He was a terror in hospitals. They had to strap him to the bed several times. He wasn't dangerous or anything He just was really strong and about half crazy. So he kept pulling needles and things out of his arms. and catheters out and he would yell at the nurses and the doctors. I tried to keep him calm because I could do that if people had just shut up and let me talk to him. But at the time I was a kid and he was a half crazy old man. I don't think anyone realized I was Pops shadow for a reason. We needed each other, He loved me for who I was and let me be a kid. He didn't expect me to take care of Tim and Trena, He didn't want me to be smart or serious or a good writer. He just wanted me to enjoy myself and I did. And more than that I loved him with all I had to give.



When Poper started forgetting who I was I was about 10. I am ashamed to say I stopped going to see him as often because I knew that I was losing him and that It would never be the same again. I told mom this one night in the car. She told me that If i didn't spend the time I did have with him then I would regret it. While I tried to spend as much time as I could it got hard to do. When he looked at me and tried to remember my name but couldn't remember who I was. It hurt worse than I can describe. He was my best friend and he kept thinking I was one of his daughters. The times that I told him my name and He didn't get a look of recognition in his eyes. It broke my heart. The blank I don't know who that is look really was hard to live with. But I kept trying I made it a point to stop by at least once a week. If i had time between school and work. It was hard to do my senior year. both were pretty much full time. Though at work I could never have more than 38 hours. He would sit in his recliner and stare out the window at the mountain and ask me if I could take him home. I didn't even know where he thought home was. I've never seen the place. I was always afraid he thought I was keeping him there against his will. Like I was his jailer or something. I just couldn't take him where he wanted to go.



There were several nights me and grandma sat watch in the hospital wondering if he'd get better so we could take him home or lay there until he took his last breath. The night he did pass we had both gone home after spending weeks there that one night everyone had came in so grandma went home with them, and I had to get back to my husband. Because he thought I should be at home (I don't know if he really thought that, I just really believed he did at the time). Poper died alone in a hospital. I had left my best friend to die alone.



The funeral came and went. Time moved on as time always does. I was driving to work one morning and I thought about stopping to see him. Only to have the heart wrenching realization that he was really gone. No coming back, no moments of clarity where he knew who I was. Just gone, I helped plan the funeral, I threw myself into it to keep myself going but it doesn't change the fact that When Poper died I lost the person that made me feel the most at home. He still crosses my mind a lot. I sometimes will take a drink of homemade chocolate milk and think that any second he's gonna walk around a corner and smile at me. I smell dirt and I can feel the softly plowed garden under my feet again. The summer sun reminds me of the time we spent eating water melons on that old worn picnic table. The world has moved on. But somewhere inside me the kid I once was is still waiting for her Poper to come back home.