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So we passed the ‘day of Armeggedon.’ Again. Isn’t it really one big case of Boy Who Cried Wolf now? I mean, let’s say that the Rapture that everyone is so hyped about happens tomorrow. We’re all gonna be standing around going “huh…?” We weren’t expecting it TODAY!? You’re here already?
It’s a lot like the guest who shows up late for dinner.
I couldn’t get excited about Day of the Beast. June 6, 2006 marked the 20th anniversary of my paternal Grandfather’s death. It’s strange, only having childhood memories of someone. He died when I was 11.
We lived a couple of hours away from both sets of grandparents, so seeing them was always a special occasion. Once a summer and on major holidays we’d schlep ourselves into the Oldsmobile and make the seemingly ENDLESS drive from Joplin to Kansas City.
Grandpa smoked like a chimey for most of his life. My earliest memories of him always include him in his rocking chair right by the kitchen entry way, rolling his own cigarettes. He had this funky ashtray on a tall stand with a little push button on it that would open up so the butts could fall way down to the bottom. He almost always wore a flannel plaid shirt, in either blue, or my grandmother’s favorite red. He’d roll the sleeves up halfway up his forearms and you could just see the edge of the blue tattoo on his arm. I don’t know what it was of, it was an old military tattoo. He was a WWII veteran, who was injured on a ship. He ended up having to have his ulna removed.
I remember only fragments and wisps of him… his seat at the table, the way he would call my grandma ‘mommy.’ I remember walking to the pond on a neighboring farm and fishing with him. Almost all of my memories of him were very serious. Not that people weren’t joyful around him, or that he never smiled… just that things always seemed to be ‘under control’ when he was around.
I say almost all of my memories of him were serious, because there’s one that I will never forget. The last time that I saw him.
He and my grandmother drove to Joplin to visit us at the beginning of May. They took my bedroom, and I moved myself into the den to sleep on the pullout sofa. That night after all the lights had gone out and I was almost asleep, my bedroom door opened and Grandpa walked out and slipped into the bathroom. When he came out into the hall again, he saw that I was awake. He stood there with the light spilling out of the bathroom making his white teeshirt and boxers seem luminescent… He gave me his widest smile, raised his hand and waved enthusiastically. He said, “Good night kid!” and turned out the light.
They left before I woke up the next morning.
We were packed and ready to leave for our annual vacation to Table Rock Lake on the morning of June 6th. I had slept on the couch in the living room, excited to go. The phone rang before the sun rose… never a good sign.
That early morning, Grandpa sat up in bed and scrambled for his nitro pills. He took one… then woke Grandma up when he needed another. She called the ambulance, and my youngest uncle. She says she hung up the phone, and Grandpa laughed, and fell backwards onto the bed. She said he was gone immediately.
When the ambulance arrived, my uncle was already performing CPR, they scooped him up and rushed to the hospital. Grandma took her time getting dressed, putting on her favorite outfit, bright red pants, a red flowered blouse, and matching keds.
Every June 6th after that, Grandma would put on that same outfit. Down to the shoes. She never wore it any other time, because she didn’t want it to wear out. My grandmother spent the next 17 years saying she was ready to join him in heaven. The 18th year, she did.
So this June 6th, I put on the brightest red shirt I could find and ignored the doomsayers.
