I like to drive by myself. It doesn't really matter if it is for hours or just around town. It doesn't really matter if the radio or is on or not. Either way, the same thing happens. But it only truly happens when I'm alone. When anybody else is around, there's too much pressure to make conversation or make sure they're comfortable. None of which is a bad thing, not by any stretch. But it is different. When I'm by myself, my mind is able to wander to a different place, some weird space where my thoughts are both melted away and all-present at once. I guess the best way I can put it is to say that sort of driving is a bit of meditation for me, and I'll usually find myself refreshed and my thoughts better organized than when I set out. I've realized we all have so many "That Day"s in our lives. Some are dreaded, some are great. Some are a mixture of bittersweet. It might be the arrival of a baby, it might be moving away for college, or figure out where the next move is afterwards. But, I think the That Day we all most talk about is death. Whether it be our own or our elders. It always seems to open those conversations that none of us want to think about, but we all know we must plan for. "When That Day comes..." Many of you reading this are probably aware That Day has come to our family. My wife's grandpa passed in his sleep a few days ago. We will be heading to Columbus* in the morning for services and whatever else awaits us in Southern Indiana. I don't really know what I'll feel or see, I guess. Maybe I should have waited until afterwards to write this. But, regardless of how things go this week, there are a few things I can say about the sixteen years I knew the man. *Yes, this one is the Columbus the movie is set in. I still haven't seen it, but I have heard good things. Before I met him, I was given all sorts of warnings about how to act, topics and language I needed to be careful to avoid, a general overview of the things he was for and against, not a lot of which lined up well with me. It was pretty intimidating for a teenage boy as I was at the time. In the end, I pretty well decided that I couldn't contort myself in all the ways I was being asked to do, so all I could do was be myself. Like Oasis said, I can't be no one else. And, well, I don't actually know how well it went over at first. I might be a bit of an acquired taste. He did say* at one point, well into Kristine and I dating, that there would never be anybody good enough for his granddaughter. I wasn't some unknown quantity at this point, so it was hard to take it any way but personally at the time. Or now, honestly. *Not to my face, just to be clear. But, time went on, and I am very persistent and very stubborn. And I didn't go anywhere. Before too long, he came not only to respect, but even all the way around to liking me. I still tried to watch my language around them, but everything else got to feel comfortable and easy around him. He always seemed genuinely happy to see me and always had questions for me or wanted to show me something with his guitar. As I wrote here before, even towards the end, he always recognized me and perked up in the hospital when I was around, even when he was having so much trouble keeping everything and everyone else straight. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was nothing, I don't know. But it touched me all the same. The last time we saw him, it was the Sunday right after we had gotten back from our Chicago train trip.* He had moved into a Columbus nursing home at that point. He was doing better physically that trip, compared to the last couple times we had seen him. Not great, but better. Mentally, though, he was a shell. We probed his short- and long-term memory, and there was just nothing there. He did the best he could to make conversation with us, but it was visibly difficult for him and often he had trouble doing much other than just shaking his head a little bit. *I've got a whole posts about trains written in my head and have for some time, but as you might imagine, other things have taken precedence lately. Maybe I'll get it out of me soon. It was a marked change from the man I first met, still tinkering with his beloved truck, still on top of everything Purdue basketball, and, as we all reminisced today, still a bit fiery yelling at Kristine's basketball games. He had been docile and having trouble communicating the last couple years, noticeably slowing down. At the time, I thought he was just having a very hard time hearing and just being isolated from that. In hindsight, I can see the decline now. But that's how hindsight works, then, isn't it? This is a lot of talk about the end, though, and nobody should be judged by the way things end up. Not everyone gets to grow old, but those that do were not old forever. Even Clyde was a young man once. I wasn't around for that, but here's what I pieced together. He lived a simple life, and truly took joy in the simple things. He loved to tinker. He was a Purdue engineer, after all. And many of us like simple things and like to take some moments to slow down and just appreciate the world sometimes. It wasn't quite that simple with him, though. Many times, when we say these sorts of things, we are talking about somebody whose means or background or whatever didn't allow them access to the finer things. Not so here. I won't give away all the family secrets here, but money was never a worry for them, and he was able to retire very young. He spent more time being retired than he did working. Unless you were very close to them, though, you'd never know it. They lived simply. Same little house in Columbus they bought for a pittance today. Just the size of their plot alone will bring in a lot of money whenever it sells. They mostly traveled with their motor home, and their entertainment was fishing and become fixtures at whatever local diner they found. If they had to stay in a hotel, I think their first choice was consistently Motel 6. That was certainly true in Lafayette, anyway. If you haven't been to Lafayette lately, we're a bit of a booming town right now. Lots of new high rises* going up around campus, new factories coming in, and all these brand new or totally renovated hotels. They had the means to stay in whatever room they damn well pleased, but they chose Motel 6 every time. And that was true basically in every facet of their life. *At least what counts for high rises in a town of 100,000 or so, depending on how you count Purdue. I've heard stories about how they took yearly trips to Canada to camp and essentially live off the land for a few weeks or a month at a time. I heard about the lake cabin they used to own that they essentially built themselves and then sold for almost nothing, just barely covering their own costs. They certainly did not cover their labor. We just recently learned from Kristine's grandma they eloped. "We didn't want anything to do with a big wedding," she said. So they just went over to her childhood minister's house and had him do the honors. With a lot of stories like that, you'd just assume there were maybe some shotguns involved. But in this case, it just fits so nicely in the rest of the story. And those are just the stories I know. I'm sure there's so much I've never heard and never will. I'm sure there are stories Clyde took with him to the grave, as I guess we all do. He'll be buried in a Purdue sweater, which just puts the perfect cap on his story. Simple, casual. Unfussy. I don't know what sort of diners they have in the hereafter, but I'm sure he's grumbling right now that the bacon isn't cremated enough and they buttered his grilled English muffin. They'll learn, though. They've got eternity to get it right now. Comments are closed.
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