Today My Hero Traded A Cowboy Hat For A Halo To Be With His Bride

1:11 a.m.  A call from home at 1:11 am could only mean one thing.  Grandpa had decided to join his sweetheart in the next life, leaving broken hearted loved ones in this life. 

As my Daddy broke the news to me about his own Daddy, it didn't feel real. It couldn't be this soon.  It wasn't supposed to happen like this.  The flowers on my table – sent as symbols of sympathy for losing Grandma – were still blooming on my kitchen table.  I sat there in the dark of the night, thinking that: the flowers haven’t even died yet, how has he gone already?  Through tears I told my Dad I loved him and hung up the phone.

The kind of grief I felt in that moment was suffocating and all encompassing.  It was different, this was it, and the last of my grandparents was now gone when just 4 days ago I sat holding his hand, laughing with him, learning from him.  It didn't feel real.  My heart, already battered and bruised, opened with fresh, gaping wounds. It wasn't just pain for my loss, but for my father’s, for my cousin’s, for my sibling’s…for all of us who are part of a posterity he created.

After an hour of being awake, I knelt in prayer by my bedside. In that moment, I felt peace in my heart knowing that he was with his bride.  He always called her that, “my bride.”  It was always the sweetest thing to hear out of his mouth. It was not joyous, I was not happy he was gone, but I felt some peace about it.  And I finally fell back asleep. 

I woke up again around 6 and retreated to the trusty old shower for more tears.  I have always allowed myself that much in moments of darkness in life.  I can fall apart for exactly as long as it takes the hot water to run dry, and then it is time to pick myself up and take on the day.  But today, that wasn’t coming easily. I wanted to stay in bed. I wanted to shut the world away.

My Mom took a page out of LeRoy Shoopman’s book and showed up at my house and forced me to take on the day.  That’s what he would have done.  He never let his days pass by idly.  There is always something to be done, always hope, always time to turn your day around.  So we went to breakfast and ran the dogs in the mountain.  It was perfect.  My Grandpa loved being outside, so an outdoor setting as I struggled to come to terms with what had happened was as close to him as I could have felt.

Six days ago I stood in my Dad’s driveway and told him and my sisters that I couldn't handle Grandpa going too soon.  I told them he better be tough.  I didn't want any tragic love stories here, damn it I am selfish and I wanted him to stay awhile!

But it wasn't in the cards. 

My sister told me today that when I said I couldn't handle this a few days ago, I might have been right if I were alone. “But you aren't alone sis,” she said, “I love you and my thoughts, my heart, and my prayers are with you.”  She is right. I am not alone.  I am surrounded by people who love me. Who lift me up.  Who lend up their strength when I can’t derive any of my own.

So, with a heavy heart, I have to accept that this Cowboy traded in his hat for a halo, to be with the woman he stood by and loved eternally in this world for over 67 years.  What a blessing he was to so many people.  Never a picture of perfection (none of us are), but always a perfect example of striving to be.

He was a soft spoken man.  A marine in World War II who stormed 7 beaches while fighting in the Pacific along with countless other battles for our freedom, yet the most humble of men who rarely spoke of the war and never bragged of his patriotism, keeping the fact that he won many medals and achieved many honors to himself, so much so that even his own family was in shock to learn about them in the last few years.  A China Marine with more dignity than anyone I’ve ever met. Who instilled that gratitude for freedom, that dedication to God and Country, that American pride he defended, into all of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. A true hero in every aspect of the word.

He survived 7 heart attacks, and in doing so kept the promise he’d made to his bride that he would never leave her side.  He loved nothing more than a team of burros pulling a covered wagon.  When I walked into their home after school or for water breaks from hot, dusty, summer days, he always sang as I walked in, “Here she comes, Miss America!”  He showed me small pieces of his younger self in these last closing years of his life.  He told me about how he hot-rodded a Marine issued Jeep on the top of the Great Wall of China. He talked about his first vehicle and "sparking" for the ladies.

Above all though, he loved his wife.  That’s how he taught us all how to live: how to be a good parent, how to be a good grandparent, how to be a good friend – it all stemmed from the lessons we learned about how to love your spouse, to be committed to them above all else, and to thrive in life by following the words in the Good Book to the best of our capabilities. I heard him pray so many times I couldn’t count them, and I will hold in my heart the sound of him reciting the Lord’s name, the way the cadence of his voice always expressed his humility in his Savior, the awe and love to whom we were praying, the way his prayers always possessed more statements of gratitude than requests.

I wrote something once that I revisted today and remembered the commitment I made to him in the moment I was writing it. I will reiterate it today.

The thought of losing him in this life devastates me, and whenever the day does come that he slips to the next chapter, I will be the biggest ball of tears around. However, he has taught, he has loved, he has cherished, he has procured and cultivated and shaped his family into one of the strongest inheritances I have ever known.

So while I beg you to wait Grandpa, wait to see my first born, wait to see me publish a book, wait to see your first great-great grandchild, I know that those wishes are mine, not yours. Those wishes are selfish, not selfless. So because you taught me with all your might to be selfless, I will instead tell you that I STILL beg you stay, but in the same breath, I reassure you that if you must leave, do it knowing that you harvested a great many, wonderful people to carry on your heritage.

We’ve got this.

We will cry and our hearts will hurt and we will seek comfort in the knowledge and belief that families are forever. We will suffer immense loss. But because of you and what you have taught us…

We’ve got this.

“God be with you till we meet again;

Keep love’s banner floating o’er you;

Smite death’s threatening wave before you.

God be with you till we meet again.”