my grandfather, dad's dad, passed away on my birthday last tuesday and we put him in the ground on saturday, his own birthday. i don't know where to begin so i'm just going to post the words i spoke to him at his service. i kind of melted on the delivery so if anyone couldn't understand me through the tears this is it. it's been a powerful gemini season this year and in a lot of ways i'm just getting in to the thick of it, but life is good and i count my blessings.
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Dear Pop,
It was this time last year when I came down to the farm after graduating from college that I realized you and I have a special cosmic bond. It was about June 14th or 15th I remember because it was just before your 88th birthday and it was just after my 22nd on the 13th. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I remember telling you-
“Hey Pop, if I’m 22 and your 88 and our birthday’s are five days apart, that means that I’m almost exactly a fourth of your age to the day. Neat, huh?” It was neat and you got a smile out of it and for whatever it was worth, it was worth something to me. I had never thought of it before, but I guess it’s been set up like this since I was born, but only on my 22nd birthday and your 88th did our ages match as neatly as they did. I wondered if it was a twins thing since we’re both Gemini’s, just like your twins, Dad and Lloyd.
I made it back to the farm a little earlier this year, just in time to help you and grandma down your homestretch. I spent the winter working in the mountains and when the snow started to melt I followed it down the valley and then down the country and flowed south and arrived on the farm around the first of May. I have a tendency to just show up down here without calling because I like surprises and it’s more flexible that way, and when I showed up you had been in the hospital for three days and grandma, starting that day, didn’t have a ride to the hospital to see you. She said I must have been sent by angels to show up when I did, and since I really didn’t know why I was here exactly when I was, except that I ALWAYS gravitate towards this place, I believe her.
For the last month and a half or so I did my best to try and play a role in your peace of mind any way I could, but I think it was you who helped me more than I could help you. Once we got you back to the farm it begin to feel like things were really as they should be. You were home on the piece of land you cultivated, and you not only cultivated the land, you cultivated your family and your principals and your community. Frances and Cassandra and Ann all did a real good job keeping you as comfortable as could be given your ripe old age, I can’t thank them enough.
I would come over from Mama Nell’s in the morning and say hello, then I’d go play out in the fields, and then I’d come back in and tell you about the turkey’s I saw or the frogs that were living in the pond or the inexplicable peacock that found us on the top of the mountain behind the house, and you would smile. I would describe the weather and the wind blowing through the hay and you would smile and it meant a lot to me just to see you smile. And after I sat with you for a while I would go and sit with grandma on the porch, or look through her drawers full of pictures and I discovered something new about your life, and myself, everyday.
It was hard to see your body begin to shrivel, and it was even harder because I have seen that shriveled face and boney body before when my father journeyed through his own homestretch over three years ago. It is a very intense experience to look into your face and know that I came from in there, but it was the kind of intensity I’ve come to look for in life. Dad’s death, when it happened, seemed a little out of order at the time, but you, you were an old man who lived a remarkable life and did more for the community and your family than I ever really understood until these past months. As hard as it was to see you like that and all the memories it conjured up, it is even harder to describe the feeling of having someone on the other side to hand you off too.
Since you passed I’ve been trying think of a way to describe this strange cosmic bond I’ve come feel with you the past two months, and it’s been hard because it’s such an intangible, magical sort of thing that is a part of the very fiber of my being. I don’t know where I end and my dad begins just as I don’t know where you and I begin. I thought our birthday connection might be a way to start talking about it, or maybe that we’re both Gemini’s and Gemini’s are twins, or maybe trying to describe the experience of sending a message to my father through you as we handed you off to him on the other side. I didn’t know how I was going to do it until I received a short email from a high school friend of mine. My friend Chris came out to the farm once for a week in high school and met you and grandma. Remember? He was the one I learned to drive that old red truck with. Chris only met you once, but he knows me very well, and I think I’ll just go ahead and quote him here in hopes something about you that I am eternally grateful for can come through.
“Dear Cole,
I’m in Germany for the World Cup and heard about Pop. Just wanted to express my deepest sympathies and also let you know how great it was to have met your grandfather and stayed with them that week in high school. Not only was he always very traditionally hospitable, but he always seemed an intricate and responsible aspect of the person you are today; kind, loving, and tolerant.
My grandmother died six days before her 90th birthday and it seems, in retrospect, that the things to remember are those which touched your life the most, i.e. the life they lived and the lessons they were able to convey as lessons learned and the examples they were able to set because they were around this long.
Please give my best to your family,
Chris Dillavou”
Dealing with death is never easy, it’s not meant to be, but if there is anything I have learned since losing my father it is that death, paradoxically, is the most powerful catalyst for life there is. There is no stronger motivating force than the example of a life well lived, and you Pop, are a storybook example of how to live the good life. You embodied every principal you stood for, and there is nothing more powerful than that.
During one of the last conversations we had I thanked you for shaping the farm into that masterpiece it has become. A place where people actually feel the energy shift as they come up the driveway. I thanked you for raising my father so well that he raised me well enough to know what’s good, I mean what’s really good in the world. For teaching me to be humble and to count my blessings and to keep it simple but try and make it sweet. To know that if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing right, and that it’s always a good idea to help a neighbor out.
Now I admit this cosmic bond bit sound a little crazy, and I wasn’t sure if I was making it all up or not until you decided to pass away on my 23rd birthday, June 13th. I’m still digesting what it means, and I don’t reckon I’ll fully understand it for a long time, but it feels beautiful and the word “honored” keeps coming to mine. It will take a lifetime to express my gratitude to you Pop. As I learned with Dad, he may have moved on, but the lessons he taught me continue to blossom and come to light in my soul each year I live because some things are hard to understand from some ages. Your influence, I have a feeling, will be much the same. Not just for me, but for everyone who knew you, or knew grandma, or knew your sons or their families. You are the trunk of the tree of my self as well as your family as well as your community. You have earned your peace more than any person I know, and we are all blessed to be your branches, or even just to sit in your shade. I hope you’re havin’ a good time up there with your mother, and I hope you and Dad are telling stories about the good life. You inspire me to find a way to share the blessings I have been given with my community and to realize my own self worth.
It’s sad you’re not around to ask us, “how’s it comin’?” anymore, but it is such a relief to see you released from the body you literally lived to the bone. Like grandma said, “Sure am gonna miss the old fella, but he’s in a real good place now.” You left before I got a chance to thank you for my birthday present, and I understand, because you leaving on my birthday was a gift. I have never received anything quite like it, and so for your birthday, today, I want to give you my word that we’ll take good care of grandma for you, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Laying you into the ground the same day you came into this earth feels incredible and complete and whole to me. It feels rare and divine like you really went the whole full big circle, and you never forgot that character really does count for the entire length of your journey, you even taught it to me. You will be missed but ever present in us all, so happy birthday Pop, thanks for everything, and whenever you and Dad want to whisper something in my ear while I’m walking through the fields, I’ll be listening.
I Love You,
Cole
Zen Quote for June 13th, 2006
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. –Willa Cather
