I never was very good at remembering to put the great in front of “Grandaddy”. There was just a tone I’d get in my voice that would differentiate between Meemaw and Grandaddy and….my grandaddy.
The term “salt of the earth” has been around a long time. Some of you might even use it from time to time. Well, that was grandaddy. I don’t think I ever saw him in a bad mood. He just took life as it came and kept putting one foot in front of the other with an unshakable resolve…and, never with a bad attitude. Maybe that’s just a young woman’s memory filtering out the negative; but, I don’t believe that is the case. I have heard nary a negative word about my great-grandaddy spoken, even in passing.
We would follow him around like little shadows – and, his house. I loved his house. We’d sit out on the porch with him and just … just be. There was nothing ever so peaceful as the time with grandaddy on his porch. Oh how I loved to go with him to check on the cows. We’d pile into the truck and go down the road a ways…it wasn’t all that far down the road – just before the little bridge at the bend in the road. Down the dirt track, back a ways we’d go bumping along. And, there they’d be. Or we’d wander over the property. I remember days before the property that is now “Possum Bottom” was developed. We’d wander down the little creek and grandaddy would remind us to be careful of snakes. I can’t say I ever worried about them. Somehow you just knew everything would be ok because grandaddy was there. Nothing could go wrong if grandaddy was around.
When he was struck down with his illness (believed to have been a heat stroke), I was attending Auburn at Montgomery and would stop by every day to visit with him. He loved to see me in my ROTC uniform. As I’d walk in he’d say, “There she is.” He had trouble talking because he was partially paralyzed. I always regretted that I kept putting off asking him to tell me in his own words so many of the stories I had heard second and third hand. But, I would sit for hours with him just knowing he would get better. He was my hero and he was going to live to see my great grandchildren. There was nothing my great-grandaddy couldn’t do. I just knew it. I would rattle on at him about my classes and so many things of no real consequence. I cherish that time with him. It was a great gift.
When I left Alabama in September of 1990 to go to basic training for the USAF, it never dawned on me that my farewell to him was more than just a temporary thing. When I got the call that November day at technical school, I couldn’t comprehend what they were telling me. Then it clicked and I understood. I fell apart and cried for two days. I cried so much and so hard that I couldn’t eat. I could hardly talk. The instructors were so concerned that they actually put me on suicide watch. They just couldn’t understand. My hero – the man who was able to do anything he put his mind to…he was gone. He wasn’t supposed to be gone. He was supposed to sit on the porch with my great-grandchildren and tell them stories about his first car and how things had changed since he was born in 1895…he just wasn’t supposed to die. And, worst of it all – I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Oh, I know it makes no logical sense. We all die. But, even at 19 years of age, somehow I had this deep, firmly entrenched belief that he would always be there. And he was gone.
He was – and to this day still is – my hero. He was bigger than life and had a heart to match. Always, he had time for me. Always, he had a hug and a smile. He never minded me being his shadow and loved to tell tales. He had a way of making the world just seem a brighter and better place.