For 5 years and 8 months of my life I was blessed with a wonderful man I called Granddaddy. He wasn't a flashy man with a flashy truck and the home he built for his family wasn't fancy. It didn't take any of that "stuff" to make him the best granddaddy in the whole wide world. Granddaddy most often wore a hat, and in my hazy web of memories I can still see him in a flannel shirt. I remember his mule and can still see him behind the plow; that old cantankerous mule leading the way. To this day I can walk right to his favorite fishing spot. He often walked with a cane and could flick aside a snake with one whisk! I can still see him sitting at the table in the kitchen waiting on Grandma to get the biscuits out of the oven. He liked juicy fruit gum and orange slices and chocolate drops. He wasn't opposed to dipping sugar right out of the sugar bowl and into his mouth. He loved to whittle and the shavings sometimes seemed to reach the arm of the chair! He raised beagles. He held my hand while together we turned the crank to the corn sheller and then he let me throw out the corn to the chickens! He loved his family, his land, his life. There are times when I can still see him laying on the table he used for scaling fish, under the trees...napping. Some say he was an odd man. Not really liking company very much and prone to do a disappearing act when any came near. Others say there was never a more honest man that ever walked the earth and that he was good to them when he didn't have to be. His life was hard. As a small boy he was burned in a fire and later he suffered a nearly fatal water moccasin bite. Both times he had to learn to walk again. A black man, who remained his friend all of his life, carried him on his back until he could get on his feet again. He went to war and suffered mumps while in a fox hole in France. He said he'd never been so sick in all of his life. An accident, while cutting logs, left him broken and bleeding. The same black man brought him home for Grandma to mend. When this dear friend that had been through so much with him died, my granddaddy wept and carried a wreath of flowers to place on his grave. In the end diabetes and a bad heart did to my granddaddy what fire, and snakes and hard work couldn't but not before my brother and I shared chocolate covered cherries with him on his sick bed. I've been told the doctor had to "convince" him to go to the hospital. He knew he would never come home to that place he dearly loved. He fought going as long as he could. In those final days as he slipped between knowing and not knowing he told my mother how much he loved my brother and me and how he wished he could see us one last time and hear his beagles once again. I saw his death through the eyes of a child. Calmly accepting that Granddaddy was with the angels up there in heaven among the clouds. I suspect he got to listen to his beagles as he was lifted up and I pray that he felt my tiny arms around his neck, squeezing tight as I whispered in his ear one last time, "I love you granddaddy." I can only pray that someday there will be those who think of me in just such a way as I hold my granddaddy's hand once again and together we smile down from heaven and embrace those we love....
