As my suburban rolled down the highway I remember the first Christmas after KJ was born. We all went to my parents for Christmas, the weather was really yucky and cold. My great Grandma and grandpa were planning on coming, but we weren't really sure they would make it with the weather. There was no knock on the door just the sound of the door blowing open and an 80 year old woman racing everybody in the car to the house so she could be the first one to hold the new baby. I know I wouldn't have gotten in her way, and she literally beat everybody to the house. (Everybody else may have been senior citizens too, but Grandpa was known to be pretty spry!) The thought of her running in the house to be the first to see her new great great grand baby made me smile through my tears.
Grandma always said it how she saw it, she was never known to sugar coat anything. She loved her family and could hear a pin drop, where grandpa couldn't hear anything. He was the legs and she was the ears. Together they were one heck of a team. I remembered stopping in to have coffee with them on my way through town while I was going to college. I loved sitting at their kitchen table having coffee and some sugar wafer cookies. Grandpa always had sugar wafer cookies and a full candy dish on the coffee table. As a kid those dishes were so hard to stay out of, we would quietly sneak in and lift the lid and slide a gummy orange slice out of the dish only to be given up by the clinking of the glass lid going back on the dish. It was no different for my own children. Generations of children were tempted by grandpa's candy dishes.
Everybody in our family loves black olives. When we were kids we use to go through CANS of them at holidays. Grandma and grandpa knew how much we loved them too, so they always came prepared with extra cans of olives. One Easter, there was one can left when everybody was ready to a go home. Mom tried to send them home with Grandpa. He wouldn't have it. So I told him I would put them in the car then he would have to take them home. We headed out the door, me a teenager, him a man in his 70's on a neck in neck foot race to the car. Some how he beat me down the stairs and to the car! I had to keep the olives, and I won't forget when he hugged me and said "Keep the olives Stringbean!"
The whole family came to our house for my senior graduation, as everybody was getting ready to leave we noticed Grandpa had disappeared. Later Grandpa and Grandma were getting ready to say goodbye. Grandpa told me I was going to have to come outside. He wasn't a real tall man, and I am at least 5'8" tall. While everybody else had been busy celebrating and visiting inside, grandpa had snuck out to the wood pile to find a block of wood he lugged it all the way to the house and put it on the deck. He took me outside and stepped up onto the block of wood and then turns to me and says "Ok Stringbean, now you can give me a hug!" I hugged him and told him "I love you, you Old Fart!"
Grandma passed away the fall before CM was born. CM never got to meet Grandma, but will always carry apart of her with her, CM was very affectionately named after a woman I loved and admired greatly. Saying goodbye to grandma was so difficult. She held my hand and told me she would be watching me! She was laid to rest in the Prairie City cemetery 9 years ago, and I still feel her presence, hear her laugh and love her so much. I know she wasn't kidding when she said she was going to keep an eye on me.
My aunt and uncle would bring Grandpa up on Memorial Day to visit Grandma in prairie city. One spring they came and had planned on planting flowers at her grave. My aunt had purchased a new shovel on her way up just for the occasion. The spring had been particularly dry. Upon arriving at the cemetery I promptly gabbed the shovel, being the youngest able bodied adult I offered to dig the hole for the flowers. I took my foot and shoved the shovel in to the ground and leaned back to take a big scoop, that dry old prairie sod didn't give an inch but the shovel did! The handle of that brand new shovel busted right off, about landing me right on my can! Grandpa laughed and laughed, "Old Stringbean doesn't even know her own strength!". I teased, calling him Old Fart!
Grandpa celebrated his 96th birthday this fall. My sister and I had stopped to visit him a couple of weeks before, his eyes were getting bad and he couldn't see people well enough to tell who they were. We visited right along for quite a while. I asked him about his birthday in a couple of weeks, and he finally said "Who are you and how do you know it's my birthday?" We told him who we were, he couldn't see us well enough to recognize us! Everything made since after he knew who we were! When we left I didn't know that was the last time I'd hear him call me Stringbean, and hug me good bye. I didn't make it to his birthday party, we were trailing cows that day and I couldn't make it. He had 96 birthdays, why wouldn't he have another, at some point I just thought he would always be there, because he always was!
On Friday October 24th I got the call I knew someday would come, but secretly hoped it never would. Honestly I thought the "Old Fart" might live forever. He had taken a fall, and wasn't going to make it through this one. I made it to the hospital 2 hrs away by 9:00 that night. I stood by his bed as he laid there with his eyes closed peacefully, I told him I loved him very much! The rest of the family stood near his bed and we all began telling and listening to stories about him. He heard Grandma call his name, and finally left to be with her. I will never hear anybody call me Stringbean again, he was the ONLY one to call me that. And had I known that afternoon visiting him would be the last time I would hug him, and hear those words I may have held on a little longer.
Now grandpa is laid to rest next to grandma in the cemetery at Prairie City, his grave site still fresh, no grass and no flowers. Perhaps when spring comes I will have to stick a shovel next to his headstone engraved with the words "In loving memory of "Old Fart" from your one and only Stringbean". I think he'd love that!
