rat

This past weekend brought many things for me--the ending of my summer at home, the ending of an internship that was nothing thatI thought it would have been, the ending of a man's life who I'll never forget and will always miss terribly.

As those of you who actively read my journal know, on 13 August 2004, my grandfather died. The memorial service wasn't till this past Tuesday, and the interim was spent with family and close friends trying to assess the damage that was left behind. My grandfather, directly descended from a signatory of the Constitution of the United States, was by no means a perfect man or even a man I would expect anyone outside our family to model their life after. He'd been born in Arkansas in 1920, and for him, the civil rights movement never happened--by 1968, he'd grown to adulthood in a segregated nation as a white man, and some habits die hard. This was a man who drank a beer or two every day of his life till three years ago, at the age of 81. He died at 84 having beaten cancer twice, but with a body that couldn't rebound from the chemotherapy and radiation treatment. This is a man who only gave me one material posession, a fiddle that's been in our family for 8 generations now, passed from grandfather to the son of his oldest son without fail, at the grandson's twelfth birthday. With that fiddle comes the responsibility to carry on a family name that has been on American soil for over four centuries. I am his only grandchild that can carry the family name and pass it to children, and with him gone, the load is heavier. This man taught me everything I needed to know about being an adult, but never in words--simply by behavior. He taught me that to lead a family require that you put them before you, whether it be in the sharing of gifts at Christmas or simply being the last to get food before you came to the table. He taught the game of "Tease the Ones You Love" that sustains my family and allows us to draw humor out of life even at its roughest points. He carried the entire history of my family in his head, and now those of us left are trying to patch together the pieces we learned over the years from him. He lived longer than any person in our family ever had, by a full five years. Even with four shattered vertebrae, a softball-sized hernia, and tumors on lung and throat, the most he ever said was "I'm having trouble breathing, and my back hurts," continuing to walk around and enjoy life. Anyone else I know that would have been in his place would never have gotten out of bed and gone straight to the hospital. Anyone else I know wouldn't have saved the only strength left in his body for a handshake for his grandson and a smile for his wife. He never failed this family, and his grip never failed his body. I miss him something fierce.

And, as life is wont to do, it provides joy to go with grief, pleasure to go with pain. Ann came with me to the memorial service, and has been my anchor as I was anchor for my father and grandmother. Last night, in a tradition that goes back to when we first dated three years ago, we went to Bill's Steak Shack here in Houston, as we've done the night before I head back to Texas A&M every time I've gone. Then a friend of ours who'd just gotten back from Afghanistan with the Marines met us and the friend we were dining with to shoot some pool, and the night got tougher with every passing moment. Every song that played for the last hour we were there was a song I knew the words to, and they all made me think of her. On our way back from dinner with my mom two nights ago, I told her that I'd broken a promise to myself by getting attached to her, and she semi-seriously told me to get un-attached. Last night after we got done shooting pool, we went to the park down the street from her house where we've always gone for the tough discussions of our lives. Found out the reason I hadn't seen her for the first two months of summer was due to a guy she was dating in Rhode Island (I'd gathered as much from some of the off-hand comments and her trip to Rhode Island to visit him), which I was prepared for. And then she said "And the reason I can't just simplify everything for you by telling you to walk away is because six years from now, when I'm out of med school, the only person I want to be with is you." As we continued to talk, it was amazing how closely tied our thoughts on the subject of "us" were. I told her the same thing I told her in January..."I'll be there." This girl is considered family on both sides of my family, and my dad dotes on her lovingly as he would a favored daughter-in-law. I'm also close with her family, and get along well with her older sister, grandmother and parents. If there were two young people (21 both of us) in the right place, loving the right person, with the right family, at the wrong time of our lives, it's us. We've spent three years in love with each other, done everything we could to drive the memory of the other from our minds, and we keep coming back to where we began. If it weren't for 2000+ miles of separation for the next two years, I'd put a ring on her finger right now, no second thoughts. As it is, I told her to give me two years, and wherever she goes to medschool (most likely in the northeast), I'll find myself a job within easy driving distance with an accounting or financial firm. It's a measure of how much we've thought it through that I'd already decided to quietly look for a job in the Boston area upon graduation--something I hadn't even discussed with my dad yet because I didn't know whether Ann and I had a future. As it is, the next two years of my education will fly by, and the degree is right around the corner. And most likely, the drinking will curb itself over the span of a few months, as there won't be a face I'm trying to drink out of my mind.

Something I'd observed about our lives struck me pretty hard last night. Last summer ended with us at Bill's, rushing to make it to a wedding in time, watching what we'd made fall apart. This summer ends with us at Bill's, home from a funeral, finally acknowledging the bright future we will build together. I can't wait to see where life takes us.