If you haven't heard, my best friend and grandpa is gone. This is a lot harder this time around. I don't mean that it wasn't easy to say good-bye to my grandma or get the phone call in the middle of the night, but I thought I still had more time to talk to him. I even called him and was waiting for him to call back before I found out.
I lived next door to my grandparents until I was 11. They were always actively involved in my life and very supportive of me. When we changed houses, I still saw them multiple times a week and when I went away to college and grad school, I talked to them on the phone as often as possible. While I was at Penn State, we wrote letters back and forth to each other all the time and still talked on the phone.
I still talked to him all the time. And now I'm having a hard time believing he's not going to just call me right back. I'm glad he didn't have to suffer and I'm glad that he's with Jesus and back with my grandma. It was hard for them to be apart.
My grandpa taught me about hard work. And though he never sugar coated things, he always encouraged me to keep going even when it was extremely hard. There were no excuses. Sometimes life just wasn't fair, but sometimes you just had to practice a little harder.
If you know me well, you know that I get extremely frustrated over the fact that sometimes I just get overlooked for being female. Or people have expectations of what I should and shouldn't do because I'm a girl. Not my grandpa though. He always encouraged me to go after what I wanted and he didn't think I should be in a silly relationship for the sake of being with someone. Life isn't fair he told me, but he knew that I'd find a way to achieve what I wanted if I wanted it bad enough.
He taught me to be generous and genuinely take an interest in people. When I had friends or dates over at the house, he would try to get to know them instead of talking about himself. He loved his family.
I've always looked up to him. I'd like to think that I do take after him in a lot of ways. I got the family nose from him. I'm certainly stubborn, but also have a deep sense of responsibility to care for my family and friends. I think we had an understanding that being the oldest child comes with a certain set of responsibilities and unspoken rules that are sometimes pretty awesome and sometimes...not so much.
My grandpa and grandma were equal partners in their relationship. He also took amazing care of my grandma even after she got Alzheimer's. The rest of the family didn't even know it for years because of how well he compensated for her. He let her live normally and was always by her side. Looking at them, that's what I would want.
I could ramble on for a lot longer, but he wouldn't like that. I just miss him more than I can say. And I'm glad he's home.
