Girl with the Flower

     There was a poem that Grandpa wrote for Grandma, stuck up high on the fridge behind a "George Jetson" magnet. I remember looking up at it from the time I could read well into adulthood. I think it was called "Girl with the Flower." Grandpa's handwriting looked like the wind to me, his letters blowing across the paper like dandelion seeds. The poem was about my Grandma as a little girl. Grandpa knew her then. He met her when she was in kindergarten...he was four years older. His little sister, my Aunt Edith Mae, and my Grandma, Patricia, became best friends. In the the years to come my Grandparents would fall in love, become man and wife, raise three children, three grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and grow old together. There was a lot of real and gritty life in-between. The kind of stuff that makes or breaks us.

My Grandparents let it make them...for 63 years.

On November 17th my Grandpa's "Girl with the Flower" passed from death to Life.

It was sudden.

We are heartbroken...still feeling a bit lost.

Most days I go over to Grandpa's for a little visit. I sit in Grandma's cozy, red chair....her needlework still out where she touched it last.

I want her back.

I bet Grandpa does too.

I feel her all around my days.

I bet Grandpa does too.

Their love left an impression on me.

From the poem on the fridge to the way he kissed her lifeless lips goodbye with the words, "my beautiful darling.." tears streaming....

Their love left an impression on me,

it is a part of who I am...

what an honor.