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Okay, I know that I should be happy that he's had such a long and productive life, but you know, I just can't get past that whole dead thing. It's a slow dying, not a quick one, and while he could go tonight or tomorrow, I don't think it's so likely. Probably shortly after Christmas. It's nothing illness related, he's just very, very old. So I'll write his eulogy now, because I won't be able to if I wait.
He'll be 92 on Monday, if he makes it. He farmed all of his life; the family grew truck produce through the Depression (he went to one of the state colleges for agronomy and got his bachelor's from 1930-1934) and they all lived on savings and what they could grow and raise. He and my great-grandmother switched to tomatoes in the late 30s and to corn and soy in the 60s. He got his organic certification in 1993, but had it existed, he could have had it all along... after all, why buy the fertilizer when it's falling out of the cow's butt? And ladybugs, bats and swallows are free...
He was my first real male role model and he and my grandmother and great-grandmother had much of the raising of me for the first 20 months of my life. I credit them with my verbal abilities. They also had me every summer from the time I was 4.5 until I was 12, and several summers or winter holidays after that. He taught me to look out for the little ones, be they kittens, children, or the little farmer down the road. He was a Democrat from his first election, a Mason from his early adulthood, and a freethinking Methodist from his marriage. His people were Dunkards and Mennonite.
I already miss the person he was when I was growing up. He was always merry and patient with a little girl who liked both dresses and getting as dirty as possible; he delighted in taking me into his woodshop and teaching me things my grandmothers would have calved over (and letting me peek at his naked lady calendar, which I thought was so silly!) and in letting me steer the baby tractor (a riding lawn mower with a disk attachment). He was always proud of me and let me know it, and he was the first person to whom I sent my graduation announcement. But he's gone, or in such a far country of blindness and deafness and immobility that I cannot reach him.
This hurts so much, and what's worst is that all I can do is look at train tickets and wait until I get that call that the funeral will be at Saturday week. Delayed, of course, so that everyone has a chance to get those 7 day advance purchase tickets. Because you never want to underestimate the frugalness of a life-long, careful Democratic farmer. (And if you don't think that didn't raise some eyebrows in rural Indiana...)
Good-bye, grandpa. I hope it's peaceful, and for your sake, I hope to hell I'm wrong and Grammie will be waiting to help you cross that bridge.
Pcat
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