I’m Back.

At the very end of November, right after Thanksgiving, my grandfather died.  Seeing as he was 95, had only stopped driving at 93, and was generally pretty hale and hearty up until the last few months, this was not exactly a horrible tragedy that had me lying awake at night.

However, it was a time consuming one. (Of the last 42 days of the year, I spent 23 of them in Dallas with the family.)

Now we writers are always telling people that you have to find time to write no matter what — that no matter the circumstances, you can always find a way to write.

I can now assure you that that is entirely untrue.  There are times (like the last 8 weeks) when the last thing you want to do is write (either on a blog or on your work) due to the overwhelming emotional turmoil being visited on you.  When that kind of thing hits you, I now say: Take a pass.  Put down your novel, abandon your blog, but don’t stop writing entirely.  I tried to write a little bit every day — from little micro-fictions to satires based on my family’s drama.  And of course, my pièce de résistance (and the only thing I’m willing to share with the outside world from that time) was the eulogy I wrote for my grandfather.

Now instead of a “traditional” eulogy, I wrote and read a piece of creative biographical nonfiction about my grandfather using details of his life told to me by my uncle.  Since a few people at the funeral asked to be able to read it, I said I would post it here, and now I finally am (six weeks later):

A Life Well Lived

On Monday as we sat around the kitchen table remembering my grandfather’s life, Susan mentioned that he had loved to waltz.

Waltz? I thought. My grandfather?

And as I sat there listening to Susan tell us about the times when he took her country dancing, I couldn’t help but realize that all of our memories and impressions of the man we all knew as James or Orvis or JO or Jimmy or even Dad or Bapa were going to be different.  And that makes sense since we all knew him at different points of his life.

For instance, I’m sure if his brothers and sisters were still here with us today, they would tell us all about my grandfather’s childhood growing up in Texas during the early part of the 20th century. I’m sure they would regale us with tales like the one where he used to sell newspapers, barefoot, on the corner in front of the county courthouse.  And Aunts Hannah Ruth and Pauline could tell us what he felt when their mother died in 1927 and the three of them went to live with Grandma Gant.  I don’t think any of them would claim it was an easy life, but it was one filled with family.

At sixteen, my grandfather left home to work at the cotton gin in Dallas. There his tale would be picked up by the Yates family. He met his future wife, my grandmother Gladys, there in Dallas on the steps of the Swiss Ave Baptist Church, and he eventually lived as a renter in her mother’s boarding house.  I’m sure the Yates could tell us all about him at that time: how he married my grandmother without my great-grandmother’s approval.  In fact, Great-grandmother Yates was so annoyed with the pair that she refused to let Grandma Gladys back in the house to retrieve her clothes.  Gladys was stuck wearing the same pink dress for over a week before Great-grandmother Yates relented.

The Yates could also share stories about the various jobs JO had during this period: everything from door to door Fuller brush salesman to brick layer.  But all that changed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor when my grandfather joined the navy.  From there, my Uncle Truman would have to continue the story since Truman was with him when he enlisted.  Uncle Truman went on to be a SeeBee at Guadacanal, but my grandfather made sure he flew in planes stationed out of Hawaii.  In fact, my grandfather was so determined to make sure he got a position he wanted, that he purposefully placed himself exactly in the right spot of the recruitment line (the navy was using a very sophisticated 1,2,3 placement technique) to ensure he got the job he preferred.

From there, he and Truman returned to Dallas and started a flooring business.  It was here that my grandfather discovered the love of his professional life.  No, I don’t mean flooring.  The two men had built the building that housed the business.  When they sold that building at a profit, my grandfather began on the career path he followed for the next fifty years.  During that time he built houses, schools, strip malls, and all manner of commercial real estate including the warehouses that support ten people even now.

During that time my grandparents expanded their family by having three children – a stillborn daughter and then my mother and my Uncle Ken.  These two could share all sorts of memories about family vacations and holidays, visits to various relatives, and countless birthdays and other celebrations.  In 1971, JO walked my mother down the aisle of the Park Cities Baptist Church. Only a few years later the whole family was back in the same church attending Gladys funeral after her untimely death from breast cancer.

This was a difficult time for my grandfather, but eventually his grief was mitigated when he discovered the woman who would be his companion for the rest of his life, his wife Susan.  I’m sure Susan has all kinds of wonderful stories she could share of their life together: tales of weddings and vacations, like their trip to Vegas, or of evenings spent waltzing or two-stepping to country music.

And finally, the story of JO’s life can be taken up by Allison, Jarrod, Jesse, Mark, and me.  The five of us have all sorts of great memories of him from our childhood.  There were big Fourth of July pool parties and annual, elaborate Easter egg hunts.  There were all those years when the three families, JO’s, Ken’s, and ours, all lived next door to each other; when our cousins were only two gates and one yard away.  My grandfather kept our dog Saber when Mark proved to be allergic, and he spent many evenings with my cousins supposedly babysitting but really just having fun.  There were many happy milestones – like all of our first cars (I know my grandfather and uncle helped my mom pick out mine) and the various graduations he attended.  And of course, there were more somber occasions, most notably my mother’s death.  Although this was a devastating event for my grandfather, he eventually allowed the grief to pass and resumed spending time with the work and family he loved.  And when he finally retired from working two years ago (and only because he decided that at 93 perhaps he really shouldn’t be driving), he continued creating memories out in the sunshine on his back porch with all of us including his great-grandson, Miles.

In the end, it is all of these different people’s different memories that speak to a rich and varied life well lived.  For me the memory is of the grandfather who presided over the dinner table every Sunday night when he took us to the club to eat.  For my brother, it’s the man who lived with him for nearly 6 months so he could finish school that turbulent year our mother died. For Allison and Jesse it’s countless Christmases and holidays with the whole family together. For Jarrod it’s the time he “ran away from home” and walked all the way next door to Bapa’s house where he dumped all his toys in the entryway, and informed JO and Susan that he now lived with them. For my dad, it’s the memory of the meticulous business man who went to make sure every building’s foundation was properly poured and then came back to the office with the inevitable cement splatter spotting his suit.  For my mother and my Uncle Ken, it’s the dad that took them on family vacations, applauded at their graduations, and toasted their weddings. And for Susan, who was married to my grandfather for thirty-seven years, it’s the image of the man that used to twirl her in a waltz.