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[danuv]

This is the week of carpet cleaning. The rug covering the one small patch of carpet we have covering the living room area (we have a large open dining/living room space with the dining room having old wood floors) has finally died a final death and the carpet under it is disgusting. Soooo... I borrowed my sister's carpet cleaner and am beginning the long process of getting it as clean as it will get. Unfortunately the living room not only houses the tv and all of its heavy crap but the three bookshelves that contain most of my books that must all be moved. It's gonna take a while.

Tomas and I went to my grandfather's memorial service on Saturday. I have quite a bit to say about all of it but I'm not sure how to organize everything I want to say. It brought up a lot of unexpected feelings and thoughts.



We got there a bit late because it ended up being much further away than I thought it was. They had it set up in the driveway of some friends of theirs and everyone brought food to share. Most people had eaten by the time we got there. We said our hellos and chatted for a few and then the friends whose house it was at spoke. They had known my grandparents a very long time and the woman went on and on about what a loving man he was. The man played guitar and sang a few country songs and had similar things to say. A young guy who had apparently befriended my grandfather in the past 6 years or so came up and spoke about their relationship and how close they had been. Then my two uncles spoke and what they had to say was much closer to the grandfather I knew.

My uncle Tommy, the youngest of the three boys, spoke about the things he had learned from his dad, how to fix things, how to grow his own food, and how to be a disciplinarian. Then he said he'd also learned to "move fast" and told about granddad having thrown hammers at him. Then my uncle Tim came up and told a story about how when he was 11 he was daydreaming and not doing his chore and my grandfather grabbed a 7 foot piece of a tree and beat him with it.

This is what they chose to share at their father's memorial service. My dad didn't even speak.

After this Tim started to tell about how when granddad found out he had terminal cancer he started having dreams that would wake him up and he couldn't go back to sleep. So he asked Tim for a tape player so that he could record some of these dreams, thinking that might help him get over them and sleep better.
Tim said the tape player sat there for a few weeks and that one day he went over and granddad said something along the lines of, "I finally made that tape you wanted me to." Tim was of course confused since granddad had been the one who asked for it but brushed it off. After he died several months later they finally listened to what he'd left.

Then they played the 45 minute recording at the memorial service.

It began with my granddad chiding Tim for making him run his own funeral. He talked for a while about what sounded like a trip to heaven, maybe it was a dream he'd had. I'm not sure it wasn't very clear. Then he started detailing all of the many places he'd lived growing up. His father was a sharecropper and they were very very poor. Granddad remembered everywhere he'd lived from a year and a half on. Every place had a name. He remembered the name of the doctor whose Model A Ford they'd borrowed to move to yet another house when he was 6. After he covered all of his childhood homes he went over going to the Korean War, meeting and marrying my grandmother and the births and general temperaments of his three sons.

My uncle Tim was upset that he didn't take this opportunity to tell them he loved them, something he never did. Not once. My dad was angry. But listening to this recording you could hear the love. It was really very full of emotion. It was the most I have ever heard my grandfather talk.

My grandmom was apparently a bit upset with me and my siblings for not having visited him when he was at the end there. But we didn't know him. We weren't close and the memories that stuck out most from our childhoods were not good ones. In fact the day of his service all I could remember him saying to me were mean things, he either yelled at me or was telling me to do something. He rarely really spoke to me.

Then that night when I was trying to sleep I started thinking about all the times he took me out into his garden. They had 14 acres that he planted every year. I thought about how much pride he had in it, how his chest almost puffed out as we walked around. I remembered the year he planted kohlrabi for the first time and he took me down to the plant, pulled some off, brushed the dirt off and cut a slice off for me with his pocket knife. I remembered him taking us out to pick strawberries and muscadines. It was my grandparents that really gave me an understanding of where food comes from and an appreciation for the work involved.

I can so clearly see where all of my own father's flaws as a father came from now. He did try and break the cycle, he made sure to tell us that he loved us, he was affectionate but he was also mean and discipline was always with a belt. And I understand where my tendency to snap at my own kids comes from, my impatience and temper, my habit of making cruel little comments especially to Tomas. I had NO patient grandparents. Every single one of them has/had a fiery temper. Each generation passing its sins on down to the next. Could be worse I guess, Tomas has child molesters on one side and alcoholics on the other. His father broke the cycle in his family by leaving them as soon as Tomas' sister was born and Tomas' mother was very anti-drinking. I need to work harder to control the words that come out of my mouth. Too bad your mouth doesn't have a "send" button you have to hit before you can speak. That slight delay would be nice sometimes.

So, weird memorial. My head is still in strange places.

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