Because Sometimes Life Interrupts

Friday afternoon I had to make a phone call that I didn't think I would have to make within the first three months of my marriage. When you get married, you realize that not everything in life is rosy and happy--you'll have arguments, jobs might be lost, people get sick. Loved ones die. I just didn't think that, three months into our marriage, I would be the one to tell my husband that his grandfather was dying.

On Thursday, Alec went to a conference in Tulsa for work. He would be coming back around 5 p.m. on Friday. He called me at about 4:30 p.m. on Friday to let me know that he was on his way back to Norman. About fifteen minutes later, his sister called me to tell me that they had removed Gramps from all of the various tubes and things that he had been connected to for the past little while, leaving him on a morphine drip to keep him comfortable. He wasn't expected to make it more than a day. She was unsure if her brother was done with his conference, but wanted him to be prepared when he came home.

I got off the phone with an obviously upset Amy and took a deep breath. I knew he was in the car and on his way home. Do I call him, or wait until he gets home to tell him? After hemming and hawing for a few minutes, I decided that I should call him. As much as I didn't want to give him that news over the phone, I felt like he needed to know as soon as I could tell him so that he could have as much time to process it as he could have.

Gramps passed the next day, Saturday. I did not get the opportunity to know him well, but I feel blessed to have spent the small amount of time that I got to with him. We went over to see him shortly after our engagement, as each couple does, and received his wisdom from many years of marriage and from finding companionship in his older years. Of course, the things he said are the things engaged couples hear in counseling or from EVERYONE, but it's different to hear it from someone who lived it through nine children and fifty years, until death did them part. He and I chatted about the Historical Society, as he played his saxophone for the USO shows that the Historical Society did around the state a year or two before I started working there, but that my coworkers STILL occasionally talk about. They sounded like a lot of fun :-)

I sit around and listen to the stories that the children and grandchildren tell and I have to admit that I'm a little jealous. I didn't really know my Grandpa because he passed away when I was almost three, and my Poppa and I didn't really get to know each other until after I graduated from college. I enjoy getting to know my husband's family, my new family, by hearing these stories. These stories keep these precious people alive to us.