I’m driving my Papa’s car right now. It’s old, but it’s wonderful, and I love it. The seats feel like powered leather La-Z-Boy recliners, and the car doesn’t try to give me any advice. It doesn’t mind if I don’t wear my seatbelt. Not even a single beep or chime; a nice change of pace.
It doesn’t tell me not to change lanes or try to keep me in one. It doesn’t beep with a warning if it feels like I am about to spill my coffee. It lets me be.
All it asks is that I put a lot of gas in it, quite frequently. Which is a price I’m willing to pay for its gentle, understanding silence. The silence lets me make my mistakes and bad decisions and doesn’t try to tell me what to do. It just silently watches me make them and continues being there for me, performing it’s function. Kind of like my Papa, who never told me what to do, and loved me through all of my many, many mistakes with a gentle and loving consistency.
Sometimes, when I’m driving, I can feel my Papa in that car. My Nana. I think about the time they had together, and I think about the love that once flowed through the vehicle. All of the places that they saw.
During my time with this beauty, I’ve slowly been stretching the speakers back out a bit — as it’s been a while since they had any action. They are JBLs, so I know they’ve got it in them. But, it’s been a while since they had to do anything but speak the words off of NPR or an audiobook.
So, I’ve been turning them up, slowly, but surely. Forcing them to run laps, and do wind sprints. Putting them through their paces. It’s probably been a while since this car heard music. But not forever. There was a time when my Papa listened to music, I’m sure. When I am driving, I sometimes wonder what songs made him turn the volume up. What songs put a smile on his face? I never did ask him.
I asked him all I could, while he was alive. But I forgot to ask so many things. I gave too many years to drugs during the time that we shared together. They muted my curiosity and stopped me from asking. On drugs, I once stole from him. My Papa. The man who was once my favorite person on the planet. I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything more shameful than that. Well, perhaps one thing. But, that truly is, or was, the pinnacle of the pathetic part of my life.
I hold that with me now, always. The scars from the things that we do don’t ever really leave us. I did make an amends to him, while he was still alive. But, I wonder how much it meant, considering that a year later I went back to using. He knew how much I loved him, though. And I know how much he loved me.
He was a spunky one, my Papa. In one of his last years, I drove him from Northern California to Southern California in his car because someone needed to drive him. Though, not according to him. From the moment I pulled out of his driveway, to the moment we arrived at my mom‘s, he did not stop talking shit about my driving. Telling me how much he should have been the one behind the wheel. For six hours. Stream-of-consciousness shit-talking. The worst peanut gallery of all time.
Up until the age of 98, he still drove himself to his local neighborhood dive bar probably every other day. Had one drink, maybe three. He knew everyone there, and they knew him. There is now a stool at this bar with his name engraved onto a plaque on it.
At 100 years old, he would throw fists at one of his caretakers, escape from their care, hop in his car, and drive himself to this favorite bar of his. At 100 years old. Just as I’m sure he did as a boy, to escape from whatever powers that bound him so he could go play with his brother in the woods.
At 99, we as a family felt it was time to probably take his keys. But, sometimes I wonder if we should’ve done that. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn’t the beginning of the end. He was one of the wisest men I’ve known, and one of the most impressively independent as well. We took his independence away from him. And though he was smart of dangerous things, my Papa knew that a safe life is not a life worth living.
This was a man who, at the age of 13 years old, walked and hitchhiked his way from North Carolina to New York with his brother Dick to go to the 1933 World’s Fair. At 13 years old.
This was a man who flew in the Army Air Corps during periods of some of America’s most terrifying wars.
He was a man who baked his own bread, both because he knew it was superior to that found in stores, and because he enjoyed doing it. He taught me how to bake bread too. We would knead dough together from the time I was maybe six years old. We would use a starter that had been passed down through generations of a German family, prior to them immigrating to the United States. The starter was eventually given to my Papa by one of their descendants. How beautiful.
And we took away his keys. Even though it was the right thing to do for the safety of him and others, it was also an offense that we probably should not have dealt such a man.
I watched him become powerless over his own body, as he began to fade away. He watched me be born into powerlessness as a vulnerable baby. He then watched me as I became powerless over other things.
However proud we both may have been at times, we both saw each other in powerless states, and in our own ways, helped each other find our way through it. Such is the way of things, however painful it may be. However much I cry, it won’t change anything. This is not my world, this is my creator’s world, and they created it this way for a reason. One day, maybe I’ll find out what that reason was.
I saw him slowly give in to death. I recognized it in his eyes. I’ve seen the same look in my eyes as I looked into the mirror, at a time when I was sure that I was ready to let heroin addiction take me. It’s a look that says, “I don’t want to leave my family and loved ones — I don’t want to be without them, nor them without me. I love them. But I hurt too much, things have grown too hard, and I’m not useful anymore. I’m ready to die.” And God saw there was truth in his eyes, and let him pass on. Just as God recognized the foolishness in mine, and gave the desire to live back to me.
I once got to take him cross-country back to North Carolina when he was around 96 years old so he could say goodbye to his brother. He knew he would not be able to make the trip again. There are very few gifts that I remember giving my grandfather, but that was one of them. I want to learn from that — it is not about the gifts we give around birthdays or Christmas time, but rather the gifts of our time and company that we give to people that are most memorable.
I got to see the town he grew up in — meager, humble, depression-era beginnings. I saw the tiny house that he lived in as a boy, which was owned by a factory and was made as lodging for the factory workers and their families to live in.
I saw the type of refrigerator that they used, prior to refrigerators being invented, when it was basically a large box that you kept a big cube of ice in to keep your food cold. A true icebox.
And I saw the location of the mill that he worked at from the age of 13, operating the machines that spun yarn. They took cotton, and they turned it into thread. An incredibly useful thing. Though, some of you may not find it a very impressive one.
But, he didn’t just turn numbers on a screen into bigger numbers on a screen. He made something. And that is impressive to me.
That is all my Papa’s father ever did for work in his life. Spin cotton into thread. Yet out of 57 years working at the mill, my great-grandfather missed only five days of work. I saw the newspaper clipping from the day he retired that noted this, so it is not just a handed-down, inflated-through-the-years story. He knew the value in what he did, and he was proud of it. Proud enough of it to only miss five days in 57 years.
And I am proud of him, just like I am proud of my Papa. And that is not a “was”, but an “am” because even though he’s passed, I still am proud of my Papa. Proud to be one of his descendants. And I know he’s still here, in some way.
Today I used one of my Papa’s ancient hand saws to saw a bunch of wood boards. It just seemed right to me. While I was sawing, I wondered what my Papa had once cut with it. I wondered what he was building when he used it. I wondered if his father had once used it too. And as I was contemplating this, my Papa was with me. Of that, I have no doubt.
I’m no seer, or believer of finding my future in my palm, nor the paths of stars — but I am pretty sensitive. I have pretty attuned frequencies for listening to the many silences of life, at least when I am sober. Probably because I’ve spent so much time sedated.
People who walk barefoot all the time grow calloused, to the point where the earth becomes just a smooth, solid foundation to them. Meanwhile, the man who only ever wears shoes has very soft, tender feet — as he has lived with a barrier between him and the ground. The soft, tender feet feel every small pebble, stick, and inconsistency on the ground he walks on. Walking is far more uncomfortable for this man. But, I would say he is more attuned to the goings on in the soil beneath his feet due to his sensitivities.
So it is for me today, as I no longer live with the barriers of addiction. I feel small things in a powerful, uncalloused way. And I felt the small things as I stood there sawing in the shade of an old oak tree, alive in a world that I haven’t always willingly participated in.
As I worked, I could feel the hot air around me, I could feel the cool brush of wind against my hands as they moved, and I could feel the graceful eyes of my Papa as he stood invisibly next to me — watching as one of his old saws was put to work once more by a man of his own flesh and blood.
One of the most spiritual, and profound experiences that I’ve ever had in my life was watching my father wade out into the American River to slowly pour my Papa‘s ashes into its current, which was what my Papa wanted. I watched as a golden brown streak traveled down the river. It probably went almost fifteen yards, in a straight, narrow, visible line. Then, in a second, it dispersed, and it was gone. The water took him, or rather, he fell back into it, and became intermixed with it. Brought back into the waters of life. Not dead. Passed on from his life as a human, but very much still in the stream of life.
I’ve grown somewhat superstitious since his passing, and since some of his possessions were passed down to me. I don’t know if it’s really superstition, though. There’s just no way that objects can spend a lifetime close to people, without those objects somehow absorbing a piece of the person they belonged to. For example, I now wear his high school graduation ring on my right ring finger, and his grandmother‘s wedding ring, my great great grandmother‘s wedding ring, on my left pinky.
I believe I carry parts of my past family with me now. I don’t believe it gives me any special powers, but it comforts me and reminds me of all the sacrifices that have been made in order to put me on this planet. Generations and generations of people who were also born into being forced to live this life in the best way that they could, through desperate circumstances, and who somehow managed to raise children.
Children who would someday become my father’s father’s father, my father‘s father, and then my father. They all made sacrifices to get me here. So what sacrifices will I make, to get the next me here? Well, maybe not the next me, but perhaps the next Papa.
