The glue that held our family together

Saturday's visit with the old boy

This post will be a bit of a hodge-podge.  Classes are over for the semester, my mother in law is back home in Tampa and I finally feel like posting again.  Thoughts of Gumpy are never far away from the front of my mind.  I still cry occasionally and yearn for his counsel.  It's been almost two years, and while I know that his suffering ended the day he died, it sometimes feels like my pain is just beginning.

A colleague forwarded a great blog post to me yesterday, I read Cranking on my phone in the garage because there was something in Jer's message that compelled me to read the post immediately.  I couldn't help but relate to much of Merlin Mann's story.  Sure, I wasn't a kid when Gumpy died, but I can relate to the feeling of drifting away from the things that I truly find important in life.  While I am fortunate to be writing about the city I love and pursuing a degree that fascinates me, I still need reminders to be take a few minutes out to appreciate my family.  Gladys was a little surprised when I walked upstairs and hugged her. I always give her a peck on the cheek and a hug when I get home, but today I needed that hug to last just a little longer.

Saturday it dawned on me that Gumpy truly was the glue that held our little family together.  Instinctively I guess I knew that but the events of a normally happy mini-reunion at the Syrup Festival really made me take notice.  None of us would have dreamed of behaving the way we did if he were still alive.  We all let our pettiness and bitterness of arguments new and old taint the day.

There is always tension in any family, ours is no exception.  Where we were once very different was in the way Gumpy would handle it.  His laugh was infectious and it was hard to stay sore at someone when he could get you to join in on the laughter.  If that didn't work, outrageous statements like, "that will make you a man before your mother" would be leveled at the offending party, which always made us chuckle.

It was his way of making sure we all stayed together.  His biggest worry when he died was that we all stay talking, that we all remember we are family and that we all stuck together.  My grandparents purposefully paid for our immediate family to spend the weekend in St. Ignace, MI with them ostensibly for their 50th anniversary.  Gumpy's real reason was to make sure that we knew his nephew Frank and that we had time with my Uncle Jim and his family.  His family was his proudest accomplishment and his greatest torment.

This isn't a post to air the family's dirty laundry, rather I am lamenting Gumpy's ability to make us all laugh, to come together and to stop the games that pull us apart.  He was our carpenter's glue if you will. After reading Mann's post and reflecting on the events of our family time at the farm together, I couldn't get my mind off the void I still feel every time I think about my grandfather.  

Ironically, when I was a teenager, he was afraid I would never be able to laugh again.  I was always so dour.  His patience with me showed me how to laugh again.  He had a great sense of humor and timing. I miss the nicknames.  I miss the jokes.  I miss the outrageous statements.  I miss going up town for a crappy tasting cup of coffee at Ken's Standard Station with him.  I miss the pancake breakfasts at the fire barn during the Syrup Festival with him.  I miss the way he would clap his hands when he was ready to leave.  I miss his smile.  I miss hearing him admonish me not to strain my milk.

Most of all, I miss his ability to bring us all together.

Growing out of the stories Gumpy left me with

I've really missed Gumpy a lot the past few weeks.  He wasn't one for telling me how to handle something or to tell me what I should do.  He was big on telling me about his experience and letting me learn from him.  Now that I'm at a point in life that he would have been very familiar with, I really miss the wisdom of his stories.

Gladys' mom decided she wanted to stay with us for a few months.  Most people who can head from Michigan to Florida around Thanksgiving but Rosa really missed Gladys, so she rode back to Detroit with us after our last visit to Tampa.  She has a ton of health challenges that have allowed us to become very familiar with Henry Ford Hospital and their staff.  Now she's understandably homesick, yet her health will not yet allow us to take her home.

This is where I could use Gumpy's help.  It was different when he was ill.  Ema was his full-time caregiver, I merely filled in during emergencies and weekends.  I worried, I would race to the hospital whenever I could and I tried to do as much as I could, but Ema handled the heavy lifting.

We are now the full-time caregivers.  Gladys is use to this, I'm not as much.  I am not afraid of the responsibility, in fact I am glad that I am trusted enough to fill the role.  Where I need Gumpy's insight is on softening my hard edges, how to balance my role as a man and a caregiver.  Both Ema and Gumpy had considerable experience in this, and Ema does provide a little insight.  But no one will be able to replace Gumpy.

When my grandparents were first married, Gumpy was a boomer for the railroad.  As he explained, a boomer was someone who hopped from railroad to railroad, each time moving up the pay scale while infuriating the previous boss.  Boomers were always good at their jobs and never had trouble finding employment.  Once the kids came, Gumpy decided to settle down and work for one railroad.

As I recall, his choice was the Florida Southern Railroad.  They moved their little family to Florida with no family and the promise of a new job.  (I still can't imagine how those conversations went, Ema ended up in a new town with three toddlers.)  As they were approaching their first year in Florida, Ema's dad Byron called.  He had cancer and needed Ema (his only child) to move home.  So, they packed their little family and headed back to Vermontville to take care of Byron.

Byron was about 50 when Ema was born, so he would have been approaching 80 when this was all taking place.  He was already a tiny man, especially by today's standards.  While being shipped to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War, he contracted malaria, which significantly limited his vitality.  He was unable to farm on his own, so there were always hired men helping work the 60 or so tillable acres.  Yet, he was still a loving father and grandfather.  Even after his diagnosis, he lived for several years in the small farm house with his daughter, son-in-law and three rambunctious kids.

And that's what I want to hear Gumpy talk about.  Sure, the circumstances are different.  Rosa is staying in our house and Gumpy was living at Byron's farm.  My grandparents had kids, Gladys and I are still working on that.  The move to the farm was permanent for Gumpy, Rosa's visit with us will last until she is healthy enough to safely travel back to Tampa.  But there is enough similarity to have me wondering what Gumpy would do, how he would handle things and what advice he would have for me.

In a way, this post is just about me reaching another milestone in life as it is a rant about me missing my grandfather.  My life is growing out of the stories he left me.  I wasn't ready for stories about this when he could tell them to me.  Now that I am ready, I don't have him to turn to.

I really could use a cup of coffee with the old boy right about now.

My Early Memories of Gumpy

Memories can be fickle.   They can be vivid one day and fleeting the next.  They can cause great sorrow and happiness without rhyme or reason.  

For me, looking through photos gets me headed down a sentimental path.  Going to certain places, eating certain foods and talking with family can trigger other memories.  Memories are full of fact and imagination since our minds do not like gaps in stories.  Ema reminds me of this on occasion because she remembers the childhood of her children in a very different way than they do.

I have been struggling with some of my memories lately.  Nothing bad per se, just the fact that I have few vivid memories of Gumpy from my early childhood.  The amount and varied hours he worked have something to do with this lack.  The big factor, the one I have been reconciling lately is the fact that my Dad was an active influence for me until I was 13 years old.

My dad was a pretty good father until the lure of pot, cocaine and alcohol proved to be irresistible.  There were endless games of "Monkey in the Middle" in our hallway, countless hours of playing catch and practicing baseball fundamentals.  We would listening to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey announce Tiger baseball, interspersed with his memories of listening to Chicago Cubs games as a kid.  We use to have boxing matches in the living room until I learned how to knock the wind out of him.  I had a happy childhood filled with great memories.

Those memories have been causing a bit of pain lately.  It has been over 12 years since I last spoke with my dad and I had given up on him being anything but a junkie long before then.  When my dad could not be a father, my grandfather stepped in.  While he could never be my dad, Gumpy allowed me to grieve the loss of my father while giving me a steadying presence.  It was his influence that allowed me to escape my teenage years with minimal scarring.

The pain of my memories comes from wishing I had experienced those things with my grandfather instead because my grandfather remained steadfast in his love for me and our family.  It has been a year and a half since Gumpy passed away and the void left in my heart is sometimes paralyzing.  It is up to me now to provide that steadying presence.    

I do have great memories of Gumpy from my early childhood.  I was pretty young when he taught me how to test an electric fence without getting poked.  I do remember hearing WITL 100 blaring on the tractor radio when he would be pulling into the barn.  I was always pretty excited when I got to go back to the woods and help him get another load of wood to keep the fireplace warm.  There was a trip to Mackinaw with my grandparents that I am sure was more fun for me and my sister.  The irrational kid in me is begging for stronger memories right now, and I am left unable to satisfy that demand.

The strongest memories, though, are from when I was 13 years old until Gumpy passed away.  It was then I learned how to treat other people.  It was then when I learned about work ethic.  It is when I learned what it meant to love and want the best for each member of your family.

Memories are little more than movies of our lives that we continue to edit and view again through out our life.  The script has last minute changes.  Characters make appearances, some longer than others.  You are always learning different ways to tell the stories.  While some of my movie might leave something to be desired in terms of storytelling, I made myself an attentive apprentice to Gumpy.  I hope he approves of my production skills.