I Love You, Grandpa

I haven't posted in a while, because Grandpa died last Monday night. I didn't exactly have tons of time before it happened, so I could post, then it happened, and we were gone until tonight.

I'm really struggling with this one, I have to say that now. Grandma and Grandpa (Mom's parents) practically raised me when I was in grade school. When I was 4, Grandpa retired from civil service, working at Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, OK. They moved out to Shawnee so he could retire. We moved out there, just a mile from them, shortly after. Grandma hadn't worked for a while, and Grandpa was fully retired, so they watched me and Misty any time that Mom and Dad were working. After school or during any school vacations, we were at Grandma and Grandpa's. Grandpa taught me golf, he taught me how to drive and actually let me drive his golf cart around, even with him in it. I chauffeured him around the course regularly when I wasn't in school. He also taught me that sometimes it's important not to speak up, because your opinion isn't always what matters. He taught me that self-reliance and initiative are two of the most important traits you can have; he had them both in spades and did pretty well.

This trip back to Oklahoma was one of the hardest I've ever made. It had been difficult to watch from afar as Grandpa wound down his life with a fair amount of medical troubles. I had to stand idly by while yet again, my family dealt with the difficulties and pain of this sort of thing without me. Everyone was there when he died; Mom and Dad, Misty, other family and friends, church folks, their pastor...they all got to be there with him, and yet again, I missed out. And that's really getting old. I've been asking God for wisdom, to see why my exile (seriously, what else is it??) here must continue for so long, what reason there is for me to be here so far from family, what purpose my time here serves. Please pray that He will grant me that wisdom, because I'm still not seeing it. Faith, I guess....

I'm really going to miss Grandpa, and the tone of this thing might change some, because I realized this week that it's important to try to be the kind of man he was: strong, calm, hard-working, honest, loving. I don't know if I live up to that much right now, really. Honestly, I'm considering even more than ever before, just shutting down the blog. Grandpa probably would've laughed at something like this...not really his thing. Grandpa preferred two-sided conversations and would not have liked that this medium doesn't provide much of that.

Mostly, I'm just really hurting still. I'll post some more on this subject later. Thanks for reading along.