Earlier This Morning

The words I had for my grandfather during today's wake, written between midnight and 1:30 this morning:

During family gatherings on Christmas Eve, there would be political debates, words thrown all around. As a participant, I would sometimes stop and look over to him, my Pepe, sitting back, staying quiet, taking it all in. Definitely the smartest person in the room, enjoying his well earned rest, observing his loved ones walk down the life path he had long since marked, commenting when he wanted to, but happy just to be able to watch what he helped to create, grateful for every moment.

I lost my father’s father when I was young, and my father last year. For me, Pepe was the last of the rock solid father figures I was raised around. Human pillars. People who, as I wrote in a poem once, “seemed to be mountains, peaks hidden in the curves of their elbows.” He was certainly a mountain of a man in our family’s eyes. How many of us had he held in his arms and cradled as children and grandchildren and great grandchildren?

Living in a house with five women, he learned very early the value of patience and silence. He had to. Of course, he had his louder moments. Anyone who played dominos with him can attest to that. But he didn’t need to be loud to be noticed or to be loved.

I regret not having heard enough stories from him, but I don’t have to have regrets. A true engineer, Pepe devised the best stories of his life to be told over and over by the ones who loved them the most. We will certainly hear some today. We will want to hear more after today.

A numbers man, he made the equation of his life equal the supporting of his wife and the happiness of his family, teaching me that there is poetry in math.

Now, as the months go by, we’re going to prepare to have entire conversations without him being present or without him even being mentioned. It may be someone’s graduation, or a summer barbecue that we’ll all feel better enough to have one of our freewheeling debates. When that happens, I won’t be hearing his voice at all, but I’ll be feeling his presence the most. Still the smartest man in the room. Still the walking and breathing old man of the mountain I remember him being since I could walk on my own. Still one of the luckiest and most loved men I’ve ever known.