Great, Grand, Fathers and Sons

This past weekend my wife, son, and myself ventured back to our home state to visit family. It was a bittersweet trip in the sense that one of the purposes of our trip was to help my wife's parents get things in order for what we anticipate will be the passing of at least one of her grandparents. None the less, my spirits were high as this was a time to return home and seize opportunities that I had let pass me by before.

We met my sister and her family for an overnight stay in our old hometown. This was her first chance to meet my son, and being the proud father that I am, I was so proud to share him with her and her family. He is such a charismatic little boy that in seconds he had them all laughing and smiling. I think he got that from his mother.

Anyways it was just a great chance to be with family, after having let the time and miles slip by for too long.

We then returned back to were my wife's grandparents live. And our journey began to take on new meaning at this point. I was involved in as much of the labor as they would let me do. But most of the labor was of a different kind. The labor of love and the binds of family. I witnessed my father in law, at a cross roads. Here he was in the home he grew up in, making all of his childhood memories, some good, some bad. But none the less, this is where he first came to know this world. I watched him in this home, and it was sad. He was preparing the home, and other administrative matters to be settled. The settling of all of the years and tears that his family had given him. I watched him still walk on egg shells around his father, a man of 85 years, whose life had seen all of the tragedy and triumph those years could hold. I watched him hold his mothers hand, as she was sometimes present, and sometimes very distant, I am sure in a corner of her mind that held her better years. As twilight approaches for them both, I was painfully aware of the fragility of life, and how helpless I was to impact the situation.

Except for one thing, like I said my son was with us. And he could light up any room. And that was exactly what he did, he took the people in that home from their own silent despair, and at least for a moment offered a reprive. Many of them laughed and smiled with him in a way I don't think they had in some time. One gal that I can't forget even said, "Please come and see me again, won't you?". The heartache in those words ringing in my ears still. We did see her again, and she held our son, I hope that for a moment her heart was full of the beauty of this life. My son's Great Grandmother even smiled when she saw him, he will never remember those moments, but I will.

It seems that we spend our lives accumulating, things and memories, and when the dust settles what are we left with? Hopefully someone who loves us enough to be with us in those final moments, gripping our hands and remembering just how much we shared together. For in the end, the funeral will get paid for, the estate settled, but those aren't the pieces that hold our lives work. Our legacies are defined by the people and memories we leave behind.