Having just written about my paternal grandfather, I feel compelled to mention a word or two about my maternal grandfather. This isn't because of their likeness, but because of the contrast they brought into my life.
He was a perverse man. I'll refrain from graphic details here, if you don't mind, in order to both show respect and to keep this tale within tolerable limits. Suffice to say that he lived his life in a way that did not made me proud to be his grandson nor leave me with any memories that are worth recounting. In my mother's youth, he had been cruel to her and had done some things which were bad enough that I've been compelled to hold my tongue here. He continued in this vein into my pre-teen and teen years. On occasion, I crossed into this lurid shadow, and it wasn't a pleasant place to be.
I remember that he was, most of the time, a loner. He, too, tended a garden, but that was about the only thing my grandfathers had in common.
When I was a teenager, he did the one out-of-character thing I recall in his relationship with me. He gave me a Japanese bayonet. It was old and beaten and bore marks of abuse itself--wounds from a bench grinder. This was the only thing I remember him ever giving me.
In his latter days, as he laid up in a hospital bed, himself also succumbing to cancer, my mother spent many hours by his side. It would be only hours, days later that he would step into eternity. Few words passed between them. Mom seized a moment when he was conscious and had his wits.
"Dad: I just want you to know that I forgive you."
Though I don't know the details, or whether there were other words spoken or tears or hugs, she told me that he responded:
"I'm sorry."
In the light of all my mother's flaws, her forgiving this dark-hearted man at the end of his wasted life will be what forever defines her in my eyes. She endured dark times, both of and not of her own creation, yet held no bitterness against this man who orchestrated many of those dark times. This also gave me a small portion of respect for my grandfather, who carried the weight of his sins for most of his 70-plus years. Here at the end, when a man's heart can be at its hardest, he made his amends, even if only in his own passive way.
Not long after this encounter with Mom, he slipped the surly bonds of this earth. I'm not curious to know what passed between him and his Creator at the throne. I have no evidence to show that it would have been a favorable encounter.
To an extent, we are who we are because of the people we've known. Whether we use people as an example or an example to avoid, they can influence us in small, unknowable ways. In this, my grandfathers were both examples to me.
In the early '80s, my paternal grandfather was suffering with lung cancer. He had been a smoker, dropping the habit when he had a massive heart attack some 10 years earlier. Whether related to his smoking or unrelated, the Big C eventually hit him in the lungs with both fists. The doctors deemed it as inoperable and began zapping him with radiation, hoping that the tumors might shrink. They didn't, at least in any helpful way.
