MY GRANDFATHER

I have, over the years, never forgotten about the relationship I had with my grandparents. My grandfather was my mentor and my hero. Although I had loving parents, he was a big part of my life, and I have often written about him. My question is this. “Do, and will, my grandchildren have that same love and respect for me that I had for him?” Maybe what I’m asking is really a two-part question because, sometimes, people love you just for who you are, and not what you are. Respect, on the other hand, has to be earned.

As I look back on his lifetime, I see a man who, with his sister, emigrated here from Norway as a teenager, leaving the rest of his family behind. What I have been privileged to find out is that he had no future there, and he wanted to better himself. Think about leaving your family— not just running away, but going to another country across the big deep Atlantic. Grandpa was always a restless man, always looking for something better. After he married, and much to the chagrin of Grandma, they moved many times. He was a soldier who fought in the Philippines during the Spanish American War. He was a man of the cloth, who shepherded many small congregations throughout Southern Minnesota. He was a businessman, a faithful husband, and a father of 8 children; two of whom died from diphtheria in adolescence. Everywhere he went, he left a trail of friends.

By the time I got to know him well, he was retired and lived in a small town called Mizpah in Northern Minnesota. As a young boy, I would go stay with him for a few weeks in the summer. Every day he would walk down to the Post Office, maybe a mile away, and come home with a fistful of letters. Then, he would sit on his porch and write replies to all of those people, typing them out with two fingers on an old Smith Corona Typewriter. Despite all of his moves, grandpa never left anyone behind. He loved animals, and once told me of the heartbreak of having to leave his horse behind when he left the service. He said it was the most faithful animal he ever knew, and he had often slept in the stall with it. He waited each spring for the Martin’s to return to his immaculate birdhouse. There was always some mongrel following him home from town for a treat. Whether it was man or beast he loved them all. But it was his undying love for grandma that was beyond reproach.

Grandpa died during my 22^nd year. Grandma had suffered a massive stroke shortly before his death. They lived in a retirement home in Bloomington. She was moved to a care center, and at the age of 85, he would run away from the home and go visit her as much as he could. I remember him calling me, and asking me to take him home, as I Iived close to the hospital. Then, one day, my dad called and said he had passed away. I asked my dad, “Of what?” “It was his heart, Mike,” he told me. I said, “I didn’t know he had heart trouble.” Dad said, “When your heart is broken, you have heart trouble.” We live in a far different world today. My grandchildren are grown and scattered, and have busy lives of their own, so I don’t get to see them much. They will write my legacy, not I. I hope it’s a good one, and if it is, they have my grandpa to thank for that.