BusyMom: Remembering My Grandpa

     Yesterday my son, Lucas, and I were watching the Disney movie Song of the South. If you're not familiar with this movie or it's stories and songs it is set in the south with a little boy named Johnny and his time on a plantation and his time with a man by the name of Uncle Remus who would tell him stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear. My grandpa and I listened to the record, when I was a kid, yes RECORD!!! I LOVED to hear these stories with him! I'm told that this movie has now been relegated to the Disney vault "FOR EV VER" because of it's racist undertones. Ridiculous.

     My grandpa was from Mississippi and had that slow, deep, drawl that Uncle Remus had and while I was watching this yesterday I couldn't help but start to cry. It was the first time I had watched this movie since my grandpa passed away in April of 2013.

     My grandpa was my world when I was a kid. My mom was a single teenage mother, and we lived with her parents, so until I was about 9 or 10 (when my stepdad, stepped in, who is tremendous, btw) my grandpa was my dad for all intents and purposes. He loved me when I thought he didn't have to. You know how you always feel like your parent's "have" to love you? Well, my mom HAD to love me, and my father clearly didn't and my grandma so obviously did but for some reason it was my sweet, gentle grandpa who I clung to.

     He was born February 26, 1931 in Mississippi and grew up there, he joined the Navy and was sent to California in 1950 where he met my beautiful grandma and they were married, life went on until many years later I was born! He was the one who when I was 4 and demolished a cake that my grandma was going to be taking to work with her, pulled me up onto his knee and asked "was it good?". He was the one who when he gave me a dollar out of his wallet and told me that "that was my last dollar" I went into my room and tore it in half and came back out and presented him with half of it. He was the one who would let me stand next to him on the seat of the truck when we went to the store (you could do that in those days) :) He was the one who I was certain needed me to go with him on Friday nights to pick up my grandma from work, for some reason he was fine the rest of the week but if I wasn't there on a Friday, I worried myself sick! He was the one that I went to when my first car broke down at 4am and I walked to his house and didn't start to cry until he opened the door! He just sighed and let me in :)

     He hand-fed squirrels and loved pretty much all animals, except Starlings, lol. He kept a 50lb bag of peanuts in his garage for his squirrels and would sit and wait for them to scamper in and grab one from his hand, and this delighted him to no end. He loved his dogs, when my mom was a kid she says there was a menagerie of different breeds but when I was a kid he had Dachshunds and later Chihuahua's. His favorite Dachshund was Copper, that they got when I was 4 and they let me name him. I had just seen The Fox and the Hound and so his name became Copper! They had him for 18 years and he was my grandpa's buddy, he didn't care for grandma though, he would sit under the end table and growl at her as she walked by, lol!

     One of my most clear memories of my grandpa was when I was in my teens, I was at his house making some kind of cake and the recipe called for a "tube" pan. In those days I had NO idea what a tube pan was, lol, so I used a loaf pan! Bad idea, for future reference, this will not work. The batter came up and over the pan and caught fire, and then as I was scooping it out of the oven it dropped down into the drawer under the oven and ignited a kitchen pad that my grandma kept in there under the pans; as I'm battling the flames my grandpa comes to the kitchen doorway, sees what's happening, shakes his head in disbelief and WALKS AWAY!! HAHAHAHA!! This was the type of man he was. He just couldn't believe someone could be so dumb! Oh, how I loved him!

     I am blessed to say that I danced with him at my wedding, he held my newborn son, and I had 35 years with this wonderful man, which is a lifetime more than a lot of people get with their grandfathers. I'm selfish enough to say that I wanted more time with him, but I know that he is in Heaven worshipping Jesus and that I'll see him again.

     My grandpa truly taught me what unconditional love looked like, what sacrificial love looked like, he would do anything for his family, especially my grandma; they were married for almost 63 years and I don't think anyone man could have loved any woman more. He taught me what a husband should be, and my husband is pretty close ;)

     I will miss him for the rest of my life and I will regale Lucas with tales of Paul Truett Butler for as long as my memory will hold out, because he was a great man, a man who loved Jesus, a man who loved his family, a man who loved me, and I loved him just as fiercely.