When someone we love dies, it can be hard to think about anything other than the loss. If their death was sudden, we may keep returning to the shock of it. If they suffered through a long illness, those final months can take up far too much space in our memories.
I understand why that happens. But I also think we owe it to them, and to ourselves, to remember the life we shared with them. Their final days were only a small part of who they were.
My grandfather had a great sense of humor and an outgoing personality. I like to think I inherited some of that from him. Even if I didn’t, I still have the jokes he used to tell. Sometimes I catch myself telling those same jokes, or at least my own variations of them.
He encouraged my creativity, too. I loved drawing cartoons when I was a kid, and he used to say I might be another Walt Disney someday. When I started playing guitar, he recorded me. He was a great guitar player himself and one of my musical inspirations. I still remember how proud he was of me.
My grandfather died of cancer about a year before I went into the Army. I wish he could have seen where my creative interests eventually took me. But I’m grateful that he took them seriously when I was young. His encouragement stayed with me.
I spent entire summers at my grandparents’ house. Some of my favorite memories are of sitting on the porch with my grandmother at the end of a hot day. The night air would finally be cool. Fireflies would drift through the yard, crickets would be making their sounds, and she would tell me stories from her life.
When I was in the Army and stationed in West Germany, she wrote to me more than anyone else did. Receiving those letters from home meant more to me than I can say. She gave me comfort and encouragement when I was an ocean away.
Later, my aunt found my grandmother after her heart gave out. Her death broke my heart. At the time, it was the greatest tragedy I had ever experienced. I will never pretend that the pain of losing either of my grandparents wasn’t real. But when I think of them, I want to give more room to the porch, the letters, the jokes, the guitar, and the love they showed me.
Recently, my friend Gregg died in his sleep. He was only in his late fifties. We grew up together. He was my friend before I joined the Army and remained my friend after I came home, when only a few people from those earlier days were still close to me.
Gregg was the one guy who actually got all of my jokes. I could make some odd remark, and he would come back with a few zingers of his own. Then I’d respond, and we’d keep the ball rolling for a while. Every time we got started, we seemed to find something else to laugh about.
When I heard he had passed, the first thing I thought was how much I would miss his laugh. His death was sudden, but those exchanges are what I want to carry with me. They tell me far more about our friendship than the circumstances of how it ended.
Thinking about them also makes me wonder how I would want to be remembered. I wouldn’t want people to feel that they had to be sad whenever they thought of me. I would hope they’d remember a good time we shared, something I made that brought them a smile, or a little encouragement I offered when they needed it. Maybe a lesson I learned the hard way could even help someone avoid making the same mistake.
Grief doesn’t disappear because we choose to remember the good. We miss people because they mattered to us. But alongside the sadness, we can keep telling their stories, repeating their jokes, and sharing the things they taught us.
My grandfather’s humor still finds its way into my conversations. My grandmother’s encouragement stayed with me long after her last letter. And when I think of Gregg, I can still imagine him coming back at me with one more zinger. Those are the parts of them I want to keep alive. These are some of the things that Shaped Bob Craypoe's World.
Bob Craypoe
