Always Missed

My absolute favorite place to visit as a child was my grandparents house.  I loved playing with all of the toys in their laundry room, especially the Dating Game.  The television was in the front room, although I rarely watched it while I was there as there was so much else to do.  I'd sit at my grandparents rounded bar in the kitchen watching my Grandmother make pies or some other type of dessert.  I learned to peal apples there as well as grind cranberries.  They had a breezeway with an extra refrigerator.  It was in that room that I realized that I would rather deal with flies than hang fly paper.  I avoided their cellar at all costs as the dirt floor and small space scared me.  I didn't spend a lot of time upstairs, where there were four bedrooms and a bathroom, solely because most of the action happened on the main level of the house.  I never went out front as they lived on a busy street, but spent quite a bit of time in the backyard and in the garden even though I got my first bee sting there.

Although I enjoyed exploring all of the areas of my grandparents' home, my absolute favorite place to be was the garage.  It wasn't the tools or the squirrel feeder that attracted me, it was the man tinkering in the garage that I loved visiting.  From my earliest memories, my Grandfather was my hero.  In my mind he could fix or build anything.  He had survived service in World War II and came home with the best stories to tell.  He married my Grandma when she was single with four young children.  He cared for them as his own and I never once thought of him as a step grandfather.  He was "CrapPa", the person whom I knew loved me unconditionally.  

When they moved to Florida, I was devastated.  My parents and I no longer lived in Nappanee, so my opportunity to ride my bike to his house had ended years before.  That saying, a twenty minute car ride was not quite as daunting as a twenty hour one.  Thankfully, we visited Florida often and my grandparents stayed at our home every summer.  The bond between granddaughter and grandfather never strained due to distance.  In fact, I think that it may have grown stronger.

When my grandparents moved back to Indiana in the fall of 2000, there was no one happier than me.  I made sure I was at my parents' house when he and Parce pulled up in the moving van late one night.  I knew that the change in proximity would ensure that my own children would have a relationship with him, and they definitely did.  I remembered how terrible I felt when he told me that he had inoperable cancer.  I visited him every day that spring, summer and fall wishing beyond hope that a miracle would happen.  He put up a good fight those five months and I cherish every new memory that we created during that time period - war stories that I had never heard before, fixing the chainsaw in Aunt Bebe's kitchen, his last haircut and his refusal to open popsicles unless the Heinisch children said, "Snip, please."  I sobbed like a baby when my Mom called to tell me that he had died.  I was so thankful that I had spent his last few hours with he and my Grandma.  He may not have been able to tell me stories anymore, but I know that he could hear the ones that my Grandma was sharing with me.

Today as I thought back about his life and our relationship, I cried once again.  He had lived a good life and I had gained so much from being his granddaughter.  Even though I had all of the those wonderful memories to think about on his birthday, I just wanted one more day, one more hour, just one more story.  That will have to wait, however.  One day we'll meet again and I know that the smiles on our faces on my wedding day will be just as big and genuine.  Until we meet again, Paw Paw, keep the beer cold and the salt shaker handy.