hero (February 20, 2024)

I have often tried these last several months to find words to write about Grandpa Powell. Tried and given up. Words don’t come easily to me now, at least not about the memories or the people who matter most to me.

It’s six months and a day since Grandpa passed; almost exactly two and a half years since Grandma, his wife, passed in June of 2022.

I have written nothing new since his death. The visit home this Christmas has rekindled the desire to capture the memories again, and I haven’t given up entirely. But I have not found the words yet.

So, for now, I want to share with you a poem I wrote back in February of this year, when I found out that my grandpa was going into hospice care. I want you to meet my hero, as I saw him growing up.

This letter to my grandpa lives in the past, and for a while I could not bring myself to share it with more than my family and a few close friends. But I’ve come to see that the story it tells is no less true for its specific time and setting that cannot be lived in again. And I know that many of us have stories like it. I hope mine may be of some encouragement to you.

---

In loving memory of Grandpa and in grateful praise to the God who gave him to me.

Hero, I thought you would live forever,
never imagined life without you—
you, with your crooked smile,
duct-taped boots, and hunched back.
They say it wasn’t always hunched,
just in the last few years, but I guess
I was too young to remember.

There were no strangers in your house,
just people who learned to love you
because you saw them.
There was that one student who came to church
and afterwards you shook her hand,
picked up her bike and put it in the
truck with a Where do you come from? and Do you like iced tea?
(That’s what he said to you, Mum, isn’t that right?
Maybe you don’t remember but that’s how I imagined it.)
You and Grandma took her in, adopted her,
the Japanese student you didn’t know would
become your future daughter-in-law.

I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your kindness,
reaching out to a total stranger who showed up at your church
and setting up a dinner to give your son an eligible match.
But you didn’t know he would fall for the Japanese student
who was talking with his sister.
He drove her home and there was no going back.
You were the one who told us, right? what my Papa said
when he came home that night.
You told us he said,
Now I understand the phrase Asian beauty.
It was more than that, of course.
And Papa always denied he said it.

Hero, you were the one we looked up to,
all of us grandkids you trucked over the mountains shouting
Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?
at the top of our lungs.
We were a bunch of knuckleheads, but I think we learned it from you,
and Grandma just laughed at us and laughed and laughed,
gentle Grandma with her poetry-loving soul and her
vibrant-colored sweaters.
You were with her to the end, and I know it was a relief when she went.
And then you were ready to join her, you said,
but Auntie J told you Not yet. Don’t say that.
and cried and cried as we looked at Grandma’s face
in the casket, peaceful and finally at rest.
I felt the tears coming down my cheeks, too, but
I kept swallowing the lump in my throat because
you sat there so peaceful as you looked Goodbye to your only love,
your last care laid to rest,
it seemed a shame to disturb you.

They said you would go soon—your Reason to go on
had gone home and you wanted to go home too;
but I couldn’t imagine you gone.
You were always so strong for Grandma
and now you could be weak because you didn’t have to
help her get up in the morning
or get dressed
or walk to her chair
or take her meds.
You said you were afraid those last days you’d been too harsh,
but you were only tired and she couldn’t hear
and you’d shouted to get her to cooperate,
and she did, eventually.
You were her hero, too, you know,
and I think she still knew you were trying to help her.
You were the only one who knew ahead
that she would pass—
If she makes it through the night, you said—
but hearing it over the phone I thought you were just
tired and things would be better in the morning.
They were for her.
Her funeral one week, my graduation the next,
but she was the real graduate, her college glory.

I heard from my cousin that you were in hospice care,
and then he remembered, he wasn’t supposed to tell me yet.
Hero, I could hear you in my head chuckling dryly at him
but he meant well
and no harm was done,
only that I knew before your own son that you were dying
and I couldn’t say a thing,
just drop a few tears into my pillow and go to sleep.
He said It could be up to 6 months so don’t worry too much.
And I believed him—why wouldn’t I?
That was two weeks ago.
In two days I’ll be on a plane to see you
and maybe it’ll be the last time,
maybe by May you’ll be reunited with your love
and falling at the feet of your Savior,
but this time the fall won’t hurt you.

Mary says it’s not Goodbye, just a See you soon,
but here on earth the waiting never feels soon.
Until tonight I didn’t realize how much I’ll miss with you
no longer in my life to give hugs and kisses on the lips when
least expected and stories that make us double over in laughter.
If I ever get married, I’ll never get to say to my husband
Come with me to Ellensburg, I want you to meet my Grandpa,
he’s quite the character.
If the Lord sees fit to give me a family, you’ll never hold my little one
and laugh and say Now that’s a beautiful baby,
where’d she get those genes?
like you did with Dwight and Seth and Eliza.
Hero, you’ll have better things to do,
and my tears will still come.
And maybe those Ifs won’t happen;
I’ll miss you anyway
and the ache won’t go quickly.
But it’ll be okay because I know where you’ll be,
and I know that I’ll be there with you one day
soon and a billion years from now.
I’ll see my hero as you were meant to be
and we’ll fall on our faces before the King of kings
and laugh and cry
and thank him for the pain because now
the joy is so much stronger, so much greater
as we see him face to face.

So Grandpa, I will tell you See you soon
and when your time comes I will cry,
but my tears will fall from a heart full of hope.

---

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

Psalm 126:5-6