Before you go any further, this has been a blog in process since the day my grandfather passed on Friday, May 3, 2019. I have had to put this down and pick it back up several times since then. It's painful y'all. It hurts to be so transparent and know I could have saved him and myself so much unnecessary heartache. So here goes...
My family dynamic as a whole has always pretty much been dangling from threads of tangled up webs we have all weaved and I have certainly done my fair share of making those web patterns more intricately complex. Out of shame and the inability to truly deal with all of it, I have done an exceptional job of distancing myself from anything reminiscent of those ties. I have missed out on birthdays, holidays, weddings, anniversaries, hospitalizations and deaths. You name it, I was absent from it. Suppression and exclusion have been my methods of dealing and what I thought was healing for as long as I can recall. All along I felt this was how it had to be done. If I could just forget all of the pain and hurt the little girl lost inside endured, the anguished teenage years amplified by things that were in and out of my control, and if I could just be someone else, then everything would be okay. Right?? No friends, all of that ridiculousness is more wrong than anything I have ever made myself believe. Ever. That led me straight into an adulthood of decisions that would change my life forever and made me believe the lies I manifested to make my younger years disappear. Everything I have realized has always been too late. Sadly, I knew all along what needed to be done and the connections I was losing. Out of pure shame and that longing to be anyone but me, I simply disconnected. You can become numb when you do that after awhile. Today I have not been numb. Today I have cried and sobbed until my head hurt and my eyes puffed shut. My mom has said a lot of things to me in my life, but the one that sticks out the most is, “One day you will be sorry.” That day finally came as I subconsciously always knew it would. We tell ourselves, there will be a tomorrow. I’ll do it then. You wake up one day and you have run out of tomorrows. People come and they go. We live and we die. It’s the circle of life. Somehow, although you logically know this to be true, you still believe in your heart that there are those that will never pass.
That’s how I saw my Granddaddy, a pillar of a man that would be here always. I failed him in so many ways and he loved me regardless. My disappointments kept me away from reciprocating that love back to him and now he isn’t here for me to tell him how much he meant to me. I will have to pray without ceasing for forgiveness, mostly to forgive myself. I did not hold on to the bond I had with the best man I have ever known. The man that all others I have encountered have never been able to measure up to. They simply pale in comparison. My biological father struggled to be who I or anyone else needed him to be and my mom has battled an overwhelming past most of her life. Neither of them were or are bad people, but at the time I was born, they surely had no business having a baby. I know they loved me then and they love me now and that’s all that matters. This isn’t about my parents though. I only tell you that because my grandfather knew my parents weren't ready for me and he did everything in his power to give them any resource he could to help build a family with their newborn baby. Neither of them knew what the heck they were doing and were fighting terrible demons they just couldn’t win over. He made it his mission to ensure sure I was taken care of at a very young age. My Christmases and birthdays were always filled with more than I expected because that man made sure of it. Him and my Korean American grandmother would pick me up on the weekends and take me to eat my heart’s content at the salad bar at Ryan’s Steakhouse (my little girl palate thought Ryan’s was the bee’s knees; however, I have since refined my tastes a bit). He knew he was going to have to give me more than a normal grandchild would need to fill in the holes that were wearing through the patchwork of my young life. When the rebel in me was headed straight towards repeating my parent’s mistakes, him and my grandmother took me into their home and you would never have known I was not their daughter. They spoiled me to no end, lavishing the best in everything upon me. This meant weekly trips to the mall for brand names like Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Guess and Clinique makeup. Stop laughing, it was the 90's. History tends to repeat itself.
The love these two people had for me was unlike anything I had known before. My grandmother spent most of her hours in the kitchen preparing every meal we had. Let me just tell you something about this woman, she could cook like nobody’s business. She whipped up all of my Korean cuisine favorites and because she knew how much I adored Sigumchi Namul (a seasoned spinach salad that I still crave just about every single day), she served it at nearly every dinner we had. Mind you, to make this dish was no small feat. She never did anything halfway and that was observed not just in cooking, but cleaning as well. That meant the spinach had to be washed numerous times and because it had to be perfect, she would squeeze the greenery first with her hands and then between two rocks for hours to get the water out. I don't know how many times she went through this process for me, but I can tell you I consumed more than my weight in that stuff several times a week. My granddaddy saw something in me it has taken me literal YEARS to uncover. He knew a light existed inside of me that just needed some kindling thrown onto it to turn it into a roaring fire. I carried a flickering flame that was in jeopardy of being extinguished just before they took me in. He introduced me to my spirituality and it was because of his guidance that I accepted Christ into my heart. I strayed away from that moment so many times since then. Too many to even keep track of. I am happy to report that the light that man saw in me is beginning to burn brighter than it ever has and the Good Lord fine tunes this gypsy free spirit more and more every single day. I think the man that was more like a father to me than my own smiles down from his high place in the heavens over that.
He taught me everything he could, from balancing a checkbook and the importance of saving for a rainy day (I really needed to pay better attention during those discussions) to the one thing I remember him saying the most, you are who you associate with. I wanted to be accepted and liked. We all do. I had to change friends frequently and never really learned how to build solid relationships before that time. I was fighting teenage angst on a whole other level, constantly conflicted about who I was before he changed my life by bringing me into their home and who I had the potential to be. I have always been my own worst enemy and the work I have done and still have to do to rise above is pretty intense. Needless to say, I was naïve and had the tendency to be attracted to people who weren't good for me. Granddaddy was intuitive that way and he did his best to open my eyes to what he saw in me. There wasn't a resource that man wouldn't pull from to give me the nurturing he knew I needed so badly. My words will never convey to you the appreciation I have for him and his bride. I can't imagine where I would be had I not of had their constant influence feeding me the nutrients of life that led to my petals beginning to blossom. Hey Granddaddy, I see what you saw now. I see it.
I came into their lives at a time when they should have been travelling the world. They had certainly worked harder than any two people I know and deserved to be taking grand vacations, enjoying the fruits of their labor. That isn't what God called them to do and they obeyed unselfishly without question. If I wanted to go on the youth group ski trip, they obliged. My first car? Paid in full. College? He did whatever was necessary to get me there. I had the world at my fingertips and could have satisfied every whim the dreamer in me had with their support. I don't even know if the sky would have been my limit. It might have stretched out into the atmosphere.
I remember seeing him cry for the first time and how it broke me inside. He is the sole reason I absolutely can't stand to see a man sob. How could this giant of a man shed a tear? He always managed to be this indomitable force in my eyes, although his arms were always open to envelop me in an embrace when I needed it. I saw him as unbreakable. I've had to take several deep breaths to share this with you. My eyes are welling up as my fingers try to find their way across the keys. He always said my name in a way no one ever has. He made it sound like it meant something. Just the way he said it made me feel he thought I really could change the world. This time when he said it, it was with a crack in his voice I wasn't familiar with. It took all of the courage he could muster to tell me something he thought would break my heart. He began to tell me the story of when my mom, his little girl, came to him with the news that she was with child. You see, my mama was only 16 years old. She has quite the childhood story to tell herself and it had damaged her early on. She met my father, charming and handsome, and she thought she had found her Prince Charming to take her away from the misery she had endured. My mother's father was devastated. As a military man, he had spent the majority of her life defending his country and unable to protect her from the world. I think deep down inside he blamed himself for not being able to be there the way he wanted and that it was his fault this had happened. His response to her was the only one you would imagine a father could come up who hadn't found his relationship with his God yet. He told her she was going to have an abortion and she was quick to let him know that wasn't going to happen, that nobody was going to take her baby away from her. My grandfather carried this around with him until I was 16 years old. He sat on my bed and wept and asked me to forgive him, that his life had been changed when I was born and he was so much better of a man because of his daughter's refusal to part with the life she was growing inside of her. Thank you mom. Thank you for loving me more than you loved yourself at such a young age. He could have kept that secret locked inside for the rest of his life and I never would have known. Of course I forgave him. Look at everything he had done for me. He had already more than made up for it when he saved my life by taking me into his home. The only thing that conversation did was make me love him more and solidified the man he was in my eyes.
There are so many things I want to say, things you need to know about the man of integrity he was. The very definition of what God meant for man to be, at least in my interpretation from my study of the Bible. He was forgiving too, because he knew what it was like to sit in the dark places. His love for his wife, children and grandchildren exceeded comprehension. I just wish I had been able to get past myself so that my memories included those with him watching my children, his great-grandchildren, grow up. I denied him and my grandmother of that. I walked away from their love, so sure I could figure life out on my own and I didn't need a single soul in the world to do it. I was so lost. When I didn't live up to the expectations I felt had been set for me, I was so shamed that I couldn't face it. They were made to suffer from my absence because my brokenness just wouldn't let go long enough for me to see how much I needed their love to make me whole. How much I needed my family in its entirety.
I am so grateful for the last memory I have of him. It was only a few months before he was called home. When he saw me, his eyes became so soft and it was everything I had not to collapse into his arms, but the realization that he was too frail for that now smacked me in the face like a brick wall.
You see, this is how I truly heal. Not by quelling my feelings and denying myself the grace I deserve, but by writing words to express what I cannot speak verbally. This is my gift. The gift he encouraged me to pursue. I'm doing it now, Granddaddy. A little later than we planned, but all in God's time. To those of you reading this who have been like me, thinking you've ruined a relationship beyond repair or that you can't be forgiven, it just isn't true. You must forgive yourself first though. Even in his passing and knowing I wasn't there when I should have been, I know he loved me for who I really am inside and not for the mistakes I continued to make. If I can offer you a bit of wisdom on the subject, tend to your emotional wounds. Sort out the mess in your head and reach out to the ones you've distanced yourself from if it's because of something you are at fault for. I can promise you they need you just as much as you need them.
