One of those days where I question things.
Jun. 3rd, 2006 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2My friend's grandfather passed away Wednesday evening. The funeral was today, but I was at a show I had planned for months. I'm sad that I couldn't have gone. I am glad that I was home, though, and was able to attend a viewing and, even more importantly, that I had a moment to say good-bye to him.
I wish I could have heard the service. All of his grandchildren spoke, I've heard, and it was full of tears, and I'm really sorry that I wasn't there for my friend.
His grandfather really was a character cut whole cloth from the larger than life men who lived through the second World War. He was always full of jokes and good humor, smart as a whip, and I always got the idea that there was steel in him. He told all sorts of stories, was a wonderful cook, and was always the life of the room.
Y'know, in my family, stories are the coin of the realm. We all tell anecdote after anecdote, funny or sad or stupid, and it just goes round and round. I'm used to telling these little stories. They can't compare, of course, to someone who has lived so fully, and I really always felt awkward telling any of them in front of him and his family. Thankfully, I would tell a shortened version, and then he would pick some thread out of it, turn and look at me with a grin and a bit of a squint, and start telling a much better one. Heh.
One of the fears I've had since starting these trips is that something will happen, I'll be needed, and I'll be far away and unable to get back. I really was petrified that something would happen while I was gone and on the road for those five weeks. It would have been extremely difficult to get back quickly.
I mean, not that I was needed, except to support my friend, but still, it is one of the giant drawbacks of living life like this.
This year is the busiest yet, and I am starting to get frayed around the edges, I think.
A bit stream-of-consciousness, but there you go.
I wish I could have heard the service. All of his grandchildren spoke, I've heard, and it was full of tears, and I'm really sorry that I wasn't there for my friend.
His grandfather really was a character cut whole cloth from the larger than life men who lived through the second World War. He was always full of jokes and good humor, smart as a whip, and I always got the idea that there was steel in him. He told all sorts of stories, was a wonderful cook, and was always the life of the room.
Y'know, in my family, stories are the coin of the realm. We all tell anecdote after anecdote, funny or sad or stupid, and it just goes round and round. I'm used to telling these little stories. They can't compare, of course, to someone who has lived so fully, and I really always felt awkward telling any of them in front of him and his family. Thankfully, I would tell a shortened version, and then he would pick some thread out of it, turn and look at me with a grin and a bit of a squint, and start telling a much better one. Heh.
One of the fears I've had since starting these trips is that something will happen, I'll be needed, and I'll be far away and unable to get back. I really was petrified that something would happen while I was gone and on the road for those five weeks. It would have been extremely difficult to get back quickly.
I mean, not that I was needed, except to support my friend, but still, it is one of the giant drawbacks of living life like this.
This year is the busiest yet, and I am starting to get frayed around the edges, I think.
A bit stream-of-consciousness, but there you go.
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Date: 2006-06-04 05:20 pm (UTC)Hee! Totally. I can just see him up there, with his wine and cigarettes, regaling them anew.
The World War generation are slipping away one by one; soon there will be no-one left to tell their tales if we don't start listening to them whilst we still can.
It's sad, isn't it? I was thinking just this morning about that war, and how it affected nearly everyone on the planet, in ways big and small. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki I don't think we could ever have that kind of a war again, but still, there is something so terrifying in the possibility, and the stories of the survivors only become more important as time marches on.
*hugs*