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| Pa-paw & Grandmother |
Easter 5C
In the name of God.
Amen.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandfather this
week. Pa-paw, we called him. Not to be confused with Paw-paw on my
mother’s side. Pa-paw was my paternal
grandfather.
He was a real character.
He had a pretty hard life. He was
born among the youngest of his nine siblings - there were five boys and five
girls - all of the girls had been named after flowers. Honestly, in this moment, I don’t even quite
remember most of their real names - just about everyone in the family had
nicknames - most memorably, “Uncle Brother,” the oldest among the boys.
While Pa-paw was still a young boy, his mother died, and his
father never quite recovered from that grief.
For most of his youth in the 1920s and 30s, Pa-paw was raised by others,
away from the family home. Often he
lived with his older sisters’ families, but for a time he even lived with an
African American family in town who took pity on him and his younger brother,
“Uncle Babe” - no small scandal, as you might imagine, in rural Louisiana in
the 1920s.
When he was a young man, like most young men of his
generation, he went away to fight in the Second World War. He spent quite a lot of time in the South
Pacific, until suffering a serious injury and returning home. But he never liked to talk about it. Even when presented with direct questions,
(being the precocious child that I was, I could always be relied upon for
direct questions on uncomfortable subjects), even then, he would evade the subject. It was just a little too hard.
Throughout his adult life, Pa-paw was always trying to be an
entrepreneur. But he was never really
successful at it, because he was a little too good-hearted and forgiving for
the high finance world of mid-century Central Louisiana. He was constantly providing goods and
services without collecting the agreed upon payment, or forgiving debts, or
investing a little too heavily with his heart, and, perhaps, not enough with
his mind.
But even so, he left his mark. He founded the cemetery in the little town where
he and grandmother lived and raised our family.
He left behind a beautiful home and a family that still carries many of
his traits - the good and the, well, less good.
He had instilled in us a deep sense of spirituality and faith. He passed on to us his love of making
music. He gave us all a deep commitment
to family and community - even in those times when that commitment might step
in the way of the kinds of things the world might ask of us now and then.
He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was a good man. His life may not have been the most
successful according to the measures of the world, but it was a life well
lived, nonetheless.
When Pa-paw died, he had Alzheimer’s disease - “The Long
Goodbye”, as it’s often called.
I still remember my last lucid conversation with him. His disease had been progressing, but he
still had some good days. In many ways,
it may have been the hardest part of the disease for him, because he could
still feel himself slipping away.
On the day of that last conversation, I had been staying
with Grandmother and Pa-paw - so it must have been during the summer. One of the things that happened for us
grandkids when we stayed there was, we took walks with Pa-paw. We might wander down to the pond in front of
their house to feed the ducks, or to the “Haunted House” in the woods out back,
or even just down the highway to the cemetery.
But we took these one-on-one walks with Pa-paw, and we told him about
our lives and learned about our shared history.
It was the time when he made each of us feel special.
On our last walk, when I was in about the fourth or fifth
grade, Pa-paw clearly had an agenda. As
we walked along the gravel road behind his house, he wanted to talk with me
about his disease. He knew he was in the
midst of his own “long goodbye”, and he wanted to make sure it was a good
goodbye.
He told me that he was sick.
I told him that, yes, I knew. And
he told me a little more about what that meant.
He told me that things would soon be different - that he was having trouble
remembering things. Not just little
things, but big things - things that he loved and that meant a lot to him. He warned me that sometime soon, he might not
even remember me. But he assured me that
it wasn’t about me, it was just this disease that was somehow separating him
from himself. And he assured me that no
matter what the future would hold - no matter how hard it might be - that he
would love me.
He let me ask him all of my probing little precocious child
questions, and he answered every one of them as honestly as he could. I realize now how hard that must have been
for him. I realize now that we were
saying goodbye, and he wanted give me everything I needed to make it good.
After every question was asked and answered, we stopped, he
looked at me, and he gave me his parting advice. He made me promise that I’d remember where I
had come from. He made me promise to
remember how important our family is.
And finally, he made me promise that whatever might happen, that I would
remember that he loved me.
I made those promises to him, and with that, the light went
off.
We turned toward home, and it was as if he couldn’t even
remember how to walk. He stumbled along,
barely lifting his feet, but somehow almost in a run. After making it just a few feet, he stumbled
more than he could step and fell to the ground, bloodied and weeping.
I ran back to the house to get help from Grandmother, and I
would never see him lucid again. He did
have a few more “good days” after that, but that was my last one.
Today, as we draw nearer to the Feast of the Ascension just
over a week away, and into the waning days of our Easter celebration, the
stories of Jesus move into a kind of “long goodbye”.
We hear again the story of Maundy Thursday. In the gospel structure, it’s the setup for
what they call the “Farewell Discourses” in John: three chapters’ worth of
Jesus’ “long goodbye” to the disciples.
At his last supper, Jesus gives his friends the new
commandment, that they love one another.
But before that, he says his goodbyes.
He does his best to explain things to them, even though they couldn’t
really understand. Even so he tries: to
the ones who had been following him these years he says, “Little children, I am
with you only a little longer. You will
look for me; and as I said to the Jews, so now I saw to you, ‘Where I am going,
you cannot come.’”
How hard it must have been for him to say goodbye.
How disconcerting it must have been for them to hear it.
We don’t always get goodbyes in the relationships in our
lives. When we do, they can be painful,
but they can also be helpful.
Pa-paw gave me his parting commandment: “Remember where
you’ve come from, remember how important this family is, and remember that I
love you.”
It wasn’t that far from the new commandment of Jesus: “Love
one another. Just as I have love you,
you should also love one another.”
Saying goodbye is hard, but when someone has really touched
your life, it’s never really goodbye.
Pa-paw lives on in me - and in his children and in my
cousins. Even in my nephews who never
knew him. He lives on in the values he
instilled. In the love that he shared. Even in the weaknesses that he struggled to
overcome.
And Christ lives on in this church. Even when we struggle to be the church that
he left for us, Christ lives on in the love that still lives in Jesus’
name. Christ lives on in our
aspiration. Christ lives in that new
commandment - that we love even as we are loved.
The goodbye may be long, but even at the grave we make our
song. Because in Christ, goodbye is
never the last word. Alleluia! Amen.
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