For My Grandpa

Two things would be sure to happen on my wedding day: 1) I would wear a dress that Scarlet O’Hara would be envious of, and 2) my Grandpa would do the ceremony. My then boyfriend, Jesse, asked me to marry him one crisp evening in November. The following I day, I asked my Grandpa if he would officiate it. Then I began my search for the largest dress made out of tulle that I could find.

Of course my Grandpa said he would marry Jesse and I. He said yes because I am one of his granddaughters, but also because Reverend Stanley Lewis was the friendliest man in the world. But it was the sort of friendliness that stemmed from a genuine interest in other people. What you told him, what he observed about you, he remembered. He would ask you about it, tell you he was praying for you, tell you he always knew you could do the thing you could barely admit to him that you wanted to try. My dad and I, we would shake our heads in bewilderment at Grandpa’s friendliness. “He makes it look effortless,” we’d say.

One Christmas when we had a little party at the King Home, and I asked Grandpa how he was doing here, he told me about his friends: who has lost her voice, who tells good jokes, who likes the Yankees but keeps it a secret (because after all, Callie, we’re in Chicago). He told me he prays for all his friends, a statement I found impressive but perhaps not as impressive as the fact that he’d barely moved in and knew all these people.

I think Grandpa’s friendliness was a God-given gift. My dad and I joke that we don’t think this gift was passed on to us. We think it might’ve skipped a couple of generations and found a home in Grandpa’s great grand – daughter, Hadley. But I think what my Grandpa did pass along to me was the idea that it didn’t matter so much what it is you are good at, rather, you figure out what that is and you work really hard to make it better.

While we were planning the wedding, my Grandpa gave Jesse and I some dogged-eared books with his notes in the margins to help us write our vows. He thumbed over familiar phrases like, “until death do us part,” and “in sickness and in health,” and pointed out a promise he thought Jesse and I ought to consider making to one other. That is, to help each other find what it is we are good at and encourage each other to pursue and develop that gift.

So he married us at Calvin College on a day in January when the sun was shining and you could almost get away with not wearing a winter jacket. I stood with him, and Jesse, and several of our friends and family members in the dress of my dreams realizing that it takes a significant amount of shoulder and back strength to gracefully hold up the amount of tulle I was flaunting. And I listened carefully to what my Grandpa said so that I could say my promise back to Jesse.

I’m glad I didn’t have to memorize my vows. I’m glad Grandpa gave me the words I would say to Jesse in little pieces, and now that I think about it, he showed me how to live out that promise little by little over the years as well: he always asked Jesse about his graduate school work and then hurricane storm surge and the folks in New Orleans. He asked me about teaching and whether I would consider going back to school for writing. When she turned three he gave our youngest daughter Harper a birthday card with Diego and Baby Jaguar on it because he knew those were her favorite TV characters. She still has the card and when she looks at it every so often she asks, “How did he know I liked Diego and Baby Jaguar?” She asks it in the same tone my dad and I use when we were equally impressed by Grandpa’s friendliness.

I have no doubt my Grandpa enjoyed being friendly. But I also think he was holding up what it is he thought were gifts, our vocations, our hobbies, our children, and helping us to develop and care for them. That sort of friendliness, I think, takes a great deal of work. I think Grandpa understood that and he also understood that it’s the sort of work you can’t do by yourself.

One summer before we had kids, Jesse and I visited my Grandma and Grandpa in Naples, New York. At that point, my Grandma had had a stroke that left her memory a tad jumbled and she had trouble walking.

We went for a drive one afternoon and as we cruised up and down the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes region, I admired a pink purse that was in between my Grandma and I in the backseat. “I like your purse, Grandma,” I told her, and she said with a grin that Grandpa took her shopping one day recently and this is what she picked out.

My grandpa stopped for ice cream, and as we were sliding out of the car, I handed my Grandma’s purse to her as well as a walking cane she was supposed to use. My grandma hooked the purse around her forearm, but quickly shook her head at the cane.

“I don’t need that,” she said, flicking her hand and shooing it away. I pivoted and put it back in the car. She grabbed my grandpa’s arm then, clearly leaning on him in order to walk up and give her order for ice-cream.

“Would you like your cane?” he asked gently, unaware of the quick conversation she and I had seconds ago.

“No,” she said, hugging him closer. “I don’t need that.”

It wasn’t just that my grandma had trouble walking and trouble remembering things. She also couldn’t write the way she wanted to anymore. My grandma had the most beautiful cursive you’d ever seen. It was as gorgeous as a dance performed by a trained ballerina. I don’t remember much of what her letters to me said, but I do remember staring and her script and studying it so I could replicate it (I cannot). I get not being able to do something the way you once could and so giving it up all together. I understand how lost one might feel when what you once had is not there anymore.

And maybe she was relying too much on my Grandpa when she refused the cane and grabbed his arm. Maybe my Grandpa thought so too. But he held on to her anyway and guided her to the ice cream stand.

Their slow shuffle to get ice cream is one of my favorite memories of my Grandma and Grandpa. Like the vows that he helped me make on January 16, 1999, my Grandpa showed me that finding what the other is good at isn’t always easy. Sometimes neither of you will know, and that can be pretty terrifying. But, like he showed all of us, you are never by yourself.