Pappaw Junior

Pappaw would have celebrated his birthday this month.

I miss that man more than anyone will ever know. I think about him everyday. I think about how we would sit at the Trolley while Mammaw went home, and we would eat so much ice cream. Then Mammaw would return and we would run to the kitchen, looking like we had been working our fingers to the bone while she was gone.

I think about him singing I'll Fly Away so many days as we worked side by side in that little ole Trolley car. I think about cleaning up at night when it was time to close. I would be so tired and yet I wasn't half his age and he kept right on trucking. He worked harder than anybody I knew. Not for recognition. But because that's who he was. I think about all the summers we worried about Pappaw because he worked in the garden in the hottest part of the day, and he didn't sweat enough. But he loved it so we let him keep at it.

I think about how he hated any kind of drink that wasn't milk or pepsi and how if he knew something had cheese in it he would refuse to eat.

I think about how we drug out those Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving every year for as long as I can remember. The older I got the more I watched Pappaw during this time. He was just like a little kid. He smiled so big and he enjoyed rolling out every light and checking every tiny little bulb making sure that it would light up just right. I think about the first blow up item that we bought him to put in the yard for Christmas. I think we eventually got up to about ten or twelve different things. But no matter what we always put the manager scene up and he would say "This is what it's all about"

I think about those amazing Trolley burgers that he could cook up. I think about the way he taught me to make a Pappaw Breakfast. I can just see him teaching us grandbabies to dutty ump. This was Pappaw's dance for us. Basically he would clap and say dutty ump and we little tots that we were would dance and he would laugh cause he thought it was the cutest thing in the world.

I think about how he always wore a red hat, sitting up too high on his head. I think about the many trips that me and Mama made taking him to the doctor after he got sick.

I can remember him being in the hospital like it was yesterday. I can see so vividly the scans of his brain that the cancer had eaten away at. I also remember him talking to me when he wouldn't talk to anybody else.

I will never forget my last days with Pappaw. I sat beside him on a stool at his house as he laid in the bed, just waiting on God to call him home. I wasn't there when he took his last breathe but the ones that were there know without a doubt that the angels came and swept him right out of this world and into a brand new body that no cancer will ever touch. Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away. I believe that is just what he did.

His funeral was a very sad time for me and my family. But so many people came to his visitation. I have never seen so many people in my life. He touched people's lives and most of the time he never knew it. That was just Pappaw, hard working and dearly loving. We celebrated his life that day. I will never forget us singing I'll Fly Away at his funeral. That song will forever remind me of Pappaw.

Nothing will ever fill the place that Pappaw held in my heart and life. I love that man dearly. I am what I am today because Pappaw taught me that this world doesn't give you anything you don't work for.

Happy Birthday Pappaw! I love you!