Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the day my father passed away.
If you haven’t read the story, you may find it right here. It is more in my nature to remember birthdays rather than deathdays. I typically choose to celebrate the life of someone I love by doing something I knew they loved to do or something that reminds me of them, rather than heading for the graveside. My family thinks I don’t pay proper tribute, but it’s just the way I’m wired, I guess. (It’s certainly the way I would hope people would choose to remember me.)
But twenty-five years. That’s an awfully long time. So I’ll compromise. Tuesday–not hisbirthday–will see me baking his favorite spice cake from scratch and a double batch of caramel frosting. (Maybe with a side of ice cream.) I’m not quick enough on the draw to steal the frosting right from under from my kids and eat it while they’re not looking, but that’s OK by them.
I was dropping by to visit cabesh today (don’t you love her new look?) and I saw this: [insert photo of Harrison Ford looking like my grandpa]
I was more than a little freaked because in this picture Harrison Ford looks exactly like my Grandpa, my father’s father. He was a rancher in the little town of Randolph, Utah. He died a couple of years after my father did, only of a broken heart.
I was more than a little freaked because in this picture Harrison Ford looks exactly like my Grandpa, my father’s father. He was a rancher in the little town of Randolph, Utah. He died a couple of years after my father did, only of a broken heart.
When I was a child, my parents would pack up all eight of us into the Chevy Impala station wagon–no seatbelts–and drive straight through the then 16-hour drive from Eugene, Oregon to Randolph every summer around branding season. And work our butts off. It was great fun. I will forever associate the blended aromas of OFF bug spray and sagebrush with the tall silent cowboy who was my grandpa.
One year we went during winter and we arrived in the middle of the night. I was too excited to be there to actually go to sleep so when my grandpa got up at about 4a.m. to start his day I went with him. It was just the two of us and we tossed bales of hay over the side of the pick-up to feed the cattle whose pastures were covered with snow. I learned how to drive in that old truck. Long before I was old enough to actually tap the brake or lay on the gas pedal with my foot and see over the dashboard at the same time. But I still managed to get it from point A to point B and live to tell about it.
My favorite story about my Grandpa Rex is one from long before I knew him. My grandmother isone powerful woman and she will not hesitate to give you a piece of her mind. She had 11 children and a ranch crew to feed every day. Inevitably there would be those days when she had been cooking all afternoon for literally dozens of people (picture this–no electricity, no KitchenAid, no nothin’) and he and the crew would arrive late for dinner. As the story goes, on days like that this tall dark and handsome cowboy would stride across the room without saying a word and sweep my 5-foot-tall grandmother up off her feet and plant a big kiss right on her mouth. So he wouldn’t get chewed out.
Smart man.
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