Dear Papa,
I will always love you.
I know you would give me one of your looks if you were here
to see me writing this letter but at least I’m not on my phone texting.
I never truly thought this day would come and I wish it
hadn’t.
My first memories of you were you telling me to stop crying.
I was three years old and without my parents overnight for the first time in my
life. I love you Papa but I didn’t stop crying then for my parents and today I
can’t bring myself to stop crying for you.
Another memory I have of you is when we went on vacation
with you and Granny to Vermont. It was that vacation that I truly fell in love
with words playing on your team in scrabble at the age of five. The same week
you taught me how to ride a bike.
After that year, you got sick for the first time in my
memory. We visited you in the hospital and I don’t remember much else to be
honest. I do remember telling my first grade teacher that you got better and
that you believed in Jesus so I knew you’d be in Heaven some day and I wasn’t
worried. She told me that you were a lucky duck and from that time forward
until last weekend, I was the lucky duck.
I’m sad that I won’t be able to have you at my wedding or be
able to introduce you to my children some day. I am happy that you were able to
pull through that first bought with lung cancer in 1999 so those first memories
of you were not my last. Whatever it was I knew of you at the age of six I know
that today, I know you much better and I was honored to have you in my life as
long as I had.
I wasn’t your most outspoken grandchild or the one you had a
lot in common with or your smartest but I was your youngest. You came all the
way to the vineyard the day I was born, you helped wallpaper my first bedroom
which we still won’t let anyone touch or paint over, you came to my
kindergarten graduation and teased me about “that boy Kyle Duff” from then
forward, you were there at my brother’s wedding and you were there at every
thanksgiving. You taught me how to fish and a million other things.
I knew that you loved me and I knew you know I loved you.
I’m sorry I could not be there at the end but I still don’t know if I could
have come back from that. You were in pain for so long and though we all knew
it we did not have to be the ones who bore it. Thank you for staying here with
us for as long as you did. I am relieved you are not suffering for even a
moment more. I am glad you are at peace now. I love you more than you will ever
know and I am so lucky to have had an incredible, strong grandfather like you.
You told everyone how it was even when we did not want to hear it.
Everyone says you were one of the best storytellers and I
never thought of you that way until now. I always thought of Granny and myself
as the storytellers but you were one too. The only difference between us is
that we weave words with ink and you wove spoken words. I will miss hearing
your stories. But I will also miss you singing to me bits of old songs you
loved. I will miss watching A Christmas Story with you and I will miss hearing
your voice answer the phone. I will miss you every day. I won’t let that stop
me from living life though, Papa, because I know you would never want that. So
Papa, I will keep moving forward and I will try to make you proud.
I love you, Papa. Thank you for being the best grandfather
and I will proudly tell my future children about you. We will keep Granny cared
for and watched over. We will wear our jackets when it’s cold and zip them. We
will hold onto the railing and we will continue to call when we get home. We
will not do anything stupid and we will make sure the back door is locked. We
will keep you alive in our memories forever, Papa and I will make you proud.
With all my love,
Maggie Joy
