Goodbye to Pa.

My Pa died last Wednesday night.

After church on Wednesday, we went to eat. I had a gaggle of giggling children and a fierce kidney infection going on. By 9:30'ish, after a hot shower and some clean pj's, I settled down to finally watch Finding Nemo with my five kids. About five minutes after becoming comfortable with the heating pad and a little girl hanging accross my lap, the phone rings.

Pa was gone.

It is not that I didn't know it was coming. He was 84. He had been sick for a few weeks. Pa was a good strong Christian. He was of the Baptist faith. With Pa, there was never any gray area. Everything was always black and white. And he never cared to call you out on it.

Pa was a stern looking man. He always had probing eyes, looking for something I did wrong. I respected him, I looked at him as all knowing. I always felt as though everything I did displeased him.

Pa liked to whittle. One time, when I was a little girl, I asked him if I could whittle with him. So, he got me a little stick, and pulled a little knife out of his pocket and we whittled together.

Pa had many sayings that I can still hear. When he said "thought" it always came out as "throught" - and if someone dropped candy on the ground, he always encouraged us to eat it, saying "it will put alittle grit in yer gizzard."

My Pa never made it past second grade. He also didn't learn to read until later years - Granny always read the Bible to him until he decided to read it himself one day. That is how he learned to read.

My Pa and Granny were married for 63 years. When they married, he was 20 and she was 16.
They had five kids and ten grand kids - five boys and five girls.

Surprisingly, we all made it through the funeral arrangements. There were plenty of angry disagreements between siblings. All the grand kids just sat back and watched out parents act out. We made it through visitation. And then we made it through the funeral. When my time came to walk up to the casket for a final goodbye, I knew that this would be the last time I would see this face. I was not sad for Pa. I knew he was better off.

What I was sad for is the fact that I don't see everything in black and white. I have lots of grey areas. I fall short, many, many times during the day. While Pa always knew the answers for things, I question. Pa's way was to follow the Bible and Jesus. That is how he lived.