My paternal grandfather passed away a few days ago.
He was 91, and ready to go. In that sense, I am completely at peace. I know my dad and his siblings are grieving, but I am a bit removed from the grief directly related to his departure. My grief is centered around knowing facts about my grandfather, but feeling as though I didn't really know him.
I have spent a good portion of my life not living near my grandparents and, even when I was a child, there were no phone calls or letters. I spoke to them if I saw them, and that was it.
My family of creation moved to live near my grandparents when our kids were small, and even though we were in close proximity, I didn't spend much time really getting to know my Papa. I know facts about him: he loved fishing, camping, and music. He lived an eventful life. When he was 15, he rode a motorcycle from Oregon to Texas without having an exact address of where he was going. Only a geographical proximity.
The lack of knowing isn't a moral failing on anyone's part, and I'm not looking for anyone to blame.
I knew someone for 44 years and still don't feel like I knew them, and they didn't know me.
There is something strange about grieving a person you don't feel you know well enough to grieve.
I don't have a collection of small, ordinary memories that come to mind when I think of him. I don't have stories about conversations we had, things we did together, or the ways he shaped my understanding of the world. I have facts, stories I've heard from other people, and a handful of memories that belong to my experience of him rather than to a relationship we built together.
I know things about his life, but I don't know what it felt like to be him.
I know he loved fishing, but I don't know what he thought about while he sat beside the water. I know he rode a motorcycle across several states as a teenager, but I don't know what prompted him to do it or how he felt when he arrived. I know some of the things he did, but I don't know the thoughts, fears, hopes, and experiences that made those things meaningful to him.
There is a whole person in those spaces between the facts.
The truth is, I don't know if he liked me very much. And I guess that's what feels the most tender. While he did a lot for me monetarily and I believe he was a good man, I don't feel confident that he thought I was special or felt any real affinity for me.
I'm not angry, it's just something I've felt for a very long time and never admitted.
I wish I knew whether there was a version of our relationship that might have felt different to both of us.
But I don't.
He was my Papa for 44 years. I am grateful for the things he gave me, and I can recognize the good man he was without pretending we had a closeness that we didn't.
I think I am grieving the things I never knew, the things I never felt certain of, and the opportunity to find out.
I don't know if that is a strange way to grieve someone. But it is how I am grieving him.
