After 40 years... part one http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/82158/1.ashx
After 40 years... part two http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/82208/1.ashx
After 40 years... part three http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/82230/1.ashx
Part Four
We drove through town towards the cemetery as he pointed out the places he visits on a regular basis. The automotive shop where he used to hang out with the guys until the owner sold it. The carwash he referred to as ?His?.
He told me of harrowing stories of WWII, of flying around the Eiffel tower again and again. How he was a radio operator in the air force and how they often lost pilots to the flack exploding all around them. How, after 600 hours in the air, he had had enough. He served his three years.
Though he will be eighty years old in only a few months, he drives like he?s thirty. As well, his mind is sharp and he gets around better than my sixty-six year old father; from what I hear, anyway. We rounded curves on what seemed like two wheels and used the full four barrels over the 3.8 more than I can count. Along the way we had good conversation as well as awkward silence. Until finally we arrived at the well manicured, though, brown lawns. We pulled right up to Bella?s spot.
The grass over her was more groomed than that of the surrounding. Three concrete vases imbedded in the earth were filled with vibrant flowers with plenty of water.
He popped the trunk and retrieved a rag. Approaching her marble head stone he landed on all fours and began cleaning and polishing it as though it were a new car. Over and over he crossed the marble with the cloth until the shine would come no more.
?You come here a lot?? I asked.
?Everyday.? He said.
?Thirty-eight dollars and forty-two cents, every week, in fresh flowers.? He told me.
?Every week.? He repeated.
It was obvious. He had no clue I was entering his life today. And the flowers in those vases couldn?t have been more than a couple of days old. He said how being a single man, retired, left him with plenty of time to visit her every day. I began to feel that, perhaps, he is very alone in his own little world.
He talked of the great times he had with Belle and how they were together for twenty-eight years. And how she was close to ten years older than him. We both agreed that age rarely plays a difference in relationships.
He told of how he used to do his own yard work and he?d come inside on the hot summers and ask her for change to buy a couple of beers. She?d go off, and give him a hard time.
?But she always gave in.? He said.
He checked the water in the vases, and seeing them full, returned the cloth to the trunk and said good-by to Bella, and we drove off.
We discussed all the places in the area where everyone had lived and he asked if I still had more time.
?Sure.? I told him.
?I?ll take you to where your mother used to live.?
Now I was getting excited. I had addresses from old letters I intended to visit. I was happy to get an early start.
Off we went again, straitening the corners, flying down the highway until we came to the airport. Winding through the neighborhood we arrived at a school. He slowed the car to a crawl and lamented, ?Oh no, looks like they tore it down.
With a sigh, I realized these address I had, the life my mother lived, were decades in the past. Would they all be replaced with strip malls, I thought.
The car continued to crawl past the school as Bryan perked up.
?There it is!? He said as we topped the hill. True enough, at the bottom of the hill, stood the house my mother once called home.
Behind the two majestic, towering pine trees stood the house my Mother and Jack rented for close to fourteen years. The very same house, where my mother wrote letters to my father. Pleading with him to see me, or at the very least, to send me a picture of herself. She didn?t know our location and was mailing the letters to my father?s parents, then they would forward them to my father.
My mother spent many years there crying over her desperate letters; wondering where I was. She traveled from that house to Oklahoma to find me more than once. The house looked as lonely as I imagine her to have been.
I sat there in the car and imagined her sitting there on the stoop, imagining me running up the road to see her once again.
We finally made our way back to his house and I sat on the sofa like a little boy hanging on every word his grandpa uttered. He told me how his last wife, Bella, straightened him out concerning his drinking. That is until 1991 when she passed away. With the help of concerned friends and family, he was able to obtain enough Vodka to drink himself into a coma. A week later, he woke up, and has never taken a drink since.
It was amazing having found my grandfather. Having traveled all these emotional miles and finally coming to another climax was so rewarding. At Christmas, while at my mother's, I called him. And after more that 15 years, my mother finally spoke to her father.
It truly was a great Christmas.
Bryan
Have You Seen My Mother