It comes upon me hard, sometimes.

Snow falling outside.
Coffee brewing inside.
A hundred little noises that happen around people working, and maybe someone chuckling at a joke.

It all mixes together and just like that, I miss my granddad.

me and russel

You would have loved to see Kaylee, Grandpa. She’s a storyteller, just like you.

3 Replies to “It comes upon me hard, sometimes.”

  1. From what I gather, most of my friends’ dads are/were about the same age as my granddad. He was… let’s see… 44 when I was born? 45? Somewhere in there.

    He and my dad owned nigh-adjoining acreage until after I graduated high school; were lived all of four miles away from them, with maybe one house in the intervening space. I saw him pretty much every day during the summer and breaks, whenever I was working on the farm. (Which I was, most days I wasn’t in school.

    He taught me to shoot (he was a certified gun safety instructor for something like 30 years), and hunt, and how live traps worked, and how to tell a story out loud.

    Holy christ he could spin a yarn.

    http://media.sd.gov:81/sdpb/dakotastories/homefront/TestermanMiller.wma

    1. I’d forgotten — about halfway through that recording — he talks about going fishing in Germany…

      … with grenades.

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