Learning By Example

I am privileged to have been raised in a loving home where I was taught most of what has made me who I am today. Growing up, we did not attend church as my children have, but my parents taught us right and wrong and for that I am thankful.

Now, here I am, a 40 year old woman (why not tell my age, there is definitely no hiding it). I can remember vividly being small enough to look up into the towering faces of my parents. Those years seem so long ago, yet they also seem like yesterday. But those yesterdays are gone now. That little girl is gone too, but I still find myself looking up to my parents for who they are.

It is never easy watching yourself age once you PASS a certain age and the changes in your body and your health and your stamina become glaringly apparent. And I may be free in sharing my age, but I won't divulge these changes, so don't even go there.

Back in 1995 I finished nursing school and the possibilities were endless. But after discussion my family and I decided to move here where my parents are. It was a good choice, one I have thanked God for again and again.

One of the reasons I am most thankful is that I had the opportunity to become close to my grandparents, my *Papa* in particular.

Born November 18, 1918 my grandfather was raised as most were in the Deep South during that time period. He had at best a third grade education, but that didn't deter him. Well liked and deeply respected people still talk of him often, even though he has been gone for almost 9 years.

When my father was a boy, my grandfather was a sharecropper. He was a good farmer, I am told. I have vague memories of those days on the farm as I was probably 3 when they moved to town. He then took a job making cabinets for Fleetwood Homes, and the evidence of his handiwork is still visible in the offices where his cabinets still hang.

In the years before he passed away he was a bailiff at the county courthouse. I saw him in action one day when I was called for jury duty. I was duly impressed by his presence. He worked the day he died a few months shy of his 81st birthday and just a day before his 65th wedding anniversary celebration.

He may not have been a scholar or had a PhD, but he had more intelligence than most people I know. And he had heart. He was a good father, a good grandfather.

When we moved to Georgia and were able to come here to visit more often, my grandparents had begun to have health problems. Right after we moved here in 1995, Papa had a heart attack and was sent to another hospital to have Bypass surgery. He wasn't as sharp as that young man of the past, but that didn't make him less of a man.

My father was 49 years old when they moved back here. Still strong and tall he soon became a force in this small town. He wielded the published word like a sword and took on many foes. My father is not an uneducated man, but neither does he hold a degree, unless they give you one for experience. He is well versed and well read.

I had the chance to watch my father as his parents, particularly his father, began to have more and more problems. He became their helper, their chauffeur, and in some instances their caretaker. He held them in a place of honor. Sure, my father was more educated than my grandfather, and he was a successful business man, but my father never treated my Papa like he was inferior to him, but always like he was his superior.

That respect and love that I saw during those years taught me so much. And a few weeks back my father was down and he said to me he wished he would have died last August after his heart surgery. He said by now we would have forgotten about him just like everyone had forgotten Papa.

I told him "Oh, Daddy, I have NEVER forgotten my Papa." How could I? I can still hear my Papa's voice in my heart, hear his laughter, feel his love.

I sit here tonight looking toward the future, toward the voids that will be in my life when my parents are not here. So much has happened lately that I cannot help but think about it.

I pray that I have taught my children well. I know several months ago I was so tired. My daughter said to me she was worried and that I needed to rest. I remember telling her then that right now, my parents needed me, and since I wasn't promised tomorrow with them, I would be there today.

Now I look across the kitchen toward the chair my father sits slumped down in as his dialysis machine clicks on. Then I glance back toward the empty spot my mother usually sits in and think of her lying in the hospital. And I think of her crying before I left tonight, and the words my father said when I arrived here, that she told him she was ready to go on, that she could keep going with the pain.

And then I think of myself and the changes time has brought to my life. And the years to come.

Should the time come that I need my children as my parents need me now, what example have I given them? I know I need to be thinner and eat better and everything else that goes with that. Will they hold it against me if someday it catches up with me? Will they talk down to me, or treat me like a child? Or will they look into my eyes and see their Mom, see the person I am today still lingering there, knowing that my youth is gone, but still wanting to be sharp and strong and sure? Will they see me as a burden, or will they feel blessed for every moment they have with me?

Because I have learned that whatever way death chooses to come, whether slow or swift, it still comes, it just doesn't matter how. But what does matter is that after death has come and we are left behind to wait our turn we know that we loved, we know that we respected, we know that we honored.

My father did all of this and more with his father.

I've learned from the best.