Dear Walter,

Dear Walter,

A part of me wants to begin this letter with a cliché, "Hey Grandpa, it's been a while." In some ways, it has been almost 17 years now. In others, I speak to you in my mind almost every day. You were the first grandfather that I ever lost. You were the first casket I ever viewed. When I remember you in my mind, it is not the image of you in your last days with the cancer. I do not believe that is how you would want any of us to remember you. Your death was my first lesson in how to handle loss.

I was around ten years old at the time and I remember watching the adults around me to see how they would react. It was the first time in a long time that I did not see my stepfather pick up a drink. Barbara, my grandmother and your wife fell into trying to figure out how to have a life without you. More so than losing a husband, one would have thought she lost an arm or a leg, she spent months learning how to function again in this new existence.

Barbara is still one of the strongest women I have ever met but the weight she holds from everyone on her shoulders was easier to carry when you were still here with her. I remember after you passed all the ways you showed her that you were still there. I remember the flower blooming outside in the beginning of the cold September month, the cloud over the yard perfectly in the shape of a heart.

After you passed, she spent months eating carnation breakfast shakes because she had to eat something. My perspective on this fact has changed over the years. When I was young, I remember rationalizing that you had always made the breakfast. Grandpa Walter, you really did make the best breakfast. As I get older and grow with the ones I love, I remember her grief differently.

A part of me held anger for a long time that you were taken away from her. I knew you were in pain and I was relived that you no longer were suffering. In a childhood that was not always the sitcom relief 0ne would hope for, you and Barbara were my respite. She still is. She is still taking on so much and I know that you are looking down just praying she learns to create moments just for her. That is when she shines, in the moments just for her. I know that you know exactly what I mean.

I look at my son now and as I raise a child of my own, I pray he never needs a respite. I tell him about his Great Grandpa Walter and the stories you would tell us, the smells of the foods that still make me sad sometimes, the kayaks, the adventures. I miss you. It has been almost seventeen years and I still feel like I am learning from you. I wish Everett had gotten a chance to meet you. I took him to the sight of your grave once. I go there whenever I go home.

I wish I had you a little longer in my life. I wish Barbara still had you there in hers. I wish that I would call her and hear you cooking in the background while she drank her tea. I wish I had spent more time as a child imprinting your face on my memory. I wish I had the forethought to bottle your laugh.

I wish heaven had a PO Box.