His Hands

Grandpa Mid was the most influential person in my life.

He was, or perhaps still is, my paternal grandfather—my biological father Jim's dad. However, the term "grandfather" never quite captured the full essence of what he meant to me. He was both my grandpa and my dad, a consistent presence in my life. He was home.

Mid had been a paratrooper during World War II. He inherited his family's cattle ranch in Wyoming, land that had been passed down through generations. He understood hard work. He understood the responsibility of caring for land. He understood public service, serving as a county commissioner for twenty-four years. He loved horses and riding.

And he was absolutely, unapologetically ornery.

And he absolutely adored me. I was his first grandchild, and according to Grandpa Mid, the sun and moon rose and set in my eyes.

And I believed him.

I spent time at the ranch every summer beginning when I was two or three years old.

When I was three, I took my first airplane ride to go see him. At least a couple of weeks of every summer belonged to Grandpa Mid. My aboslute favorite place in the entire world.

The man I knew was strong, funny, hardworking and fiercely loving. But there was another version of Mid. I learned that during my father Jim's childhood, struggle with being a kind and patient father. I understand that he was particularly hard on Jim.

That man is part of Grandpa Mid's story, but I never met him. There wasn't a single thread of that man in the grandfather I knew.

The hands I knew were rough and calloused from a lifetime of work, but they were also a source of tremendous gentleness and security. I think that's one of the strange truths about families. We don't all inherit the same version of a person.

My relationship with Jim was entirely different.He was my biological father, but he was never really present in my life in any meaningful sense of the word. To be fair, as an adult was not a willing participant in a father/daughter relationship with him. I did not make it easy to love me as a father should.

Even now, as dementia slowly takes his mind, there is something strangely fitting and sad about our relationship. Sometimes it feels as though one of the things he has managed to retain is that he doesn't remember he has a firstborn daughter.

And strangely, I'm okay with that.

Because I wasn't fatherless and I had my Grandpa Mid.

We already knew Grandpa was dying of cancer when the call came that he had slipped into a coma and it took me eight hours to get to him. The longest eight hours of my life.

I thought about every phone call I could have made and didn't. What was the last thing I had said to him? Did he know? Had I told him enough? I just needed to get to him. I needed to be with the most beloved person in my world.

My grandpa.

My daddy.

When I finally entered his room, he was quiet and still. His eyes were closed and there was no spakle. The sparkle that had always been there when I was near. It was different from the way he looked at anyone else—or at least I believed it was.

It was mine.

Even lying silently in that bed, his presence seemed to overflow the room. I couldn't breathe. With the time I was given alone, I did the only thing left for me to do. I simply loved him. I thanked him for all that he was and is. I told him over and over how much I loved and adored him.

Sometime later, my father came into the room. And somehow, sitting beside the dying man who connected us, my father and I had the conversation we probably should have had years before.

He told me he wished he had been a better father and regretted all of the moments of my life he had missed. He told me he was proud of me. He knew, he said, that he hadn't really contributed to the person I had become. But still, he was proud.

I was holding Grandpa's hand as we talked. That rough, calloused hand, I continued to caress while I told my biological father he had it all wrong.Yes, he had been absent, sometimes painffully so. Yes, by almost every definition of the word father, he hadn't been one to me. But still, I hadn't missed out.

I looked at the man lying between us.

I had a dad.

This was my dad.

I hadn't gone through life without a father who was present and constant and loved me completely.

And then I told my father something else that I had come to understand. Even in his absence had contributed to the person I became. Every time he wasn't there taught me something about the kind of parent I wanted to be. Every absence left a lesson. Every empty place showed me something I wanted to fill differently for my own children.

In a strange way, his not being my dad had been a gift.

He tried to apologize again.

I told him there really wasn't anything to apologize for.

I hadn't been cheated.

I hadn't been left without.

I had been overblessed.

Eventually, our conversation came to a close, and even after twenty-one years, it remains the most beautiful and cherished conversation I've ever had with my father. So much was resolved in that room. And I don't think it was an accident that it happened while my hand rested inside Grandpa Mid's. At some point, I left the room to get something to drink and when I returned, the nurses told us Grandpa was beginning to decline, the numbers that told us his body was still alive were slowly falling.

I held his hand as my tears fell onto it as I caressed it over and over. I told him how much I loved him. How much we all loved him. We promised him we would take care of his beloved wife.

At one point I recall a nurse tried to pull me away telling me I didn't want to remember him like this. But I refused telling her I wasn't looking at him, I was remembering his hand.

I wanted every line, every rough spot, every last detail etched in my brain to preserve forever. The hand that had been a source of strength every single day of my life. The hand that had worked the land and held reins.

The hand of a soldier.

The hand of a rancher.

The hand of a county commissioner.

The hand of a man who had not always gotten fatherhood right.

The hand of the man who somehow got grandfatherhood exactly right for me.

The hand of my dad.

And then, far too quickly, he was gone.

The sparkle in Grandpa Mid's eyes disappeared from this world and something inside me collapsed with it. I knew I wasn't only grieving the man I loved. I knew I was grieving who I had been in his eyes. The little girl he adored. The girl for whom, according to Grandpa, the sun and moon rose and set.

Who was I in a world where those eyes no longer looked back at me?

My grandpa was gone.

My daddy was gone.

And for the first time in my life, I had to learn how to live in a world without Grandpa Mid in it.