A eulogy for my Gapaw

I know his story is more complicated than this, but through the eyes of a much-loved grandchild, the thing I will always remember about my Gapaw was his sense of silliness and mischief. There was nothing too mundane to be transformed into a game or a story. The drinking water tap on the corner of the kitchen sink in their house in Lizton? That was magic water that Gapaw claimed made him more beautiful. The door that was always kept closed to curious little grandchildren, behind which was a set of dangerously steep steps to the unfinished basement with the water heater and furnace? It hid a monstrously ferocious wombat*.

When he hid plastic eggs around the yard for Easter, some contained candy, some contained money, and some contained…..driveway gravel. He claimed to be descended from bold and brave Vikings.** He made the infamous “flamethrower” suggestion when he and my dad were clearing out the rubble of the collapsed barn in my parents’ backyard and discovered a massive hive of angry bees under a pile of old carpet, which led to one of the Great Family Legends. Furthermore, he was an astonishingly good sport about my constant childish pestering for him to give up smoking*** and sometimes he let me “help” in his woodworking shop, distressing finished pieces so they would look comfortably worn-in. The smells of cigarette smoke, varnish, and sawdust always send me back there.

I grieve that his story has ended, but I’m so very thankful for how much more magical my own story has been because of him.

Thank you to my cousin Amanda for letting me borrow this absolutely perfect picture

*Gapaw didn’t actually know what a wombat was, and was very surprised one day when my sister and I came over with cuddly wombat stuffies that another relative had brought back for us from a trip to Australia.

**His side of the family was descended from Jacobites on the Scottish-English border, so this isn’t entirely implausible because Danelaw, but it seemed fantastical to me at the time.

***He did eventually quit, but it had nothing to do with my anti-smoking “campaign”