When I was 19 my Poppy died. Poppy is what our family called my Dad’s Dad. He was not the first person I had lost to death, or even the first loss I had experienced in general, for loss comes to us all in different shapes and sizes, faces, choices and actions. A best friend moves away, parents get divorced, romantic relationships end, a patriarch dies. Poppy was the quiet yet profound patriarch of my life.
My Poppy was not the first person I had lost, but he was the hardest.
His death was the toughest blow to my life by that point in time. I carried a stake of grief and anger in my heart for years. All I could see was what I had lost.
Then one day I visited one of my many life-teachers, a counselor who had been recommended to me by a friend. I have found that good teachers do not tend to give me the answers. They just ask the right questions and wait for me to figure it out.
I was experiencing detachment issues, or rather attachment issues since I was becoming quite expert at detaching myself from others.
Then she asked the question. It was a simple question and it changed everything.
“Describe him to me.” She said.
So I did. My memory linked back to the little-thing moments. You know, those moments we think are so insignificant, but are actually the pieces that set one person apart from another. Little quirks that make us laugh or drive us crazy. When those quirks and little things are gone they don’t seem so little any more.
“He was bald.” I noted. “Only on top though. To compensate he grew long hair on one side and combed it over the top of his head so he didn’t seem so bald. But if we would go outside to pick crab apples or mow the lawn, sure enough a gust of wind would blow that neatly combed hair right off the top of his head and his long hair would hang down only to cover his left ear.” I chuckled to myself.
“Oh.” I remembered something else that made me laugh. “When he would stub his toe he would always yell ‘OH GIVE ME STRENGTH!’.” I giggled.
“I remember how my sister and I would have sleepovers at his house and it didn’t matter how much food we had for dinner, or how full we said we were, he and our Nanny (his wife) would bring out bowls of crinkle chips, washed grapes, or Dad’s Oatmeal Cookies for snacks. I think it was a Maritimer thing to never take no for an answer when company says they’re full. Snacks in hand we’d watch the television until 11pm. The night usually ended with the news, my Poppy snoring in his recliner until the TV would chime and the broadcaster would ask, “Do you know where your children are?”"
As I continued sharing my memories I began to make a connection. For the past few years I had been so angry because all I could see was everything that I had lost. After sharing the memories of my Poppy I began to realize that I had gained much more in my life from having known him in the first place, than I had ever lost.
A significant gift was given back to me that day. My broken heart felt a little better. My life was richer because I got to share pieces of it with this wonderful man. That richness far surpassed the loss I had felt that he no longer got to share pieces of it with me.
