My grandfather has been battling Parkinson's disease for the past few years, but today, his battle ended as he passed away peacefully. During the past few weeks, his health has been deteriorating quickly and my grandmother was not able to give him proper care at home, so they made the decision to move him onto an assisted living center.
My grandma and grandpa got married when my grandma was just 16 years old and had been married for almost 70 years. That is crazy to think that they have spent that long together. They had seven kids and way too many grandkids and great grandkids for me to try and count. It is crazy to think that these two have created so much life.
My grandpa was the one that taught me how to fish when I was young and we went on so many different fishing trips together with him and my brothers. I didn't pay enough attention when it came to learning how to fish, because I am horrible at it. Instead, I would normally get in trouble during our fishing trips.
I was telling my daughter last night about a fishing trip that we went on when I was about 10 years old. We went to Strawberry Reservoir here in Utah. It was my brothers and our grandpa and for some reason, he liked to go to Strawberry when it was really cold, so he was trying to start a fire in the morning. The wood was pretty wet and he was using a propane torch to try and get it to light. Me being the little trouble maker I was, decided it would be funny to pee on the wood while he was trying to light it.
Well, when my pee started to splash on the wood he was trying to light with a torch, he turned to me to see what I was doing and the torch shot a flame right at my little weeny and burned the tip of it. I am not sure if you have had the tip of your weeny burned, but it hurts pretty bad. Luckily it was just like a millisecond that the fire was on me, but man that hurt.
Being just 10 years old at the time, of course I started to cry, which made my older brother laugh at me, and that made me mad. So I ran at him and pushed him back as he was making fun of me. He ended up falling backwards into the fishing poles that my grandpa brought and snapped one of them in half. So let's just say that I didn't get to go fishing on that trip because there was one less pole to use. That is fine though, because I usually just ended up getting my grandpa's fishing lures stuck on logs because I sucked so bad at fishing.
He never did get mad at me for breaking the pole and I think he felt bad about burning me, but it ended up that we would always joke about roasting weenies whenever we were going on a trip or later on when we would see him.
As his health was deteriorating, my wife and I were not able to see him before he passed because we have all been sick, but my sister was finally able to take the her boys that arrived from Haiti. My grandma and grandpa were so excited to see them and welcome them into the family, and they were excited to meet him as well. It does suck that they will never get to have the fun experiences that my brothers and sister had with him growing up.
He is the type of grandparent that I strive to be one day. I want to be able to take my grandkids on adventures and teach them fun things, like he did for all of his grandkids. I am already going bald like him and that is something that I would always joke about with him as I was growing up. I made so many bald jokes to him and didn't realize that I was going to be bald just like him one day. I still have some hair left, but it is leaving faster each year that it wont take long until I have a shiny head just like him.
I wish I was able to see him before he passed. He was such a great guy that I know he is in a better place right now and he is no longer battling any disease. I hope that he is spending some time with all his loved ones that have passed and that he is catching as many fish as he wants. I love you grandpa, you will be missed, but you will never be forgotten.
