Last year I was asked to write a speech for the service the night before his funeral (the Rosary or wake, whichever you prefer to call it). In memory of my Grandpa, I wanted to post that speech. I only wrote it a couple hours before giving it...but I think it was the spirit of the words more than the words themselves that were important that night.
Love you always Grandpa!
The definition of a farm reads as a tract of land, usually with a house, barn, and silo, on which crops and often livestock are raised for livelihood. And my farm has some of those things and is used, in principle, for that purpose, but no dictionary definition of a farm matches mine. On sticky, summer evenings you can hear the crack of a bat ring throughout the yard of my farm. If the batter is lucky enough to get a good hit they race around the rocks, or bases, and slide home. Chilly, winter nights at my farm bring booming laughter that echoes through the dining room between multiple games of Skip-Bo and hot homemade popcorn. My farm isn’t a place full of livestock and machines. My farm is a home full of people, love and laughter. And most importantly, the man who started it all…Grandpa.
To try use a serious tone throughout this whole speech would be a lie, because Grandpa was hardly a serious person. Although there was a serious and solemn farmer in his heart, he’d much rather be smiling and laughing. My farm is full of laughter. And usually by the time we’re done laughing we can’t even remember what started it. But I think that’s the best part of my family. It never did and never will matter what makes us laugh or makes us happy, as long as there’s joy in what we do. I remember many car rides where something, usually just a word or something Grandpa said, got the whole vehicle giggling and before long we were either choking or tearing up from laughing so hard. This seemed to always happen during nights of cards as well. I think every time we played Skip-Bo we had to remind Grandpa that you could only have 4 discard piles and that you could, in fact, put all your 12’s in one pile…not in 3. I think our advice on the rules was conveniently ignored, because Grandpa always played the game according to his own rules…and then got that goofy grin on his face when he won.
My farm is a safe haven for all of us. And no one looked out for his grandkids more than Grandpa. Even if most of the time we thought he was trying to ruin our fun, it’s clear that he only had our best interests at heart. When I was in junior high the farm received its first four-wheeler. A grandparents’ nightmare (although there is a story of Grandpa secretly enjoying the four-wheeler…a story that ends in a flipped four-wheeler and surgery…). Marshall, Amanda, Jennifer and I were more than excited about this new toy. It was like a new bike, except bigger, faster, and no pedaling required! Grandpa quickly banned us from riding it on the “super-busy” sand roads, which left us the driveway. This became boring fast and so we mapped out a new four-wheeler track through the yard. The track was drawn and made all before Grandpa realized we were driving that 1,000 lb machine through his precious grass. I think he endured that torture for a whole afternoon before we were banned from the yard as well. Looking back and realizing how young we all were I’m amazed he even let me drive the four-wheeler, especially with the younger kids riding.
As we were remembering Grandpa I realized that almost all our memories involve wheels. When we were little those wheels were a golden tan color and had a gun rack in the back. And whenever those wheels pulled out of the driveway it was a race to see which grandkid could get out the door fast enough to receive the honor of going with Grandpa, even if it was just to check his bossies. And even though I was scared of the cows, I was usually the one that got to the truck first. I don’t know why Grandpa bothered ever taking me, since I refused to roll down the windows if we were within 20 feet of a cow, even if it was 100 degrees outside. And if he “let” me ride in the back, I sat in the very middle right next to the back window. As far away from the cows as I could get, while he yelled, “Come Boss!” and counted.
He helped teach Marshall and I to drive as we grew up. And anyone that has ever been the driver with Grandpa as the passenger knows how cautious he insisted on being. He had this sneaky little way of peeking at the odometer and casually asking, “How fast you going?” when he knew good and well what the answer was. It was his little way of saying “Maybe you should slow down.” He also stated on one vacation to Branson with Karen, Amanda, Jennifer, and Grandma that if he ever won the lottery he would buy a Hummer.
My farm is full of tradition. Times change and people grow older but the traditions instilled at the farm make it feel like time can magically stop when we’re together. Christmas will always be the most valued tradition at my farm. Grandpa never went with us to look for Rudolph; he was always on Santa-watching duty. And he was always ready for us to run back through the doors after, once again missing Santa but still finding our presents. It didn’t matter how many grandkids there were that year, Grandpa would protest that we opened presents too fast during the Santa presents and he couldn’t see what we were doing. And then proceed to hurry us along during the family presents, just in case we didn’t get done in enough time to get ready for Midnight Mass. Even if it was only 9:30.
My farm is full of overwhelming support for each of us grandkids. Grandpa was a bulldog, a leopard, and a thunderbird. A black and gold hat could quickly be exchanged for one with blue and white. Teams and colors didn’t really matter, as long as his grandkid was competing. He was always ready to go to Amanda’s long powerlifting meets and she remembers one specifically where he pulled her to the side while the girl with the winning weight was taking her turn and joked that he would go and take some of the weight off that girls bar so Amanda would win if she wanted him to. He was a dedicated Leopard as well. LaCrosse became almost a second home for Grandma and Grandpa during Marshall’s 4 years of high school. I think he saw a lot of himself in Marshall, which made him extra proud of his grandson. He always told us stories from his football days and the time he hit a baseball over the roof of the school here at Holy Name. Anyone that spent a few minutes with Grandpa would hear a few stories or get an update on Marshall’s football or whatever new sport Jerred had been trying. And if you were looking for him on summer evenings it was mostly likely that he would be at Chelsey or Jerred’s baseball games. What a blessing it has been for all of us kids to live so close Grandma and Grandpa. They don’t have to worry about traveling to see us and we get to spend invaluable time as a family.
Even though many of my memories of Grandpa are light-hearted and cheerful, there is still that hard-working, dedicated farmer with dirty hands at his core. When he wasn’t Grandpa, he was a diligent worker, whether it be in the oil field or on the tractor. It was that work ethic, those bare hands, that built my farm, that built the stout hearts of his kids and the loyal hearts of his grandkids. His work ethic built the traditions at my farm, built a safe haven for all that are a part of his family, and after all that hard work was done, my farm was full of laughter. American journalist, Chuck Palahniuk once said, “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” And Grandpa did. Thank you, Grandpa, for my farm. For our farm.
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