I told them they didn't have to get out of the car when we pulled up to the cemetery. After all, neither he nor the kids ever met them. I was the one needing to draw close, to read their names in stone, to pay my respects in my own way. The kids opted to stay, but he walked with me. When we reached their graves, we stood there in silence, as if he was absorbing the memories, love, and nostalgia that were emanating from within me.
There was a service plaque at the end of a long metal pole near my grandfather's footstone. It was rusted and mangled and practically horizontal with the ground. When he asked why it was like that, I said probably the groundskeeper had hit it with the mower. He scoffed and made a comment about people being disrespectful.
I watched him remove it from the ground and spend several minutes working to straighten out the metal pole as best he could. Then I watched him stake it by the footstone, perfectly centered. I was overcome with emotion for this gesture of respect and honor - for a man he'd never met or loved. But he knew what PaPa meant to me. And he knew that he was a hero to me, and that if he hadn't existed, I would never have come into existence. It was a beautiful moment of tenderness I will never forget.
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
but of respect and joy in each other's life.”
~Richard David Bach
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