I know it’s been a while, about a month actually.  It’s been a little busy though, finishing up my Master’s, getting ready for fatherhood, working, burying my grandfather etc.  It’s not that I’ve not thought about blogging, it’s not that I didn’t think about not sharing my thoughts and views, it’s that I’ve taken some time to really think about life.  It’s amazing what a death to someone so close to you will do to your sense of humanity, life and the time you have here.  It’s amazing what life will do to you when you let it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the person that I want to be.  It started with Papa.  I got the supreme honor of speaking at his memorial service and carrying his body to his resting place.  The funeral director called it one last act of service to Papa.  I was fine through Pastor Brett talking about Papa, I was fine with the final viewing, but I came unglued at that. One last act?  As if his lifetime of service to me, my mom and our family could be summed up in me carrying his body to his grave?  I shed a few tears while they were putting the casket in the wall.  I shed a few tears while driving over to the church and I had to go to the bathroom so I could cry because I was watching s slideshow of a man who would never hold me again on this earth and I would never get to eat his raviolis and sausage.

I got to speak about him.  Selfishly I backhanded volunteered because part of me wanted an opportunity to speak and let people know I am a good writer, a talented speaker and a kind-hearted gentleman.  I wanted the opportunity to speak because I loved the man, respected the hell out of him and I’m his first grandson.  That was all before I started typing, started crying and started remembering.  I looked at countless photos of him with me, him with my brother and sister, him with Nana, him with mom.  I read the notes he wrote Nana when he was in the Army, I listened to Nana talk about him, my mom talk about him and how Lauren remembers him.  I wished Tyler could have known him, and I know Papa would have been proud to know Tyler.  I wrote about him the best I could, I tried to represent him the best I could, to let people know who knew him that his life was spent for something good, that the effort made by him was not unnoticed, and that even though he’s looking down at us now, he lives on in all of us.  Then I realized when I was talking about him in front of friends and family, that is was not my one last act of respect and service.

He was a man who loved God, loved his family and worked hard.  Every memory I have of him and from what I’ve heard of him before I met him speaks to those three truths.  And it’s not that he expected it of himself.  He expected it of others too.  And he expects it of me now.  The Bible talks about faith without works is dead.  If I only talk about how much that man meant to me, and not live the values he taught, the values he lived…where is my lasting, on-going acts of devotion?