Ten years gone

since my grandfather, Edgar Craig, died. I can't believe it's been so long. He'd had emphysema for years (he smoked) and his blood oxygen levels were going very low. At one point he'd coded and been put on a ventilator at the VA hospital, but he'd been sent home and died there, as he wanted.

He was a Marine in World War II, and he was at Iwo Jima during the famous battle there. He raised three children with his wife Marjorie, and they also had foster children along the way. He broke his back falling onto a jackhammer sometime in the 50s, but managed to have surgery that kept him from being paralysed. After that he managed a store in Danville, Kentucky, where they lived. He later sold Suburus and car batteries.

He was bright, engaging, and a wonderful role-model. He had a gentleness about him, but could stand up for himself as well. I sorely miss him. He was the main father figure in my life, more so than my own father.

I remember driving home in an ice storm to be with my family after his death. For the actual funeral, the roads had gotten bad enough that my family came and got me in a four-wheel drive (Danville is only 35 miles from Lexington, and at the time I had my dog and didn't stay over.) All in all, it was a good death...he'd gone home from the hospital, gotten up in the middle of the night, fallen, and my grandmother couldn't get him back up. He told her to let him be, and then quietly died. At the funeral, one of my cousins was pregnant with her daughter, who sadly never knew him. But children born before and after his death continued the family, and he would have loved to see them all. At the funeral there was a gun salute at the graveside. The only glitch in the whole thing was that he wanted 'Amazing Grace' played during the funeral on the bagpipes; the funeral home played it will some sort of bells--not the same for a Scots family. But I guess they tried their best.

Anyway, I'm remembering him today. My grandmother is still living, although battling renal cancer. I suppose today is weighing heavily on her as well. I know she misses him every day.