2008 Woodie Awards
A lasting tribute
Danielle Stillman
Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Opinion
This time last year, my grandfather passed away.
Everything stopped cold for me. I rescheduled my midterms and then proceeded to forget entirely about school. As the designated writer in the family, I numbly wrote his obituary, which ran in the Chronicle next to the crossword puzzles that he did every day. When it came time for the funeral, our house was overrun with cousins from every corner of the state. I slept on the wood floor of my family's office one night just to get a little privacy.
I stayed as far away as I could from the casket at both the wake and the memorial service. I deeply wanted a chance to say goodbye, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. I did not want to cry in front of my family-strangers would have been okay. With all the people that my grandfather affected around, that moment never came. He was buried in the same cemetery as his mother and father, near a little ravine that we knew he would have loved.
I resolved that I did not want to remember him like I saw in the hospital: weak, unable to speak, disoriented. It was hard to be around him during his last days. That was not my grandpa in that hospital bed, because my grandfather was never sick a day in his life. With the memories of his illness fresh in my head, it was near-impossible to remember the good times.
The good memories started filtering back eventually, like hazy little patches of sunlight thrown against a sidewalk from a tree up above. I remember being a little girl and sitting at his drafting tables while he still ran his engineering practice out of his home. I remember how grown up I felt listening to his conversations with contractors about building permits. I remember him never shooing me out of his office. He always had time for me.
I remember all the good times we had at our family's ranch. One particular run for a Christmas tree stands out in my memory. He dragged the scraggly Texas cedar from the woods to the house while my sister, cousins and I shouted Christmas carols at the top of our lungs. I have a picture with all of us and the tree, and although I look dorky and awkward, I treasure that photo now.
Everything stopped cold for me. I rescheduled my midterms and then proceeded to forget entirely about school. As the designated writer in the family, I numbly wrote his obituary, which ran in the Chronicle next to the crossword puzzles that he did every day. When it came time for the funeral, our house was overrun with cousins from every corner of the state. I slept on the wood floor of my family's office one night just to get a little privacy.
I stayed as far away as I could from the casket at both the wake and the memorial service. I deeply wanted a chance to say goodbye, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. I did not want to cry in front of my family-strangers would have been okay. With all the people that my grandfather affected around, that moment never came. He was buried in the same cemetery as his mother and father, near a little ravine that we knew he would have loved.
I resolved that I did not want to remember him like I saw in the hospital: weak, unable to speak, disoriented. It was hard to be around him during his last days. That was not my grandpa in that hospital bed, because my grandfather was never sick a day in his life. With the memories of his illness fresh in my head, it was near-impossible to remember the good times.
The good memories started filtering back eventually, like hazy little patches of sunlight thrown against a sidewalk from a tree up above. I remember being a little girl and sitting at his drafting tables while he still ran his engineering practice out of his home. I remember how grown up I felt listening to his conversations with contractors about building permits. I remember him never shooing me out of his office. He always had time for me.
I remember all the good times we had at our family's ranch. One particular run for a Christmas tree stands out in my memory. He dragged the scraggly Texas cedar from the woods to the house while my sister, cousins and I shouted Christmas carols at the top of our lungs. I have a picture with all of us and the tree, and although I look dorky and awkward, I treasure that photo now.