One year

It's hard to believe that on Tuesday the 18th it will have been one year since grandpa passed away. I just wanted to post some of the pictures we had of the day of his funeral. It was such a snowy day, but I thought it was beautiful. Although I miss grandpa so much I'm so glad that he is with grandma, our mom, Lucille, Veronica, and many other members of his family. I learned so much from my grandparents. Most importantly I learned the importance of living the gospel. Both grandma and grandpa were missionaries to our family. Without them I don't know if I would have attended my church meetings and stayed close to the gospel. I'm forever grateful for all that they have done for me. I miss them both so much.

Traditions!

The following is part of a talk about traditions that I gave in sacrament meeting in our ward in Virginia several months ago. I know this is two posts about the "long hard pull" in a row, but hey, maybe Grandpa should have thought about that before saying it so much. I'm actually really glad he did.

I'd like to take this chance to invite any and everyone else to write and share essays about grandma and grandpa.

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My Grandpa was a hardworking man all his life. I heard him describe himself more than once as a farmer but as far as I know he never owned a farm. I assume by that he meant that his father was a farmer and that he inherited the hard-working farmer ethic and lifestyle from him. My grandpa was actually a builder: a builder of houses, of buildings, of businesses, and a builder of engines.

While my grandfather didn’t pass his talent for building things on to me, he did enjoy passing on advice – in particular he had one talk that he would recount whenever there was a marriage or birth or other life-changing event in the life of one of his kids or grandkids. It was a short talk the gist of which was “life is a long hard pull…and it just got longer and harder.” This “long hard pull” talk was given as a means of sharing fatherly/grandfatherly advice and mostly the advice was that life is not always easy and you have to work hard for what you get.

Now that Grandpa is gone, whenever the family gets together someone invariably says the words “long hard pull” and when we hear them we think of Grandpa. The “long hard pull” talk is a family tradition that reminds us of our Grandpa and his life and love for us.

We will give the same talk to our own kids and grandkids and tell them about Grandpa’s love and example of a Christlike life and in a way they will get to know Grandpa the way we did. Not only will they get to know him through his unique words but we will also tell them about his love for his family and friends, his hard work ethic, about how he rarely missed a day of work in his life and how he never retired. The spirit of what Grandpa said will carry on if not the memory of Grandpa himself.

This small, seemingly insignificant family tradition serves the dual purposes of bringing us as family members closer to each other through the memory of our Grandpa but also bringing us closer to our Heavenly Father by reminding us of a man who led a Christlike life.