17

Seventeen years ago on December 2ND we got a call from the ER that my grandaddy had had a heart attack. He went to be with Jesus about an hour after we got there. He waited! Prior to him being in the ER he had been battling bone cancer and we {literally} lived with him in the hospital. Because that's what are family does! After my mom would get off work we would pack our bags and head over to the hospital. We ate dinner together in that tiny room and did homework. We slept on reclining chairs and took showers in the tiny bathroom in the morning before school. You see my grandaddy was like a father to me. Me and my sister loved him deeply!
After my parents got divorced we moved in with my grandparents. I loved it! I had a constant {love} in that house! I was very close to my grandparents even though I was young when they went home to Jesus. I was 8 when my granny went home and 14 when my grandaddy went home. My grandaddy loved this place called The Dog House! His favorite hot dog was a Collie dog! He always played with us and had {midnight} snacks of milk poured over bread while we watched western movies late at night. He bought me my first typewriter because I made the middle school newspaper as the recipe columnist, ha ha! He was proud! He would help me go through my granny's recipes to find the most delicious ones!
He owned a drug store called Kale Drug in downtown Durham, NC. He was a very smart man and graduated at the top of his class from the UNC pharmacy school. He payed his way through college by collecting coal from the train tracks. He met my granny while he was sick in the hospital and she was his nurse. {That's so romantic}
So you see that's why we couldn't leave him there in that hospital while he was sick. He needed us and we needed him! I can still smell him today, he smelled of Lance crackers and shaving cream. The summer before he got sick, he went down hill. He was using the bathroom in his bed, throwing up and falling. But he was stubborn and didn't want to go to the doctor. Plus he was 6 foot and very stocky so it wasn't like we could pick him up and put him in the car and go. His last meal before he went to the hospital was at his favorite restaurant Honey's! He loved the child's plate spaghetti and a sprite. He ordered the child's plate to save money, ha ha! After dinner when we were leaving he fell walking out the door. I knew then he needed help. He agreed to go to the doctor and that's when we found out he had cancer.
Theres not a day that goes by that I don't think about him. I stayed home a week after he passed away. I would go in his room and *smell* him and lay in his bed and plunder through his tool box where he would hide candy bars { I found a snickers that he had not eaten, me and my sister saved it}. I wore his plaid shirts to school and could smell him all day, it was the best feeling knowing I had a piece of him with me. That was a hard school year.
So grandaddy, I love you and will see you one day in heaven! I know God has you all hooked up with Lance crackers, cereal and sardines!
~Gal Molly