Somebody Died

Somebody in my family died this weekend.

Actually, to be more accurate, my paternal grandfather died this weekend. But, I just called him "somebody" because that is who he had become in my life.

My dad's Dad was never the kindly grandfather you see on television and read about in children's books. How could he fill that role when he was never an actual father to my dad?

That failure by my grandfather created a massive chasm in our relationship; a chasm that could never be crossed. I saw my grandfather a few times when I was child, but the casual disdain my father showed for everything he did or said really guided me as to how I dealt with the man.

My father must have truly been hurt when he was a child. He says he always knew who his father was and actually lived with him until he was five years old. But, then my grandfather left, and my father and his two brothers and sister became one more black family without a man. Forced to work by the time he was eight years old, my father says that he learned some cruel lessons on the street, lessons he won't even share with me.

My pops never let go of that hurt. And I am my father's son.

I understand that my grandfather was sick his final few years, that he had withered away as cancer and hard living finally caught up with him. I still remember him as a boisterous man who loved to talk about black history and WWII. As children, my brother and I completed many school projects just with the books and other material my grandfather gave us for free. He earned two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in WWII, but I never got to hear him tell his stories about that time.

He was willing, but I never let him.

One time, when I was in college, my grandfather came to D.C. on business and tried to catch up with me to have lunch. I made plans with him and was supposed to meet him at a local diner. The meeting slipped my mind, and I overslept like a typical college kid. I've always pictured that proud man waiting at that diner for me to show, and then finally giving it up when it became clear that one more overture on his part had been spurned.

If my father never got past his pain, I never learned to see anything but that pain when I looked into my grandfather's face. He was usually nice to me, but whenever I gazed into this face, a face that was a slimmer version of my father's, I saw a five-year old boy without a daddy trying to learn how to be a man.

To many people in this world my grandfather was Somebody, but to me he was just somebody.

It's a sad thing when the sins of the father are fostered upon the second and third generation, but that's what happened in my family. Those bonds that should have existed were never created, the love that typically blooms died on the vine. There was never any chance that I would love my grandfather because the blueprint for our relationship was laid when he walked away from his responsibilities 50 years ago.

My grandfather never got a chance to tell me his story. I never heard why he made the choices he made and how he lived with the mistakes of his life. My ears were never open because I figured I knew every word he was going to say.

So, he died as just another somebody.