See you on the other side

This photo is about 3 1/2 years old. My grandpa on my mother's side is the guy in the wheelchair. He passed away this morning.

When I received the call I was shocked. Shocked at what little emotion I felt. I felt sad that I didn't feel sad. I wasn't overcome by any great sense of loss...let me explain.

I can count on one hand the encounters with my grandfather as a child. There was the time we met him in Santa Cruz for lunch and I ordered blackened fish, the morning we woke to a box of donuts on our kitchen table with a note from him (how he got in our house is still a mystery), and of course the infamous Christmas packages filled with loads of second hand treasures that always made for a good laugh-mom where did you put that sweater dress?(I think it's back in style!)

None of us knew him well. He was a mysterious character that would occasionally stop in for an unannounced visit and be gone just as abrubtly as he came. He was an American nomad. A drifter and a recluse. He eventually made his way to Georgia where he and his wife settled at a trailer park in Stone Mountain. This is where our lives intersected.

When we moved to GA my mom mentioned that was where her dad lived. I figured it must be a God thing that of all the places we would move to, he was just around the corner. So I figured I'd give him a call, maybe bake some cookies to drop by and see what might come of it. When I tried to contact him I ended up getting a hold of his stepson who was called into town because his mom (Grandpa's wife) had a stroke and wasn't expected to live much longer.

As it turned out, it was a God thing but not in the grandaughter-meets-long-lost grandpa-and forms-a-wonderful-bond-redeeming-the-years-of-absence, "happilyeverafter" kind of way. My grandfather's wife passed away within a few days and my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and sent to an "old folks home".

We would visit him on a weekly basis. We were his only family and he didn't have any friends. He rarely recognized me. Sometimes he'd light up as if he knew who I was and then he'd introduce me to his Bingo buddies as Carol (my mom).

When my parents moved into town we took turns checking in on him. That brings us up to today. So, here I am with lots of questions to ponder like, "Lord, what was his purpose for the past 6 years? What is the value of a human life when it's no longer productive to society? What was the point of bringing us together?"

I don't think I'll get the full answer to each of my questions. Just fragments until God puts the pieces together in eternity to make sense of things. Until then, I will rest in the confident hope that my grandpa is in the arms of his Father and that somehow I was a part of God's plan to heal his mind and spirit.