One final shout out to my grandpa

My grandfather died last week and it hit me pretty hard. My grandfather didn’t like science fiction or tech. He was a plain guy from a small town and the old school. He was genuinely a good man, father, husband and papa. He used to take my cousin and I to the country town where he was born. We fussed about having to go but enjoyed the scenery, the food and just hanging out with him. He used to take us to Astros games. We never knew why but we went if only to roam around the Astrodome and eat nachos and cheese from the stadium food court. It was in the Jose Cruz days, I only remember that because they used to yell his name over the loud speaker all the time.

In recent years he’d become heavily involved with his church. It was a passion that I didn’t share but respected. He wasn’t one for long drawn out discussions but when he did say something it was thoughtful. I’m really upset that he’s gone. We’d planned to cook him a big Tex-Mex dinner for Father’s Day but he died two days before we could do that. I’d spoken to him 2 weeks ago and was looking forward to the dinner because I hadn’t seen him lately because of my school schedule. I’m still a bit upset that we couldn’t even get one last Father’s Day with him.

He’s gone now. It took me totally by surprise and for awhile it felt like I’d lost my footing in life. To work off some of my grief I made him a photo memorial tribute. It was displayed at his funeral. The trip down memory lane and all of the old pictures of him made a lot of people happy at the funeral. I think he would have liked that. I made it because I felt that people needed more than just to see our grandfather lying there in a casket. We all needed to be reminded why we thought he was so great. Not only that, physical act of making it certainly made be feel better and I got to see pictures of my grandfather that I’d never seen before. Below are some of the pics.

R.I.P. Papa (1932-2011).