Anyway, I graduated. I absolutely cannot believe that three years have gone by since I packed up a moving truck, very unexpertly loaded my Jeep onto the trailer in the back (I did 45 mph for the first three hours as I was sure that thing was coming off - but by New Mexico I was doing 70 downhill), and headed out west. It is seriously as if I went to sleep one night and woke up a law school graduate living in L.A. (with a MOUNTAIN of debt). My God, I hope the rest of my life doesn't go by this fast. If it does, I shall be 80 by the time I finish this post.
Graduation was bittersweet, though, because that Thursday, three days before the ceremony, my sister called to tell me that our grandfather had passed away. Most everyone who reads this blog already knows, and Gina's spoken very nicely about it in her blog. But I thought I should put my own thoughts and feelings down anyway.
It was surreal to go through graduation and then get on a plane and go to his funeral. I don't much care for graduation ceremonies, so not having anyone there didn't really bother me. My friends were very good to me, especially Zeina and Ian who treated me like family. The trip was bad. I missed my flight, they lost my luggage. I had to borrow a suit from Bill when I got there. But what got to me most was that at my mom's house, there was a card from my grandpa waiting for me. It wasn't just a graduation card, but a law school graduation card. I don't know where he would've found that in Lawrenceville. It was his last message to me. I had sent him a graduation announcement but no note because I planned to write him or call him later and talk about it. I never got to. Instead he wrote to me in that card. I couldn't open it for two days.
My grandpa Ray was, to put it simply, the coolest person I ever knew. I don't mean James Dean cool, I mean possessing a zen like quality that most buddhist monks would envy. I cannot even picture the man telling a lie, unless it would be to tease me as a kid. He used to tell me fantastic things to see if I'd believe them. I could always tell by the slight grin on his face though, he always gave it away. He was almost Eighty-two when he died, and in my entire life I never once saw him angry. Never. I know he wasn't perfect, but he was to me. He was all the good parts of a man.
He taught me how to fish, shoot a gun, and drive a tractor. The last started out by him showing me how to operate his riding lawn mower. It had no steering wheel, only two levers. You pulled them one way to go right, another to go left, back in the middle to go straight, etc. There was a clutch and a throttle. This was difficult stuff for an 8 year old, but he always treated me as if he had every confidence in the world that I'd master it right away. Later, he taught me how to ride a little motor scooter he had and immediately went into the house, leaving me to zip all over hell and creation on my own. By the time I was 11 or so he put me in charge of a piece of machinery that could have killed me in 6 different ways - a tractor with a gargantuan mower deck on the back (called a bush hog), and again went inside while I mowed everything in sight. The fact that he'd trusted me with it meant the world to me. I was only a kid, but he treated me like a man.
He also taught me to respect life. I won't go into too many details, but one story sticks in my mind to this day. It involved me, my sister, and my grandfather fishing. We were really young. I had, though, in typical grandpa ray fashion, been given a pocket knife for my birthday. I was involved in doing despicable things to a minnow we had used as bait when my grandpa spotted me. He simply stayed my hand and said "You can put em to death if you have to, but don't torture em. Ever." I am not kidding when I say that I spent the next few weeks praying to God for forgiveness and hoping to meet that fish in heaven so I could apologize.
Mostly, my grandpa taught me how to be a good man in every situation. I don't always do it. Not nearly often enough actually. But I have his example to know how. He was very slow to anger, treated everyone with respect and always thought before he spoke. I can never dream of approaching a life as cool as his, and that's someone who lives in Los Angeles talking about someone who spent his entire life on a farm in rural Illinois. I guess I knew he wouldn't always be there, but I never really thought he'd ever be gone either. I miss him.
The two greatest men I've ever known, or ever will know, are now gone from the world. I have to be truly on my own as a man now, for the rest of my life. Thinking about that makes me feel really alone. I'll always have their examples to turn to. But it's a very lonely place without them.
Eldon Ray Spidel
August 1, 1924 - May 18, 2006
