My Father’s Father: Love, Loss, and Legacy

MOMENTS & MEANING | Family & Legacy

Life can be a real kick in the junk sometimes. Nothing can prepare you for some losses, and nothing really heals them, even time.

I know this because of my father. When he died, it broke me in a way I didn’t know was possible. He was more than just my dad, as an adult he was my friend, and a person I leaned on, more than I knew, without even realizing it. He was an ever-present part of my life. But unlike me, my father didn’t get the gift of decades with his dad. He lost his father to cancer when he was about thirteen. Just as he was beginning to understand who he was, the man who could have helped shape that understanding was taken away.

Throughout my life, my dad would share small fragments about his father. Little stories. A rare picture or two. It wasn’t enough to really know him, but just enough to imagine. I could tell those fragments meant more to my dad than he let on. He wanted me to know his father. I’m sure he wished his father could have known me too.

So I pieced together what I could. I built an image of “my father’s father” in my mind. A patchwork quilt of stories, photographs, and my own imagination filling the spaces between. Was I close to who he really was? Or did I create someone entirely new, stitched together by longing? I’ll probably never know for sure.

Yet, shortly before my father passed, he said something. He said his father and grandfather had come to visit him. I don’t know what form that took, but I believe he felt their presence. Maybe they were waiting for him, just out of sight. Maybe they were there to let him know he wasn’t alone.

And maybe one day, when my own time comes, I’ll get to join that reunion. My dad will finally get to introduce me to his father, and his grandfather too. Four generations of men, whose lives overlapped, or didn’t overlap at all, finally together in one place.

Will the man I meet match the version I’ve carried in my mind all these years? I don’t know. But either way, I think it will be wondrous. Because for the first time, the missing pieces will be filled in. And my father’s father will no longer be just a story.

Take a moment to remember the ones who shaped you, even if you only know them through fragments. Write down a story or a memory about them today. Someday, someone might be grateful you did.