Only in the past few weeks have I started looking at his picture in the hallway. It’s right outside of the hallway/girls bathroom and hard to miss. His big smile looking back at me, hasn’t been something I’ve been willing to look at until just recently. Before then, when it happened to catch my eye, he never failed to make me cry. There was just something about that picture. It was too real. Maybe I was still grieving too much. I don’t really know. Now I look at it and grin. Not because it hurts any less today, just because I  miss looking at him.

He had a great smile, my Grandpa did. A smile that could light up a room. He didn’t smile often, he was a serious man. However, when he did, his smile was infectious. The picture on my family wall, is of him and my Grandma, taken when I was about 14 years old. I’m not sure why I have that one up. No, I take that back, I do know why. It’s that smile. He didn’t always smile like that in pictures, in fact he normally didn’t. Grandma once told me that the man taking their photo that day, had told Grandpa a joke.

We talked about him a lot this past weekend, my mom and I. As much as I miss him, she misses him a million times more. He was her father after all. This coming Saturday it will be a year. On Saturday, the man who I adored, the man who I saw as the strongest man in my life, will have been dead an entire year.

My first real memories of my childhood are from a trip when I was three years old. I remember my brothers being born and visiting them in the hospital and I was only two then. But my real solid memories are of this trip. My dad and Grandpa helped move my Aunt and Cousins to Texas from California. My dad drove the moving truck, my Aunt her car and my grandpa drove his car with my Grandma, my mom, my brothers and I. I sat on the hump. Can you imagine letting your three year old sit in the front seat, much less the hump in between the drivers and passengers seats? Me neither. It did have a seat belt though.

I sat on the hump and sang with Grandpa for 1300 miles. Truly, I did. Until the day he stopped talking, which was about a year before he died, he told me this story ever time I saw him. From then on, he and I had a great relationship.

I miss him. I miss him more than I can even tell you. He was a major player in my life. He had more influence than my dad ever did, on my life. It hurts to think about him most days. It still doesn’t seem real. He’s been gone, a few weeks longer that Harrison has been alive. He never met Harrison. As sick as he was, as bad off as he was in that last year, I’m not even sure it registered that there was going to be a Harrison. That makes me sad. Grandpa loved all the babies. He loved kids. Heck, he had six of them. He adored his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. He’d of adored Harrison. In a lot of ways, Harrison is a lot like him. Very serious little dude, he is.

I nearly named Harrison after him. I would have if he’d been born a few months later. At the time, I just couldn’t see saying Grandpa’s name every single day. Plus, H’s name really fits him.

A year has passed. Now he’s gone. But he’s not forgotten. He and my Grandma’s death, left a hole in this family. Our grief is still huge. My girls still tell me on a regular basis, I’m sad because I miss my great grandma and great grandpa. Me too, my babies, me too.

To you Grandpa, loved and never forgotten. Love, me