Pop

For the last few days my life has been on hold so we can deal with a death. My husband’s grandfather passed away the other day, after almost a decade of “mini strokes.” I loved this man, as did my children. He was gruff and blunt. If you asked him how you looked, he would tell you exactly what he thought without a thought to sparing your feelings.

The record of Pop’s birth was lost in a fire but they narrowed it down to the year and one of two days. So we’ve always celebrated both days. J Pop’s mother died just after he was born and his father had a Native American woman care for Pop while he went out and earned a living. When Pop was very young, (I don’t remember the exact age, but under the age of ten) his father died and Pop and the Native American woman were left to fend for themselves. She raised Pop and watched over him until her death when he was about fifteen.

After she passed he started to wonder. He traveled the Mississippi, meeting a young woman in the bayou that he very nearly married. Her father wouldn’t have it being as Pop didn’t have two coins to rub together. Eventually, he moved to New York where he worked in a theater and met several noteworthy men.

Finally he joined the military and went to war in World War II. He fought in the Pacific theater and was a member of Truman’s honor guard when he signed the treaty ending the fighting with Japan.

When he came back from the war he went back to Pennsylvania where he met the woman he would have his family with. They married and had a little girl (who would become my mother in law) then a boy, another boy and a girl. They lost the second boy when he was about seven to a drunk driver who plowed the playing child down.

Despite the heart aches and tragedy Pop and Nana stayed married for over fifty years. When she passed away, Pop was devastated.

Pop asked my husband if he really loved me. Of course, the reply was yes. Then Pop told him something I will never forget. “If you love her than you better divorce her as soon as you finish raising the kids, loving someone for fifty years hurts too much. It’d be better for you to get rid of her as soon as you can.”

But Pop and I would have some great conversations and I think he was fond of me and that he believed Brian made a good choice with me. That’s what I’d like to believe was true anyway.

Pop’s health declined after Nana passed and with it so did his temper. But I vividly remember the man he really was and will keep that close to me. The man the strokes made him wasn’t who he really was.

I’ve tried to capture a bit of the stories he used to tell in this blog, but it doesn’t do his true life story justice. I wish he would have written the stories down. There is more I could write. Like the time he and his son cornered a skunk under the neighbor's bathtub. Or the countless times he threatened the lives of people who hurt his family.

Today is his wake and tomorrow is the funeral. Roland Lester was an amazing man. He will be truly missed.