I Miss Him.

I promise I'm not in a parent-bashing mood this evening, as I do have a somewhat decent relationship with all of them at this point in my life. I'm more...reflecting.

In the past 6 years, I've gone from being a minimum-wage, part-time worker and SAHM in a miserable marriage to putting myself through college, raising my daughter, running my own business, and doing it all with a gigantic smile on my face. One family member, other than my fiance, has said that they were proud of me: my aunt. I love my aunt dearly (and got to see her today, actually), and it meant so much that I cried when she said it. I can't help but be baffled that my friends and even people I've never met in person will send me emails and call me to tell me how awesome they think I am, but when it comes to my parents/family I feel very much like the black sheep that made all the bad choices. I did make bad choices. So did they (insert my untimely existence here) . I'm doing something about mine. It shouldn't matter if they like my fiance, have a problem with my schedule, or are frustrated with my lack of time due to my crazy schedule. I'm happy. My fiance absolutely adores both me and my daughter, and I'm busy because I'm working on my first of three degrees and have a successful business. When my aunt and I talked about how she was the first and only person to really even acknowledge what I'm doing, she said that maybe they didn't know how to tell me. I'm more apt to believe that they haven't really even noticed.

I know one person that would have noticed...and said something, although it would have probably been a simple smile and a 'Well, good!'. This guy:

This is my grandfather. My grandmother ran across this picture of him today while going through a few things, and I came close to bursting into tears. Grandpa died of lung cancer when I was 15, and this is the first picture I have come across since where he looks just as I remember. The rest are either profile views, dark, blurry, or from before my time. This, though...this is Grandpa. When he died, I was sort of numb to it. I didn't cry when he died. I didn't cry during the funeral. I do remember that at one of the viewings, my aunt and I were alone in the room with him as the others left and the place was closing up, and I absolutely broke down. She left me there with him, and I just cried hysterically...me and my grandpa, and I had a chance to sort of say goodbye. Sort of. The grandpa in that casket looked nothing like the grandpa I knew, thanks to the cancer. For the longest time, that's what I remembered of him. Maybe that's why I stayed so 'unaffected'. Then, a few Christmas' ago, my step-mom gave me a DVD of my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. I came home and watched it repeatedly from midnight until 4am. I'm pretty sure I've never cried that hard in my life. It was him...just like in that picture. Not only was it him, it was his voice. He only talked a couple of times, and I would rewind and play it over, and over, and over. I watched that video and some sort of emotional dam broke. As my daughter gets older, I miss him. As I accomplish more, I miss him. Every day, something little reminds me of him, and I cry...and miss him. I'm pretty sure I'm hell bent on torturing myself where he's concerned, because I even make garlic salted popcorn with a glass of milk when I want a midnight snack simply because that's what he used to make me. When I do it...I miss him, and I cry. I'm not sure why it's harder for me ten years later than it has been the entire ride, but it is.

Grandpa wasn't the kind of guy to show his emotions (might explain my dad, actually). He did talk, though. When I was saved and Baptised around the age of eight, he told me he was proud of me and bought me dove earrings. He bought me a Red Rider bb gun for my birthday once because I asked for it. Then, he taught me how to shoot it, smiled and said I was a good shot. As a child, whenever I brought him drawings of whatever I had decided to scribble, he would talk to me about them and tell me how good they were. When I was an early teen and still spending Saturday nights with him and my grandmother for church the next day, I would stay up watching tv with him and study...and he would ask how I was doing in school, smile, and say 'That's good!'. Just little things...never big, but there were alot of them and they were always something I remembered.

So today, as I have yet another 'I really, really miss Grandpa' day combined with a 'Why can I never be good enough for them?' day, I remember all that I'm doing, his half-smirk half-smile, and a simple 'That's good!' ♥