The Second of October

I have scheduled this blog post to appear on Thursday, October 2nd. When I recently looked at the calendar it dawned on me that October 2nd this year fell on a Thursday.

Thursday, October 2nd, 1975 was like every other day I knew then. Get up, get ready for school, go to Epworth Elementary and live the world of a sixth grader in Mrs. Goss’s room. Later, get on the school bus, ride home and live the world of an eleven year old boy growing up in a rural north Georgia mountain town. It was just like any other day except Thursday, October 2nd, 1975 was the day my Pappaw died. I wrote some about his death in an older blog post that you can locate here.

When I looked at this year’s calendar and noted October 2nd was a Thursday I could not help but think back to that day in 1975. I have written before how I believe this day impacted me because my Pappaw was the first person I really, really, really knew who died. I think about that from time to time. I ponder how things we enjoy and grow accustomed to change and how a certain realization seeps in telling us that the life we knew won’t ever be the same again. Other times I try to think about the pool of memories I have from those eleven years I knew Pappaw. Either way, I find I still miss him after all these years.

Andrew Jackson Rogers was a copper miner. He made his living by going into the belly of the earth and digging out copper for the area’s main employer at that time, a place the locals still call "the copper company". He never drove a car that I recall or he never held anything written in paper in his pocket that would fulfill the driving requirements the state of Georgia would appreciate. Sometimes if he needed to go somewhere, he just started walking there. I recall one time he showed up unannounced on our doorstep after his retirement just to show me and my Mom a one hundred dollar bill that he had. I had never seen one of those before. Sometimes now I wonder if he had ever seen one before then either. He loved dogs and it seemed he always had at least one following him around. Once, a stray dog had taken residence in the garage just above the house where he lived with Mammaw. He took me there to show me that dog and her puppies. Then there was Boss, his prized German Sheppard. Pappaw and Boss had been walking one day when Boss was hit by a car. Pappaw picked up Boss and carried that dog home to care for him as long as he could. You can’t help but love an old man who loves dogs.

The summer prior to his passing, I spent a good deal of time at Mammaw and Pappaw’s house. Looking back, I suppose his health was declining. I am sure I did not fully understand that then. My Mom and I would go there to spend the day looking after Mammaw and Pappaw. I recall going with them on trips to the doctor’s office where the antiseptic smell held down the smell of sickness. I remember sitting on their sprawling porch shaded by giant oak trees in the sizzling summer heat as neighbors drove up and down the dusty dirt road in front of their house. I am pretty sure Pappaw understood we were there to help Mammaw look after him and I am fairly certain he wasn’t thrilled about that. My Mom and I still laugh sometimes at the verbal war she had with him one day that summer when she tried to get him to eat some Vienna sausages and he was as bound and determined that he didn’t want them as she was that he should try them. My mother can be pretty persuasive when it comes to food, even Vienna sausages, but on that day I think he won that battle. He could be grumpy and grouchy at times and I like to think I inherited my similar moments from him but I also recall he balanced it out with a wry sense of humor and a mischievous smile when he was joking and I like to think those things were his to give to me as well.

After his passing I recall years later how we were in my Mom and Dad’s basement searching for something. Mom came across some things and began to remove them from their packaging. One of those things was my Pappaw’s hat. He wore a hat all the time, as did so many men of his generation. Mom pulled the hat out of the heavy plastic it was encased in and opened it and when she did the smell of Pappaw's tobacco, which had soaked into that hat, filled the air. It was almost like he was standing right there. It was almost like it was the summer before he died again.

As I grew older I sometimes found myself taking a detour to my destination. I would drive into Sugar Creek and park at the foot of the graveyard where he is buried. I would walk up the hill to his gravesite to just stand there quietly reflecting on him or on my family or on whatever was going on in my life at that time. I am not sure what that really did for me then. Now I know by that time, distanced from that 1975 October, a certain peace resided there. It was a place that became a soft place to fall and a quiet place to recharge.

Now and then I stumble across a few photos I have of him. One is of him with my grandmother and together they are holding a cake. I am too young to remember the event when it happened but family members recall the photo was taken at their anniversary. Their nine kids and countless grandchildren had gathered in that big yard at that old house on Damascus Road to celebrate this grand event. Someone was able to coax the two into holding the cake and smiling for the camera. It is one of the few photos any of us have of the two of them together.

Here is the other picture. This is me with my Pappaw. It is probably the only picture of me with him. There he is kneeling down, hat on head, dog nearby and mischief sits on his face in the form of a grin. I look at this picture and focus on him and my memories of him rush over me. It makes me consider how he left us too soon. It makes me wish I had gotten to know him better. It makes me long to remember more about him. You think those things about those you love and who are no longer here, don’t you?  For Pappaw, there were grandchildren he did not ever meet. There would have been dogs to pet. There would have been Vienna sausages to argue about. There would have been more memories to have been made.

Admittedly, I don’t think about him as much these days. I haven't been to Sugar Creek to the foot of that graveyard and made that walk up that hill to his resting place in several years. The distance between 1975 and now has some subtle way of softening the edges of memories simply because life has to be lived. Still, October 2nd comes every year and Thursday, October 2nd comes every few years.

And, here it is today, Thursday, October 2nd, 2014. 

And, Pappaw, I still miss you.