Goodnight Grandpa

It's only fitting that today would be one of those days where Grandpa would have decided he needed to drive me around instead of letting me drive on my own. If you didn't read my other blog from Wednesday, today is the anniversary of my grandfather's death.

I was living with my grandparents at the time of his death going to college at K-State. I love(d) my grandparents more than life itself (my grandmother is the one I tell most everything to, as well as my mama). My grandpa was a mechanic and owned his own service station in Manhattan on the corner of 11th and Poyntz right across from the park. My mom would let me stay with them sometimes in the Summer and some of my favorite childhood memories are at that service station. He would let me fill up cars (well, let me think that I was...in reality he would start the gas and I would then just stand there holding the handle while it would fill up, but I felt like I was doing an important job.) This was back in the full service days. I would help him clean off windshields and watch him as he checked under the hood. I would get to empty the pop machines, and while I was doing that he always let me have a free pop. I would clean the shelves where the motor oil was and get bubble gum as payment. On his lunch breaks grandma would come down and we would grab some food and walk across the street and have a picnic in the park. I miss my grandpa so much, sometimes it feels like he just died.

The thing that always tears me up the most is that I never got to say good bye. I was having a fight with my boyfriend that night so I was more concerned with talking to him and getting things worked out. I went downstairs to my bedroom without giving him a kiss good night like I normally do, or saying I love you. Definitely my top moment in life I would go back and change if I could. My grandma always tries to reassure me that he knew I loved him and that we couldn't have known what he was going to do because he didn't want us to know. I just wish somehow, someway, we could have convinced him that having him around is so much more valuable than the life insurance he thought he was leaving behind.

So since I never got to say it before, "Goodnight Grandpa. I love you."