The winds of October are tinged with the subtle essence of impending mortality. Leaves lose their green, shortly followed by a wafting fade into lifelessness and a return home to the cooling ground. The birds have long lost their song, and nature begins its descent into the quiet solemnity that is winter. The world is still alive, and waning days of sunshine reflect a brilliant myriad of colors that other months cannot possibly duplicate. A last desperate throw of color in a world soon fading to grey.
It was on this day, October 15, some 17 years ago, that one of the brightest leaves in my life fell into darkness. Seventeen years is a long time, but the impression this man made in my life is fossilized in my memory. He was the source of endless childhood fascination. He was the one who awakened my curiosity about the world. He was the man who taught me how to fish. He was truly the lynchpin of my family, and to this day, his memory is celebrated every time that family gathers. To others that surrounded, he was known simply as Whitey, or Uncle Whitey (due to his shock of white hair). To me...he was grandpa.
Lawrence Raymond Graf, Sr. is probably at the very top of my list of people I'd love to sit around and have a drink with. When I was a kid, he told us that he rode the Oregon Trail as a cowboy. Who was I to doubt that? It was my GRANDPA. I lived to wake up and go fishing with him at our cottage in Iola, WI. The fact that he usually overslept somehow didn't matter. Time in the boat with him was damn special...and he used to let me drive, so long as I could pull start the motor.
As I got older, junior high and high school, annual trips downtown to Grandpa's with my two older cousins Tony and Phil were my initial forays into becoming the person I wished to be...outside the boundary of my immediate family...I was amongst peers. When my oldest cousin Tony went off to college, Grandpa took Phil and I to visit. Mission Missouri was the first time I drove on the highway, and the first time I attended an off-campus party, come to think of it. My cousins and I were young dreamers, and our Grandpa encouraged those dreams. Its so strange now to look back and put a finger on the exact time when I first felt like something other than a kid...because I was treated like an adult.
My Grandpa followed his own dreams as well. He travelled the world in his later years, going behind the Iron Curtain more than once, even going so far as to smuggle Levi's into the U.S.S.R. at one point. He had friends EVERYWHERE, but it was always family that was the most important thing to him. That was his legacy, and that lives on in his descendants to this day.
That October day may have been bright with sunshine, and brilliant in color, but I felt nothing but the cold wind of sorrow...and loss. The man who gave me so much to dream about, who I was so proud to tell of my accomplishments in school or sport, the man who's gregarious nature used to embarrass me in a restaurant when he'd invariably flirt with the waitress...was gone. It hurt my heart, and still does to this day.
Likening his death to a day in October is one thing, but, there is no stopping the march of time. The period of mourning, the long, monotonous grey, had to be endured in order to appreciate what had been given to me. The rest of my life lay before me...like The Oregon Trail.
To my Grandpa...Cent'Anni.
The Miker
