Chasing the wind

Grandpa never wanted to write new years resolutions. Mom would always nag him until he wrote something and sealed it in an envelope. He would grumble and sip his coffee as he tossed the envelop into a drawer with countless other unopened new years envelopes.

My grandfather was one of the few great men I have known. He could fix anything and he always had "something big in the works". He lived alone since his wife passed before I was born and his home was a tragic mess. His countless projects were strewn all over the floor, in desks, on tables. The only place he kept spotless was his desk. He owned a laptop but seldom used it, opting instead to use an old fountain pen. He would always tell us the stories he wrote. He was always writing about some valiant hero, a knight in shining armor. His heroes would always come away victorious over evil and always, always lived happily ever after.

One of Grandpa's perpetual projects was his wife's sky blue Ford Thunderbird. The car was more than 50 years old, but beautifully maintained. I never knew her, but every time he looked at the car he would remind us with tears in his eyes how much she loved to drive.

"We would just drive" he would say with tears in his eyes, "She said we were chasing the wind.".

Then he would smile and say something about whatever he happened to be fixing on the car. He had rebuilt the engine more times than I care to count.

My grandpa died recently. I hadn't seen him in over a year when it happened. He gave me a call late one night and told me that he had been sick for a long while and he didn't expect to see the morning. Over the phone it sounded like he was surrounded by some incredible storm so that I could hardly hear him. They found him behind the wheel of his wife's car, having glided to a stop on an empty stretch of interstate. His last words to me were: "I caught the wind".

Yesterday I went upstate to his house to clear it out. I found the drawer in his desk where he kept all his unopened new years resolutions. I decided to open one. On it was written, in the most beautifully styled lettering: "God, give me one more year - John". Every page was the same, except his handwriting got shakier until it was barely legible. The last one was different. He must have been in his hated wheelchair when he wrote it because his last years were spent struggling to walk. He had written, "Ok, God. I am ready. I can not truly live anymore, my hand do not obey me and my body had become a prison. Take me home".

I realized just how successful he had been at achieving his goals. When he had resolved to live another year, he meant that he wanted to thrive and live life as it is meant to be lived. This realization gave me new eyes as I looked around his home. I was awed by what I saw. Piled on his desk were affectionate letters from all sorts of people. So many that the majority of the world's nations were represented in their native languages. People who he had never spoken of.

There was an old rifle on the wall above his desk. He had brought it home from Vietnam. It was a Chinese AK-47. He never told us the story behind it, he just said it belonged to a good friend. The weapon was always impeccably clean, wearing polished wood that brought out its many battle scars. Despite being a machine gun which warranted a felony in Colorado, it never left the wall.

Grandpa was a man who really lived. That was his resolution, not just every new year. He lived until he could live no longer and that is why he was a great man.