Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Back to Jack
Back to Jack
The way my father tells
it, Great-Grandpa Jack
was a lawyer in L.A.
back in the days when
the city was
really beginning to take shape.
He walked out of the
courthouse one day,
fed up with the system,
and across the street to
a construction site
and asked for a job.
He never looked back.
The way I remember it,
it was hot
where he lived. He was
frail and his head shook,
a subtle nodding,
as he smiled at me
and my little baby sister.
I squirmed, not
understanding why we were smiling
and sweating at this house.
Perhaps they knew
that death wasn't far off.
We drove away and never looked back.
I was 6 or so
when Dad whispered
to my mother in the
upstairs hallway that Great-Grandpa Jack
had passed. "What
does that mean?" I asked.
"He died. Funeral is Thursday,"
Dad said. I
wanted to go with him.
He couldn't understand why I
wanted to mourn
a man I barely knew.
Perhaps I just wanted to look back.
--
Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project
Part 8: Death, be not proud
Labels:
death,
family,
grandpa,
memoir project,
memories,
poeticbloomings
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Beautiful and poignant. Like I was there.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mosk!
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