It's been awhile since I've been around, I know. 

Last weekend, I flew to upstate New York to attend the funeral of my Grandmother, who, after 20 years, was finally reunited with my deceased Grandfather.  She had been the matriarch of my father's family, the holder of its history, and its guiding light. 

My Grandfather had grown up in New York before his father started making boilers from the sand dunes outside Michigan City, IN, and had been interned at the family cemetary in Hillsdale. It was my Grandmother's wish to be laid to rest beside him, despite the fact that she had spent most of her life in Indiana.

Nowadays, the family is spread out from California to Texas to Ohio, and we all traveled hundreds (if not thousands) of miles to say goodbye to them. The sad thing about the distance to the grave is that it's unlikely that I'll have the opportunity to visit it again... something we were all aware of.

This was the last goodbye.

Not only to my Grandmother, but also my Grandfather, whose memory and stories she had kept alive since he passed away, 20 years ago. I feel these days as if I know more about him from her memory than my own, despite the fact that I was lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with him when I was younger. I remember him as a tall, calm man, with a lightness to his movements and a heaviness to his eyes. He never swore, and I never saw him drink or smoke. We knew he had fought in WWII, had helped to plan the D-Day invasion, and had been knighted by the Queen of England afterwards, which made him larger than life, especially because he never talked about it. Yet he was always approachable - I remember that the time I saw him happiest was when he was playing with my baby cousin Rob - not a goofy happy, but something calm and wise and full of quiet joy. 

My Grandmother loved him with all that she was. The last twenty years of her life were hard alone, and she often told us how much she missed him. Somehow, with all of her stories of him, I didn't really feel his loss when he died... until she was gone. So it seemed natural that as I spoke to my uncles and cousins, the talked turned to my Grandfather's military service. 

It was as if each of us had a little bit of the puzzle, because we knew so little about that time in his life. He had told me curtly when I was thirteen (after me having bugged him incessantly for a war story) that he had fought his way out of an ambush with a pistol after his driver had been killed while they were traveling through Italy, something that surprised my uncles, because they had never heard tell of it. 

I had known that before the war, he had expressed desire to become a priest, but that his father had demanded he join the army (as was customary for all men in my family at that time). I often thought that it was his natural aversion to violence that kept him silent about his service. But my uncle Chris gave me the context to understand: 

These are the men of the 401st Glider Infantry Company, in Fort Bragg, NC, before they were shipped out to the front. They were attached to the 101st battalion in the D-day invasion in WWII - yes, the battalion that inspired "Saving Private Ryan". My grandfather was their commander during this time, although I can't find him in this shot (his name is in the lower middle). 

He sent them into battle. As an officer and strategist, he was not on the front line, although I believe he saw his share of action. The company was decimated in D-Day and the subsequent the Battle of the Bulge. In fact, later, when my grandfather returned to HQ, he was held at gunpoint on suspicion of being one of the many English speaking German spies sent to inflitrate the Allied forces. Why? Because there was no one left from his company who could personally recognize him. 

This was not due to a failure of leadership on his part, nor a surprise to him - the calculated casualty rates for glider companies were anticipated to be 80% going into D-Day. My grandfather had seen the statistics and knew what he was doing when he sent his men to battle. And it was a battle we won. He was promoted to Major, and in 1944, he was on a plane to Japan to help plan the anticipated invasion when he got news of Hiroshima.  

But I don't think he ever stopped blaming himself for the deaths of the 401st company. When he got back, he put his medals away, and only let the war out in brief, curt, stories - two sentences long at the most.

After the service, back at the hotel, I knew I had to see them again. So I drove back out the grave to sit with them awhile. It was there that the memories and the sorrow of the loss of my Grandmother came rushing out. 

When I was born, my mother became very ill, and it was my Grandmother that had taken care of me while she recovered. My childhood is filled of memories of Grandma - eating wild strawberries off the vine on their farm, breakfasts of red ruby grapefruit while we watched the ruby-throated hummingbirds dance in the garden outside, walking with her through the tangled forest the two of them had re-planted on the acres of pasture they owned...

One of my regrets is that in my adult life, I saw her rarely. The distance from California to Indiana was too great to make frequent visits possible. But after my first son was born, I bundled up my family and flew out to see her. Something told me I had to. 

She loved meeting my son and welcomed my wife with open arms. She was very infirm even then - confined to a wheelchair and hospital room, but her mind was sharp as a tack, and her memory was incredible. 

After the first day of visiting her, my wife and I had a brief moment of intimacy. When we visited her the next day, my Grandmother congratulated us on being pregnant. "Oh no, Grandma, we just had our son - we're gonna wait for a while before we have any more. One is enough for now." We thought she was confused.

Almost exactly nine months later, my second son was born. I'm sorry my Grandmother didn't get to meet him, because his fire and intelligence remind me so much of her. 

Their grave is in an old cemetary, closed now for anyone who didn't already own a plot. The graves go back to the early 1800s. Amazingly, buried in the grass, her name almost invisible, I found the grave of Florence Stockwell, a great-aunt who had been a rising opera star at the turn of the century. I found this description today of her debut performance in 1899:

  "The gathering of the Welsh colony to celebrate St. David's Day, on March 1st, at Sherry's, New York, was exceedingly brilliant. The musical part of the feast was entirely impromptu, and all the better for it. Mr. Evan Williams came in for his ovation as usual. The startling surprise was the first appearance of Florence Stockwell, a richly endowed contralto yet in her teens, who sang "The Holy City" in a way that stirred the audience, who insisted on her singing again. Miss Stockwell then sang the new ballad "Nanny Frew," music by Parson Price, and poem by Hans de Groot. She gave it with fine voice and imparted so much genuine feeling and senrtment to its rythmical phrases, while imparting the right comedy spirit that its genuine pathos struck a chord so responsive in the audience that the singer was received with a tumultuous ovation that ended in three cheers given by the five hundred diners for Fanny Stockwell. Such a furore is seldom witnessed at a Welsh celebration, and the young American was launched on her career with a strong legion of friends, won by the magic of her voice and the innate beauty of 'Nanny Frew.'"

My Grandparents lie beside her now. Maybe one of these nights, she'll sing for them.