John Wayne, Grief, and the Things I Remember

You know those people who seem to exist with some kind of special magic? The people who are loved by everyone and embody a certain energy that makes everyone else around them feel special?

Well I did.

There was once a man I knew who could make me feel special with a single crooked grin. A man who knew how to make me laugh and one who I looked forward to seeing again the second I said a goodbye. One who made me feel comfortable in my own skin and so deeply loved.

This man wasn’t family by blood, but in every other sense, he is engraved on my heart and in my memories.

Even as I write the impact he had on me, I feel the tears welling up as if the hole he left in my heart was yesterday, and not 6 years ago. People say that grief gets easier. Maybe for some it does. I think for others it just gets a little more bearable, and that easy isn’t the right word to use altogether.

When I was little, before I can even remember, my family and I moved to a small town away from any prior family or family friends. In an attempt to get plugged into the community and find their people, my parents decided to join a church a couple towns over. One of the first people they met after walking in those doors for the first time was this man.

This man that would become my grandfather.

Half of my grandparents have been estranged from our family for most of my life, and after getting to know my family better, this man and his wife saw a missing puzzle piece and decided to fill the spot themselves.

People say they love their grandparents, and I know that’s true. But there is something special about being family with people who chose you time and again. Not out of obligation, but purely out of love and care. People like that are rare, and in my own life, I have found those people to be all but scarce.

These two people were my rocks throughout the entirety of my childhood. I would go so far as to say that they make up a portion of my brain’s chemistry. For my milestones, birthdays, holidays, celebrations, events, summers; they were always there. A constant in my life that was so normal that I never thought to question the possibility of an alternative reality.

My grandmother, too, I love more than life itself. But this specific story is about him, my grandfather.

Every single summer that I can remember, I stayed with my grandparents for a handful of days. These days were the highlight of my year. With my grandmother, we would sew blankets, make doll houses, get pedicures, go shopping, etc. And I loved it all. With my grandfather, we would eat old fashioned donuts for breakfast with orange juice in tall, formal glasses, eat Blue Bell ice cream until we couldn’t manage another bite, play card games until I finally called him out for hiding cards under the table, and watch John Wayne movies as if it was our duty. And maybe it was. Because those memories have been imprinted in my mind in such a way that I will never be able to forget. So maybe unknowingly at the time, it was my duty to do all of these things. Because I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to do them for long.

You know when children hit those teenage years and family starts to feel like a nuisance, grievance, or whatever other negative connotation the teenage mind is convinced of? I had many of those teenage afflictions, but when it came to my grandparents, they were never capable of being one of them.

During winter finals my junior year of high school, I was home alone as my parents were out for a walk in the neighborhood. My mom always leaves her phone at home, because why need it when my dad has his (typically on do not disturb😅). I heard her phone buzzing in the kitchen and saw my grandmother’s name as the Caller ID. My nosiness and lack of boundaries at that age took over and I answered the phone. The voice on the other end belonged to my grandmother, but it wasn’t the voice of the woman I knew.

I knew in my gut that something wasn’t right. But the last thing that would ever have crossed my mind was the reality of what had actually occurred. Looking back, this is interesting to me. I am a chronic over thinker, and so the fact that imagining the truly worst case scenario didn’t cross my mind is unlike me. Or maybe my cynicism started after this. Who’s to say.

When my parents returned from their walk after receiving a phone call of their own, I saw the look. The look that confirmed that my prior gut feeling had not led me astray. The words I heard after asking what had happened are ones that I cannot comprehend to this day.

My grandfather and his dog had been out on a neighborhood walk of their own, when they walked past the house of their next door neighbor. This neighbor had been an ongoing issue in the neighborhood and was a consistently difficult person to get along with. As my grandfather approached this neighbor’s house, an interaction occurred. What exactly transpired in this interaction, can only be told by the dog or by the gunman. The gunman being that neighbor.

How beautiful the “freedom” that comes with living in the Texas Hill Country. A person can stand a few feet within your property line, and you can kill them with no legal consequence. Land of the free, home of the… I digress.

Whatever was said between the men at the end of the neighbor’s driveway resulted in them both pulling their guns and one man being shot three times, the final time being in his back.

My grandfather.

How do I know exactly where the altercation occurred, you might ask. Because I had to drive by his freshly dried bloodstains the very next day.

Before arguing semantics, my grandfather had been a cop for decades of his life and worked for law enforcement in other capacities for the rest of his career, up until the day he died. He was no stranger to procedure and his temperament was not one that resulted in egotistical, rage-filled gun fights. Anyone who knew him could tell you the same, and they did.

At his funeral.

My life and those of anyone close to my grandfather permanently changed that day. My grandmother, to this day, is a shell of the human being she once was. A woman who was once full of life, generosity, kindness, love, and care is now somewhere deep within the frame of the woman who goes by her same name but is not the same person at all. There is immense grief in losing someone who is still physically here, but who is no longer the person I knew.

People like to say that grief teaches them things or that they had some glorious moment where it all made sense. If people want to create a fairytale out of tragedy, be my guest. But I’d like for it to be kept as far away from me as humanly possible.

We are allowed to sit in our grief. We are allowed to move through it at our own pace. And we are allowed to hold our grief in whatever way we see fit.

I did not have a magical moment where it all made sense. In fact, as time goes on, I think it makes even less. No closure, no justice, and no satisfying answers. People said that “God will use this”. And maybe He did. How He did is still an utter mystery to me and the others who had this figure so violently ripped out of their lives. Maybe it will be clear one day or maybe it won’t. Either way, I’m certainly not holding my breath.

This piece is all over the place, perhaps in harmony with my processing of the stages of grief. And to close it off, maybe I leave it with no grand conclusion or satisfying life lesson, as the loss of this man doesn’t have one either.

To be honest, I don’t need this story to teach me anything at all.

I just need it to remember him.