Dear Camden (a goodbye)

Dear Camden,

Before I laid you down for your nap this afternoon, I told you the sad news we received this morning: your great-grandfather, Fred, passed away after a tough battle with lung cancer. Of course, I didn't phrase it that way to you. You're a little young for that right now. Instead, I told you that Great-Grandpa Fred went up to live in the stars with Jesus. You see, the other night when we were outside after dark and the stars were shining brightly, you kept pointing to them. I pointed out individual stars to you and told you the names of the people we love who are living up there now. So this afternoon when I told you that your great-grandfather had gone bye-bye up to the stars, you looked towards the ceiling in your room and waved bye to him.

You won't remember your great-grandfather, of course, but you'll see him in pictures and hear about him in stories we tell when you're older. You won't know how difficult his battle with lung cancer was even though he quit smoking 30 years ago. And you won't know how much it pained all of us to see him suffering so greatly at the end of his life. But I'll remind you of your great-grandfather's final days if you even consider so much as touching a cigarette in your lifetime.

But it's really not the end of his life that I'll want to tell you about, Camden. There's so much more about him that I'll want you to know. I'll tell you how every time I went to hug your great-grandpa at family gatherings, he would smile and tell me he'd been waiting for that moment "all day" (and I'm sure he said the very same thing to all of his grandkids!).

I'll tell you how he spent last summer at the beach with us and tried so hard to win your affection. You weren't even a year old at the time and you were in the height of your stranger anxiety phase. You'd stare at your great-grandfather while clinging to me whenever he entered the room but he never gave up trying to win you over that week at the beach. Finally, towards the end of the week, you looked at him across the room and smiled. He was so excited.

I'll tell you how we rarely saw him wearing anything other than his flannel pajama pants during that beach trip because he was cold natured like your mama. And how he'd sneak into the kitchen at night and eat Peppermint Patties straight from the bag even though he was diabetic and he knew he'd get in trouble if Nan caught him. I'll tell you how he fell down the stairs at the beach house while on the way out to play golf with your Pop. Later that day, I also fell down the stairs (while holding you!) and we joked the rest of the week about which of us was the clumsiest.

I'll tell you how your great-grandfather was a simple man who didn't have a lot of material possessions. That stuff didn't matter to him. He loved his family, he loved his work, and he loved his golf game. Great-Grandpa Fred had never met a stranger and would even go to Wal-Mart a few times a week just to walk around and chat with people there. In all of my 30 years, I never once saw your great-grandfather get mad or raise his voice.

I'll probably laugh when I tell you how Great-Grandpa Fred made a Facebook page around his 80th birthday. And he kept up with it too! He was up to date on the latest family gossip, citing Facebook as the source of his information. His email address always made me smile, too: FredWGolf. So simple, just like him.

He married and divorced your great-grandmother twice before finally splitting up for good over 40 years ago. And even though your great-grandmother has been gone for years now, your great-grandpa Fred still spoke lovingly of his childhood sweetheart in his final days, recalling how pretty her bright red hair was.

I've told you that his final days were filled with suffering and that is true. But they were also filled with love. Your great-grandfather was a popular guy, and that was never more evident than when his room was filled with a constant flow of visitors at the end of his life. His co-workers from his longtime job left notes telling him how they missed his jokes at work. And one of them told your Nan that he always wanted to be like your great-grandfather because he was the happiest guy he'd ever known.

I'll tell you all of these things, Camden, because I want you to know these men who came before you, that are a part of who you are. You come from a long line of kind, good men, and your great-grandfather Fred was certainly one of them.

I read somewhere recently a quote I want you to always remember: Death is the saddest part of living, but only for those of us that are left behind. We'll see your great-grandpa again one day, when we join him up in the stars.

Love,
Mommy