Family is important to me. I dearly love my family. And, the older I've gotten, the more I've grown to appreciate the bonds and love within my family.
I have a modern-day family tree. It's one where some branches of the tree have broken off and reattached elsewhere. My family tree splits and twists. But there's a lot of love (and weirdness) all over it.
One of the areas where there aren't warm fuzzies is my paternal grandfather. I'm not going to get into the details. The extent to which I know the man is that I've met him once. I was eight years old. So, needless to say, I didn't know him.
He died Monday. (I found out yesterday.) It was strange not to feel much of anything. It didn't really affect my day or my mood.
I am directly related to him. Without him, my dad would not have been born. In turn, that means, his existence was essential in my existence. It's strange to try to reconcile that with the fact that he and I walked the earth for 29 of the same years, but never knew each other.
Despite all that, I found myself praying for him as he lay dying. Since I didn't know him, I couldn't say with any degree of certainty what his relationship with Jesus was. But I assumed he didn't have one. I prayed that he would find Him before it was too late.
And now that he's gone, I just have one biological grandparent left: my mom's mother. She was always the oldest of the four. She's currently 89 and feisty as ever. But that's an entirely different post...
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