We
sat in my grandpa’s garage and talked. It was a horrible event -- my grandpa’s
funeral. He’d held family dinners in that garage. There were so many people
that they wouldn’t fit in the house, so he set up tables out where he usually
parked the cars, where he fixed musical instruments and where he kept his golf
clubs. He wanted all the family together all the time. And he held the family
together, even toward the end when family was splitting apart (sometimes by
distance and sometimes by resistance). In his death, Grandpa brought us all
back. And in his garage after the celebration of his life, we had nothing to
do, nowhere to go, no smart phones to steal each other’s attention ... We told
stories about him, about our pasts, about anything. And we did it for hours. That’s
everything to me. What’s everything to you?
