The Day Is Past and Gone

He was Warren Bostrom to the rest of the world, but I called him PopPop. And if I survive nine decades like he has, then I’ll look more like him than anyone else in the extended bloodline outside my own father. Like PopPop, I have a bald, broad, Shakespearian forehead; a bias for basketball; a penchant for bad jokes suitable only for 7th graders; a sweet tooth for strawberry ice-cream despite medical counsel; and a calling to teach and to write. So his death today, one day after Pearl Harbor Day (a day that changed his life once before, sending him into the Pacific front), calls for a few words from his eldest grandson. And since he was a man who loved to tell and read stories (another thing I’ve inherited), I might as well tell some of my own.

Our relationship was an easy one because he was an easy going man. His walk was slow, his under-handed basketball shot was slow, and his speech never exceeded second gear even though he had plenty to say. When my parents swept their three children off to Kenya, Africa, to serve on the mission field, it only seemed natural in my boyish mind that he and Nana visit in their easy and familiar way. I took PopPop on a walk, showing him my secret haunts and introducing him to everyone I met. We got lost in the process. I was about seven and he was old (that’s the only way I’ve ever thought of him). I remember we saw some Crested Cranes, a noble African bird, and he was fascinated by the Guinea fowl whose haunting cry still stirs up mystery in my bones. I was proud to be his grandson and I still am because he always seemed to like whatever I liked. When I came state side, he took me out for ice-cream as often as my mother and Nana would allow. Let me confess publicly that we did have a few clandestine meetings at Dunkin’ Donuts that I’m pretty sure Nana never discovered.

Of course, PopPop had his personality quirks which he shared with everybody he met. He habitually greeted me with “Heeeeyy!” (emphasis on the H) and I catch myself doing the same to others who hold my affections: another fingerprint he’s left on my life. Such is the myopic memory of a grandson and writing a eulogy for a man I knew less well than his wife and kids and even his friends is a dangerous endeavor. Like most grandchildren, I’ve romanticized a man who, like me, has many faults. Lest I be convicted of perpetuating what Thomas Wolfe called “the stone-carver’s conspiracy,” and making more of the man than he really was, it should be noted that there were awkward moments, too. One of my more memorable ones came when I was a teenager. We pulled up to a red light, waiting for it to change to green, but PopPop got the sneezes (one of his many spiritual gifts) just as it turned green. Although I knew, along with a long line of others, that all signs encouraged him to pull forward, he didn’t budge. One sneeze followed another and he finally wiped his face of happy tears after the light had changed from red to green and green to red, three times. The line of cars simply accentuated my teenage embarrassment. Little did I know that three light changes was less than half his record.

And then there was the time when Nana and PopPop were stuck in the car with me while I drove them who knows where. I popped in a Steven Curtis Chapman cassette to help me stay alert and it lasted no more than two minutes before PopPop snapped it off, calling it something I’ve since repressed, and asking if I had any real music. On another occasion, we heard the Space Shuttle would be flown over their house in Colorado Springs on the back of a 747, so all the extended family gathered out on the lawn and looked heavenward. We heard the roar of engines and I still remember the closeness of that big silver belly as it passed over our heads and descended like a god toward the airport on the other side of town. When it was too far away to see, I turned to locate PopPop but he was gone. Then he ambled out the front door and interrupted the holy awe with a pleasant, “What’d I miss?”

I was so angry. “You missed everything PopPop! Everything!” And after I caught my breath, I asked, “Where were you?”

“When nature calls,” he answered philosophically, “a man must answer.”

It was one of the more disappointing moments of our relationship: my grandfather missed a once in a lifetime moment to answer nature’s call! I’m still trying to get over that one.

His poor health over the past decade had us anticipating his death for awhile; however, my PopPop’s closest brush to death, the one that told us this Great Getting Up Morning was around the corner, happened last year. While the rest of us prepared ourselves for the separation with tearful phone calls, he ordered ice-creams all around and everyone on his floor of the hospital wondered why they were enjoying a taste of happiness because the dude down the hallway was going to buy the farm. But that was my PopPop, and his passing has me, once again, considering the way his life and death has helped forge my imagined story.

His bright outlook, his quirks, his slow pace and his big hands have all significantly shaped the narrative I have imagined for myself and any interpretive efforts I make to understand life have some of their roots in his impact on my life. We are shaped mostly unconsciously and passively by the practices and outlook of those around us. Thank the Lord, then, that I’ve been shaped, on both sides of my family, by grandparents whose love for the next world charged their efforts to make a difference in this one. PopPop’s life has shaped me in more ways than I probably recognize, and his death has reminded me of that magnificent old hymn: “The day is past and gone; the evening shades appear: O may we all remember well the night of death draws near.

We lay our garments by, upon our beds to rest; So death will soon disrobe us all of what we here possess.

And when we early rise and view th’unwearied sun, may we set out to win the prize and after glory run.

And when our days are past and we from time remove, O may we in Thy bosom rest, the bosom of Thy love.”

My children sing this at the end of almost every Friday, joining voices with the rest of their student body at The Oaks. It’s a beautiful way to remind each other of life’s brevity as the music sways our imaginations to embrace death at the end of a good life. Lay your garments by, PopPop. You’ve run the race and told the rest of us to keep up. By now you’ve heard what we so badly long to hear ourselves: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Now that you’re gone, we’ll remember that “the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them” (Psalms 103:17–18). My children are walking with God because their grandparents have walked with God. While you, PopPop have had to imagine, like us, a world under the reign of God almighty, God brings you now to the other side of the smudged window where you see “face to face.”

PopPop has crossed Jordan as I write this and I’ll be darned if he’s not enjoying a party with “real music” and the best strawberry ice cream he’s ever tasted. Take your time, PopPop, and save some for me.