Freeze-Frame: Grandpa Johnson

My dad wasn't here to see Rundy and I get married. He hasn't been here to meet our children. Not here to pester us at our house and be a snoop. Not here to fret over anything frettable (which, for a professional like him, would have been precisely everything).

Tonight while getting his bedtime snuggles, Tadhg asked where we got his two special stuffed animals. The tiger, I explained, was from my friend Jori when he was a baby. A tiger for Tadhg. 

And the stuffed dog?

"Grandpa Johnson gave me that dog when I turned 16. I had asked for a real puppy, and he gave me that instead. I saved it to give to one of my children. And since you were my first baby, you got to have it."

We've talked about Grandpa Johnson a little bit before. How he was my daddy. I explained again that he died before Tadhg was born; before mommy and daddy even got married.

"But where can I visit him?"

"You can't. He's in heaven with God."

"But where are his bones?"

"In a graveyard near Grandma Johnson's house in Nanticoke." 

"Why did he die?"

I explained cancer as well as I could. He pondered for a bit.

Thoughtfully--"Did he eat something poisonous?"

I really wish Dad could've met Tadhgie Boy. He would've liked him.