A Life Well Lived

I miss my grandfather. He lived a life you and I can't live anymore. A truly simple life. I don't know a whole lot about him but I'll tell you what I can. I know he worked hard in a vineyard. He worked hard at home. He had eight children and never collected a welfare dime. He had a house and never paid a landlord. He owned what he had or he didn't have it. He didn't have a license to drive so he walked everywhere. He would walk miles, to work, to town, to the hardware store. He ate very simply. Chicken that he raised, rice, beans, vegetables from his own yard. Every day he would rise at dawn. Coffee from a bowl, some bread then he would head outside. No TV, no computer, not even a cell phone. He had more important things to do in his back yard. Tend his fruit trees. Paint his shed. Care for the chickens. Make wine. He would have me sit next to him on a wooden bench and teach me to write my name in the dirt with a small tree branch. He had a small stone basement under the house that had a work bench with old wooden tools, old musty boxes and a portable radio that would play traditional Mexican folk tunes. What I remember most about this small room was no matter how hot the day the basement was always cool. Also this is where he kept the Hershey's candy bars. He would buy a large box of chocolate bars and pass them out to myself and my cousins depending on how good we were that day. I got more chocolate than I deserved. He taught me how to make a fire outdoors to cook the Christmas tamales. He taught me how to peel a cactus prickly pear so that no thorns would stick my fingers. And he would read to me from the paper, slowly, pointing at each word with his finger. Not bad for someone, who English was a second language. He didn't care what kind of car you drove or how big your house was. Were you a good man and did you love and care for your family? That was important to him. He would never say anything to the grandkids if he felt they were doing something wrong. But he had such a disappointed look on his face that you knew. That look could make you turn away in shame. It made you want to do what was right. His was a generation that was black and white, no grey. There was right and there was wrong. You did what was right. You didn't make excuses. You stood up for your family. You provided for them. If that meant nines hours a day under the hot sun in a vineyard that's what you did. You put your faith in God and yourself. Between the two of you there was no problem you couldn't work out. This was how he lived. And it carried him well into his nineties. Until one day while sitting under the shade of his apricot tree eating one of his favorite foods, a popsicle, the Lord said his job was done. He quietly slumped in his chair and left us all. No long hospital stay. Just a departure from his home that he had taken care of for so long. It was as they say a life well lived. We can only hope for the same for us.