Grandpa's Chair

My Grandpa died almost two years ago and today I put his chair up in my bedroom. After he died and the family started sorting through his belongings, I asked my Grandma for his chair. When I was little, I used to be afraid of the face on his chair because it reminded me of some kind of monster from Where the Wild Things Are. He spent a lot of time writing in that chair, tapping away at his typewriter, and making extensive notes and labels for everything in his library. And so when I got older, that chair became one of the most enduring symbols of my Grandpa.

This man was organized, to say the least. In modern times perhaps he would have hung up his farm boots and became a librarian or, god forbid, a blogger. I remember looking through his closet after he died and finding meeting agendas from some county farmers association, all meticulously kept in ziplock bags, each with a 3X5 note card giving extra information about who was at the meetings, etc. We found ration stamps from the war, fishing licenses, and handwritten genealogies, all systematically indexed and in perfect condition.

So, wouldn't you know that today when I was cleaning the chair I found something new - a note that my Grandpa had enscribed onto a piece of wood and glued to the underside of the seat. It reads like this:

"PROPERTY OF CARL W. & ORA EVON BECKER. PURCHASED AT THE ESTATE DISPERSAL SALE OF VELMA & DANIEL GABERDIEL. NOVEMBER. GERALD CECIL & ERRY MEYERS AUCTIONEERS. GEORGE BOWERS & WALTER WHITE ATTORNEYS."

Besides being meticulous, he was a great man. He is actually my mom's stepdad, but you'd never know it. To read her tribute to him, click here. It's worth it.

By the time I was old enough to relate to him, he was pretty much deaf and blind. Talking to him was almost impossible for an impatient kid who didn't see the value in what a poor old farmer like him had to say and didn't want to shout the same sentence ten times until he understood. I'd rather be out playing with my cousins.

Some of my earliest memories of him were when I was little and he had a stroke. Someone bought him a Garfield the Cat stuffed animal and he really liked it. I thought that was funny. Every year at my birthday he would send a hand made card that looked like something a 6-year-old would make. It always said, "For your birthday I thought about getting you a new Buick or even a Mercedes, but then I decided on this shiny new Lincoln." Each page would have a poorly cut-out picture of the cars and then the last page would have a new penny stuck on with clear tape and his childlike scrawl of "Happy Birthday, Grandpa".

He would go back and forth between strength and weakness for the last several years of his life. It was always good news when we heard he was able to get out of bed and walk to the living room. We thought he would die a few different times and once we were almost sure. But he decided to hang around for a few more years, stubborn old man.

The last time he took a turn for the worse, I flew home to be with the family. He was in a lot of pain, but he was concious. I played guitar and we sang some songs and he really liked it. The last thing I remember him saying was "thank you" after playing one of his favorite songs from the hymnal that he liked. At one point he was in so much pain that the family decided to dope him up on morphine to soften the blow. It worked and he just laid there until eventually he stopped breathing. Surrounded by family, he died at age 94 in the same old rickety farmhouse where he was born. No doctors, no tubes, no attempts at resuscitation. He had waited for everyone who was coming to arrive and we all just sat there, partly sad and partly relieved.

So that's the story, as best I can remember it. I really didn't know my Grandpa that well. We never had an intelligent conversation. But all I need to know is that he took great care of my mother and her siblings when their real father had abandoned them. That in itself was quite heroic and more than enough for one man to accomplish in a lifetime. He was a kind man and always smiled. I never saw him angry. He had gigantic feet and hands. He had a big nose with blue veins on the tip. He was a farmer and a Democrat, the only one I knew until I moved east. That was my Grandpa, Carl Becker.

I'm glad to have his chair and hope that someday I will have a fraction of his kindness as well.

Here are my Grandpa and my mom on her wedding day: