I never told you about how shopping for Gala apples used to weigh so heavy on me. You were always so particular about them. Their shape. Their shine. Their texture and crunch. It always felt like the margin of perfection was too narrow for me to get right—the learning curve of apple scoring too steep for me to master. So it became your job to hand select each ruby prize. You did so lovingly, only bringing home the best and sweetest red globes for our lips to caress.
For the first year after you left, every time I reached for a Gala apple from the produce stand I felt a tightness in my chest. I had never told you about the imaginary scoring system that I failed to learn. But even after you were gone, the pressure to pluck perfection from the pile lingered. Each time I went to the grocery store the anxiety returned. The longer it went on, the sillier it felt. The visceral tightening in my stomach, bringing back a flood of memories of the life we used to have. Of the people we used to be.
Eventually I stopped buying Gala apples, for fear that the weight of them would crush me. I switched to Granny Smith, because the touch of them didn’t break my heart. They were tart rather than sweet, and their bruises never bothered me.
I’ve since found equilibrium in my grocery store escapades,
and the bottom of my fruit drawer holds space for both luscious red and green orbs.
It doesn’t shake me anymore when I pull the drawer out and they roll around
together. They’re just a piece of you and a piece of me, all that remains of
our beautiful, chaotic hyperbole.
I was lucky enough to see Grandpa Cog a few months ago when I came home over Memorial Day weekend. We all had dinner as a family at Lou’s LaGrotto and when he walked in and saw me he asked, “What’s new in the Illinois Valley, Granddaughter?” And I replied, “Not a damn thing.” Except I didn’t say damn. The word I used had a little more color. He laughed and put his arm around me and said, “Ain’t that the truth.” It didn’t strike me until I was preparing this that most families don’t drop F-bombs around their grandparents. But we certainly aren’t most families.
Grandpa sat next to me during dinner and we caught up on each other’s lives. I told him the story about a memory of mine from when I was little visiting him at his house across from the high school. He used to have this blue and yellow Fischer Price toy drill, and he’d chase me around trying to stick the drill bit in my belly button. He used to say that if he unscrewed my belly button, my butt would fall off. I don’t think I ever really believed him, but I never let him get close enough to find out. When I got the call that he was gone, I tried to think of what my very last memory of him was that night in LaGrotto’s. And my last memory of my Grandpa Cog is looking over at him spooning the butter and the parmesan (out of the basket that had previous housed our garlic nuggets) straight into his mouth—two days before his scheduled CT scan to assess the integrity of his heart. I remembered looking over and thinking, “Ooph… where do I even start?” He was a man who couldn’t be told. And when I stop to think about it, we’re an entire family that can’t be told.
Roger was a strong, Scandinavian stubborn, simple man who appreciated a cold beer at the end of a long day. He didn’t know how to send a text message yet he always managed to find his way to my blog posts in the vast expanse of the internet, and then tell Donna what to text me in response. He loved his family, and his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren with the ferociousness of the lion-hearted man that he was. Grandpa worked hard but he always managed to make time for his family. He came into this world feet first and he went out of this world in his work boots doing something that he loved. And I know that he loved it, without hesitation, because every time I’d come home he’d say to me, “You know those brothers of yours are working my ass off, but I love every minute.” He was a good, honorable man—deeply respected by his community, and he will be deeply and sorely missed. I didn’t know the last time I saw my grandpa was going to be the last hug I ever got from him. So I urge you, I beg you—to please hold each other a little tighter, and a little longer, because this moment right here is the only one you’re guaranteed. Reflect on all the things that make you happy, and then make a list of all the things you do every day. Compare the lists, and adjust accordingly.
I want to leave you with a list of things that will always remind me of Grandpa Cog. I listed them in order of my earliest memories of him until my final ones:
Butter pecan ice cream
French onion Sunchips
Ballroom Barbie
Viewfinders
Orange Gatorade in the shop fridge
Orange Goop hand soap
Blue Scott shop towels
Titty calendars on the dashboard
Cinnamon Dentene Ice chewing gum
Water wings
Norwegian elk hounds
The number 8
The word “Whatever”
Sharpening pencils
Garlic nuggets
And the way he used to wave goodbye to me for as long as I can remember until the very last time he hugged me goodbye…
