My grandfather passed away three days before this last Christmas. It was emotional. It threw us all. He was my last grandparent. I delivered the following speech at his funeral. I meant to put this up quite some time ago, but never got around to it. I think that I just didn’t want to touch it again for fear of the emotions it would bring back up. But I promised myself and others that I would post the speech here for posterity. I need to post more often because lately, it feels like I’m only posting to this blog when someone close to me passes away.
The following speech was given at my grandfather’s funeral on December 26. We love you, Grandpa:
Ninety-four. How do you encapsulate 94 years full of life into a short speech? Especially when my grandfather was so many things to so many people. A son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, an uncle, a friend, a mathematician, an engineer, a teacher, an athlete, a card player, a movie-lover, a traveler… I feel like I could keep going for the rest of the day and still not be able to touch on everything he was. He was such a consistent presence in our lives that it was easy to believe he would be here forever, probably because it was almost impossible to imagine life without him.
I could talk about how he and I would go to the movies, just the two of us, usually to see something no one else wanted to. He had an appreciation for silly schlocky movies that I think I picked up from him. I could talk about how, when I and the other grandchildren were little, he loved to tickle us until we practically couldn’t breathe. About his smile that easily reached his eyes and would light up his whole face when he saw you. About his laugh, that the best I could describe it as would be a close relative of Barney Rubble’s laugh from “The Flintstones.”
A few days ago, we had to sit down and explain to Viviana that my grandfather had passed away. It’s hard to explain what it means in terms a 6-year-old can understand, especially something that, let’s be honest, do any of us really understand it? But she said something that stuck with me. She said that what she thinks happens to us is that we go up into the sky and become a star so that we can watch over our loved ones (she said this in a more roundabout way that a 6-year-old does, so I’m paraphrasing a bit). But it made me think of something.
My grandfather was a brilliant mathematician and engineer. He worked on several high-profile projects. We’re talking about the kind of things that made the news, although he himself never sought the spotlight. He always said that to him, it was just the job he was hired to do. But there was one project of his that always stuck out to me: the Galileo space probe. Being a science nerd, something that he actively encouraged, I was fascinated by this project. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it was the first probe of its kind. It was sent to orbit Jupiter and drop a probe into its atmosphere to take readings, something that had never been done before, and paved the way for other such projects later. I found out after its launch that he was on the team that designed it, and I was in awe when I found out. Galileo orbited Jupiter until 2003 when it was sent into a final descent into Jupiter. We think we know what happened to it then, but there is some room for speculation, and there it will remain.
For those of us who have had project-based jobs, we know that on particularly large or intensive projects, it can feel like you put a part of yourself into the project. While my grandfather maintained that it was just his job, I’m sure a part of him felt that way. In a way, it’s almost as though a part of my grandfather is up there.
So I know that on some night, I’m going to be outside with my daughter, and I’ll point up at the night sky and say, “You see that, right there? That little point of light right up there? In a way, a part of your great grandfather, his brilliant mind, is up there and a part of that light, and he’s watching over us right now and smiling.”
SheldonNylander.com 