Papa Bill
I wrote the following reflection eight years ago. I am sharing it today in honor of my paternal grandfather who passed from this life to the next on March 31, 2021.
He was one of my first companions. He rocked me to sleep and taught me the Lord’s Prayer. He passed down a love for black coffee as he slurped it on our morning drives to my elementary school. It was he who removed the training wheels from my bike and splinters from my hand.
I “walked on egg shells” as they say. Before I would ask a question, I always formulated it in my head and prepared myself. Calmed myself. Prepared to be denied. My soul would armor up. Sometimes, I went ahead and asked anyway. It’s a terrible place for a child to be—always sitting on the edge of her seat, hoping not to disturb anyone too much. Profanities flying, dropping like drones, doing damage, and taking civilian casualties. Words ripping through souls like shrapnel. They call it post-traumatic stress disorder. After two “tours” to Vietnam in which he saw bodies explode and limbs fly, alcohol became an incompetent therapist. He later found consolation in Jesus.
I once watched him step on a thumbtack that had been half-way buried in our living room carpet. The way that he jumped and winced in pain hurt my heart—I noticed that he could be hurt. The reminder that he hurt was often too much for me to bear.
In the midst of it all, I still thought of him as nearly infallible. Not superhuman, but Papa Bill who would not ever get old and whose body would never fail. Although he’s walked with a limp most of my life due to a bad knee, I never thought he would actually find it difficult to get around. During my last visit, he picked me up from a conference in Nashville, I noticed the award-winning city bus driver was now more cautious and calculated in steering a vehicle. I remember hating this. Hating it so much—the cruelty of witnessing the brokenness of bodies awaiting redemption.
He gave up drinking alcohol in my early days and smoking in my toddler years. He loves so generously. Cousin Sarah describes it as, “he loves with gifts.” He has given his grandchildren more than he ever received and dreamed of having. He hoards love like he does toys and knick knacks from Big Lots, because he never knows who will drop by and he feels a duty to make sure they leave with something. Many would say with the yelling and cursing, love could not have been present, but I am sure it was. We each only love from the point that we know how. It is really a miracle that many of us can love after the trauma that we have endured. Papa Bill’s sweetest comfort and solace has been in Jesus. He loves him, seeks to better understand Scripture, and has made great progress in hopes of pleasing Him. I have never been a sharecropper in someone else’s field, endured the horrors of the Jim Crow era, or been a soldier in a land where grenades were being unclipped in my sight. But I do know that it is a miracle that men who do can still love, and that women who live with them can still love them.
One of the main reasons that I will never be for war—on crime, on drugs or on humans in other nations. War never solves problems, but multiplies them and passes on cycles of pain and sin. Generations are left to pay the wages of our wars, triggers we pull, and bombs we drop. This is the horrible reality of living in a world of brokenness. We cannot excuse it. We must name the evil, work for good, and pray that the love of God would heal the hurt we have caused and the hurt we feel. We pray to fight against principalities and powers of darkness instead of fighting God-bearers whose bodies and spirits have endured brokenness. May we become better empathizers, truth tellers, and grace givers.
