Wednesday 24 April 2024 – 1640 Pacific Time, while in flight

Dear Grampa,

I do not know how to begin. You were here, and then you were not, and even though this knowledge is true in my mind, it is still beyond reckoning that you have departed this earth and are now in glory. How quickly our lives here pass by us.

The kinds of questions people ask when there’s a death in the family sometimes border on the absurd. Then, there are the more normal ones: “How old was he? Was he sick at all before?” It’s easy to read between the lines as the knowing nods return in response to the words caught in my throat. As though people are saying, “Ah, yes, mortality. That thing we acknowledge only when it touches one of the perimeters of our lives.”

I am that perimeter, now, to them. “He lived a good life?” people say the statement like a question.

“He did,” I smile, and they are comforted. It is impolite, after all, to weep in front of strangers. They, too, smile and furrow their brows, and though they never knew you, I can tell that they are doing their best to sympathize. They do, in fact, care about the pain of losing you.

Death is swallowed up in victory.

What a claim. Is it, Grampa? Has the shadow of death passed over you, and now has plunged you into eternal victory? What can this victory be, except being with Christ, and sharing in His inheritance? Being brought back to life with the scars of the Son of Man. Reigning forever and ever with the King of Kings.

What an inheritance.

Mom and I have been asking ourselves and each other what you must be experiencing right now. What is glory really like? You are presently conscious of an entirely new reality that we know nearly nothing about.

Did you get a bear hug from Jesus first? Did you hear His voice sing your name like a sunrise? Was your mansion ready already, or does that part come later, with the new heavens and earth?

Time doesn’t end for you now. So what are you getting up to, Grampa? Are you riding horses or felling trees for your next building project? Are you simply sitting enamored at His feet, surrounded by all your loved ones gone before? Are you feasting on the best steak and potatoes you’ve ever had in your life?

Who have you met? Are you and Dad reliving your favorite fishing stories? How big are the halibut in heaven?

I just finished listening to the book The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis a few weeks back, and the part that always strikes me is that the grass is so real in heaven, it hurts your feet to walk on at first. Not all these huffy fluffy depictions of naked toddlers with wings floating by on puffs of cloud. Far from it. The place where the LORD God Almighty dwells could never be that unappealing.

No, the new life is work – just like He gave us in the garden – but without the pains, frustrations, anxieties, and failures of our current, fallen, earthly reality. You have a purpose there, just as you had a purpose here. Nothing is wasted.

When people ask about what kind of life you lived, I’ve had to admit that I only got to see a sliver of it. I was your first grandchild, and I remember coming to visit you by ferry and then what seemed to be a very long drive, until we made it all the way past the lake resort restaurant where we used to get the monster-sized banana splits – all the way to your and Gramma’s house.

I remember you as a jovial, joyful, kind, and compassionate grandfather. I am blessed to have known you this way. The truth is, you did live a good life, but parts of it were very hard. I only know the stories, but you experienced hardship to a degree that I cannot imagine clearly – perhaps it’s the softness of my generation. You grew up working the land, blowing up tree stumps as a child along with your brothers, so that you and your parents and 12 siblings could settle into this homestead in British Columbia.

Your dad was hard on you, and I’m sure learning to be a husband and father yourself was a learning curve, as it is for everyone. You worked hard to provide for your family, and this was your offering of love in the best way you knew how, to Gramma, and to Lavon, and Mom, and Jordan. I’m sure you didn’t do it perfectly, because nobody does, but I do know that you did the best you knew how. And I also know that over time, knowing Jesus softened you into the gentle, hilarious, hopeful, joy-filled man I got to know as my Grampa.

I loved seeing you play guitar and sing old gospel songs, hearing you auctioneer pies at the family reunion that one time, making pork sausage in your butcher shop, listening to your stories of shooting wolves from the front window so they would stop killing the neighbors’ livestock, watching you haul up a 90-lb. halibut from the depths of the southeast Alaskan channels, and then insisting later that you were going to make the next one you caught into sausage. (I still think that would be a bad idea, by the way, and if you were here, I would wink at you and say so, and then we’d both start laughing.)

I love how you’d always do word searches in your big reclining rocking chair in the living room, facing the stone hearth, coffee in hand. “Boy can Mennonites drink coffee!” you told me once, and you could get away with it, because you grew up Mennonite. Remember when you built the wooden deHavilland Beaver floatplane and put it on top of a post in the driveway? That was such a neat project. It looked just like one of the Pac Air fleet that Dad used to fly.

Do you remember the time Riley and I came to visit you with Gramps when we were 8 and 5, and you had just bought one of those driveable lawnmowers? You showed us how to start it up and shift gears, and it was love at first sight for us. Then, you cut us loose, and you and Gramps shot the breeze and enjoyed a beer on the front porch. Riley and I took turns racing around, captivated by this newfound freedom of the lawnmower, and incrementally we became more and more courageous, until we were zipping between trees and whipping around the corners of the house.

Well, we must’ve become a bit too fast and loose, because, before we knew it, Riley had cut one corner a little too speedily, and launched your brand new rideable lawnmower directly into the front steps of the house. In my vague recollections, a flower pot was broken in the fall, and both you and Gramps stood up suddenly to observe the damage. Riley and I both expected the wrath of the grandfathers, which may as well have been the wrath of God, to us.

But instead of anger, a grin crinkled your face into countless smile lines, and you just about fell over laughing. Our fear was turned into sheepish acknowledgement of the hilarity of the moment. You said something like, “Oh, that’s okay Riley, just watch out for the front porch next time!”

I am grateful that this is the Grampa I got to know as a child – one who was generous and forgiving, and who had grown into a man who would readily admit his mistakes, but who had clearly allowed the work of Christ to keep on redeeming him and transforming him into the kind of person who would respond with laughter instead of a tongue lashing when his grandkids inadvertently broke his stuff.

But that’s what love does, isn’t it? It is ever at work within us, ever culling the harmful pieces out, and ever transforming the broken into the whole.

Love is ever making us more and more like our Savior Jesus, until the day we see Him face to face. This is the power of the cross. This is death swallowed up in victory, the glimpses of eternity here and now.

And while all creation mourns and groans, aching at the losses and woes and sins and struggles we have yet to endure, we are assured that the promise is true – that the mystery of God’s grace has been revealed to us, His saints. That Christ now lives in us, the hope of glory.

I will see you again soon, Grampa, and you will have even more to teach me then than you did while you were here.

I think God says, “precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints” because death is a homecoming to those who have placed their trust in Jesus.

You are home now.

I can’t wait to come home, too.

I love you, Grampa. See you on the other side.

All my love,
Morgan