I'm feeling a little nostalgic.

On Mother’s Day I talked to an elderly couple I’ve known since high school. They told my mom and me that they’d just recently celebrated their anniversary…63 years. I saw them again this past Sunday; I didn’t get to talk to them, but I watched them as they went up to the altar for Communion and as they went back to their pew. They held hands the entire time, and he treated her as though she were the most precious thing in the world to him. Sixty-three years and their love hasn’t diminished; if anything, it’s intensified, especially in the time that I’ve known them.
I saw my grandmother on Sunday, and she told me that she’s 69. This couple has been married almost as long as my grandmother has been alive. My grandfather, her husband, died at the age of 69…12 years ago. I always knew he was a lot older than her, but I’d never really thought about how much older he was.
My grandfather and the man in the couple of 63 years used to play in a band together. They were called the Midnight Cowboys, and they played in nursing and retirement homes. Many years before that my grandfather was in a band in Memphis called the Snearly Ranch Brothers (I think), and my grandfather played back-up guitar for a singer named Warren Smith on an album produced by Sun Records. My dad once told me that my grandfather used to be a regular guitarist for Sun Records and that he once (and maybe more than once) played with Johnny Cash. A couple years ago I found that Warren Smith album on E-bay and bought it for my dad. Unfortunately, my parents no longer have a record player so we haven’t been able to listen to it yet.
But more recently my dad found some old recordings of the Midnight Cowboys and put them onto CDs. I never knew my grandfather could sing until I heard these CDs. I always knew he could play the guitar, but not that he could sing....
He used to love listening to me play the piano. Any time he was at the house, I had to play, and he would just sit and listen, and when I was finished, he would sit down at the piano. There was only one song he knew how to play, and I’d give anything just to know the name of it. Whatever it was, he loved it, and it was amazing to watch his old, gnarled, arthritic fingers as they touched the piano keys. “Ticklin’ the ivories,” he would say, and that’s exactly what it looked like he was doing.
I’m sitting here listening to these CDs, to my grandfather’s voice, and I’m flooded by memories…going to Dairy Queen, just the two of us, and eating ice cream while he told me stories of when he was in England and Germany during World War II…him recording my first piano recital…when I was 8th grade he told everyone he introduced me to that I was president of the jr. honor society…when I was in 9th grade and no longer in the jr. honor society he still told everyone I was president….
And I remember his last months, from the time I found out he had cancer to his death about 4 months later…visiting him in the hospital…him telling us that everything was going to be okay…and holding his hand the night before he died, when he told me that there’s a reason for everything, even for dying, and part of living was to discover that reason....
He was something else, my grandfather. So full of life and love. He once told me that when it came time for me to choose a career, I should look to my hobbies, because if I made a career out of something I loved to do, I'd never have to work. I'd always be doing something I loved. It's good advice. I hope some day I'm in a financial position where I can do that with my writing.
Wow...so this isn't at all what I set out to write tonight. I had something completely different in mind, but I guess I'll be saving that idea for another day. :-)