My Grampa

Last Thursday, my great-grandfather, Jack Archer Vaughan, died at a nursing home in Lake Isabella, California. He was 101 years old. He had lived through The Great War, World War II, The Korean War, The Viet Nam conflict, The Cold War, and two wars fought in Iraq. He had been an American citizen under eighteen different presidents. He had been alive through both the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. He had seen the Japanese go from a source of cheap labor to our enemies in the Pacific to our closest allies and the most technologically advance people on Earth. He had seen the Germans go from Imperialist bastards to Nazi bastards to pacifist weakling bastards. He had been a pharmacist for longer than I have been alive. He had been retired for longer than my mother (his eldest granddaughter) has been alive. (He definitely got more than he put into Social Security!) He had outlived a son who had fallen to cancer. He had outlived two wives, and left a widow. He had seen literally dozens of great-grandchildren brought into this world. However, most importantly, he was a man of God. He was rooming with a man nearly thirty years his junior who had Alzheimer's. That man frequently forgot who or where he was and would occasionally (once in front of me) cuss like a drunken sailor. My great-grandfather would sometimes forget that he was in the middle of a conversation, and instead of trailing off into a blur of verbalized thought, he would pray. It's as if what is truly in your heart and soul is what comes out in your moments of frailty on this mortal coil. I can only hope that I will have a similar heart when I get old. I pray that I will be allowed to leave a legacy even half as great as that of Mr Jack Archer Vaughan, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, husband, uncle, patriarch, widower, American, friend, and follower of Christ.

I know you're in a better place, grampa. Can't wait to see you again.