On Saturday, my Grandfather, Milton Thompson Penn, was having trouble sleeping. He got up, and walked painfully to the dining room. He sat at the table and pulled a plate of cookies over. The following morning, my Grandmother, Ruth, found him slumped over - he had died of congestive heart failure.
I loved my Granddaddy. He was a great man who always made me laugh. His antics were legendary among his family and friends. His later years, he was stricken with rheumatory arthritis that left him hobbled and with gnarled hands that made it difficult for him to hold anything.
Kathy and I hopped on the plane to fly to DC. I'm here at my sister's house now, typing this on my brother-in-law's computer. We went to the viewing on Tuesday, and the funeral on Wednesday. The funeral was lovely - the room was packed, family members holding each other, comforting those that needed it, and paying our last respects to a fantastic man. My granddad.
The theme of the funeral was “A Great American.“ Losing his mother at a young age, he took care of his younger brother and sister. He left high-school to fight in WWII on the USS Hornet. He returned from the war and found work breaking horses and working rodeos. Bucking broncs didn't pay what he was hoping, so he left to join the fire-department, first as a volunteer, but slowly climbed the ladder until he was the Fire Chief of the City of Alexandria. He lived a life of public service, and always believed in the idea of having fun, while not hurting anybody.
My mother and Aunt Cheryl stood to speak, and my great uncle Billy gave the eulogy. My young cousins also stood to pay their tributes. I want to say, also, how proud I was of my oldest cousin, Chris, who gave a heartfelt, stirring, but also funny speech. She's a woman of few words, but she found them and shared them with us. Again, I couldn't be prouder of her.
After the funeral, we all crammed into my Grandma's house. We ate, and drank, told our favorite Milton-stories. What I'll remember most is how everybody laughed hard at some of his sillier moments. Even now, as I type, I stop and find myself smiling thinking about the time Granddad was caught cheating at poker, and rather than own up to it, he left and drove himself home. Then there was every Christmas when he would tell the grandkids that Santa wasn't coming this year because he had broken his leg. Of course, there was every summer when the family would be at the beach, and he would wake us all up when the stars were still up so we could go down to the K&W cafeteria and be first in line for breakfast, and how mad he would be if we were second in line instead.
Milt was a card, alright. More stories were told of him cooking roasts for 8 hours on 225, and making the worlds worst chili and having to bury it in the sand. Fishing stories, hunting stories... the more we talked, the more we laughed. Soon, our grief was replaced with a kind of joy. We all felt lucky that we had an opportunity to know him, and to share our lives with him. He left a huge family that misses him terribly, but wherever he is, I'm certain he's playing cards with his friends, taking a long pull on a Budweiser.
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