revival, an old man crying.

I have began to realize that even I will, too, grow old one day. And my body will not work the way I have always known it to be. And climbing hills will be harder, and making fists with toes will hurt. And my skin will bunch together and not be so soft. My hair will turn gray, and my sight will grow dim. I will be less able to run, and perhaps even at times to walk.

I will die.

We will all die.

But for now, I will look forward, and see others grow old before me, watch their skin sag and backs hunch over, and voices change. And when I see an old man cry, I will have to turn away, because if something moves someone who has seen so many things, who am I not to crumple under such thunder? Old eyes with tears filling, I'm broken.

Old men remind me of my grandfather, and the years from his death continue to widen the gap of visible, tangible memory. I remember certain aspects of his life as I knew it and saw it, riding on his enormous four wheeler, teaching me how to fish, quiet walks in pastures, laying with him in his recliner watching John Wayne movies and Andy Griffith. Hearing him laugh. Seeing him cook. Knowing that he was a survivor and that I carry half his name and a quarter of his genetics. I can recall his face and his body type, but I never knew him as the strong man of his youth, as a peaceful person caught in a war. As a young man who left with brown hair on his head, and returned with gray. A killer forever haunted by his memories of duty and survival.

He did not talk about the war much, if ever at all. But I, in my childhood ignorance of the horrors of man, and in my fascination with adventure would ask him about it. Maybe nag would be the more appropriate term. I'd want particular stories, places, battlefields and maneuvers. And he would tell me them, water them down to, I think, keep me innocent and to hold back his pain.

When he died, or was close to death, I cannot remember which, my grandmother brought down a very old faded green suitcase out of the attic. She popped open the locks and letters and pictures fell out of it, its contents love letters written to my granny, pictures he had sent back. This small country boy traveling around the world.

When he passed away, I remember old men crying at the sight of my stiff grandfather, arms folded, regal like a knight in his casket. I could not look at him, did not want to have the last thoughts of him as this, this body, this hollow thing asleep before me. But men shook my hand with tears in their eyes telling me stories I had never heard from him, giving me pieces of the puzzle. And I thanked them.

My mom cries sometimes when she looks across the pond at his old house. The pond is drying up now, its life seemingly feeding off of my grandfather's life. She looks across and stares at her old house, where she grew up, where he quietly raised her with powerful words not spoken. I'll see her cry and put my hands on her shoulders, and whisper, "I miss him, too". And she will say back, "After daddy left the pond started dying." And I'll just nod quietly.

Maybe that's Granddaddy in me. The gentle nod, the quiet words, the pushing through hard times.

When an old man cries, they are tears of age, of wisdom, of a love once lost and lived.