John Green (my grandfather)

  My grandfather passed away May 28th. I have wanted to write something regarding this but have not been sure what exactly to say. When my grandma passed away four years ago my grandpa wanted to join her as he felt life without her was not worth living and so the last four years of life for him have consisted of not so patiently waiting. That has been complicated for all family involved. We wanted to see him happy but he chose to describe himself as a non person and view his aging process as de humanizing and horrific. After observing what he went through I think I get it. So I think I am glad he is gone because I choose to believe he is happy and with my grandma again, but I wish it could have been a different sort of goodbye.

  When I think of my grandpa there are a lot of different things that go through my head. He was strong and loud. When he had a point or he had an opinion he stuck to it. It was pretty hard to convince him otherwise. He was very smart. He liked adventure and the great out doors but I don't think he liked it because he felt connected to nature or that the beauty spoke to him. I think he liked a challenge and I think he liked to feel like he had conquered something. He had a sail boat that he built and it was the first fiberglass sail boat ever and that boat was something he was very dedicated to. He spent hours on it and went on many great adventures on it. All of his family experienced at some point or another sail boating the Grandpa Green way and that is all I will say about that. My grandpa was married to a woman who made his life good and I dont think I have a single memory of just my grandpa before my grandma passed away. They were a team when I was growing up. If I picture my grandpa in my mind I see him sitting in the corner of their living room that had his grand oak desk. For many years there would be the clicking and ching of the typewriter and later on the sound of a key board. He was a writer and a news paper man. He was often talking loudly on the phone to someone also and it was often long distance so we would need to be a bit quiet.

  Years ago for one of my grandpa's birthdays I decided to write him a letter letting him know what he had taught me in life. I wanted to tell him then (and not wish I had told him later after he had passed away) what I thought of him and how he had impacted me. The letter ended up making him mad but that was because the memory I shared was not exactly one of our best ones. Is was happened was I was staying with my grandparents for some reason and we had gone to Deer lake for a 'hike'. I was wearing thin tennis shoes and some long shorts so not exactly great hiking gear. I had imagined a pretty hike on a little path around a lake. In reality it was the typical grandpa hike. There was no trail. No trail at all. We had to cross through bogs, crawl over many windfalls, and fight through devils club and undergrowth. This was in 1993 so I was eleven. I had one time before had a 'fight' with my grandpa and it involved us both yelling at each other. In that instance I had won. This time as I was getting covered in scratches and getting whipped in the face by branches and covered in mud I was getting angrier and angrier. This was NOT what I had agreed to. I had asked to go back numerous times but maybe my grandpa felt I needed some toughening up or something so he did not agree. He also loved a good challenge and he wanted to conquer walking the whole way around that lake with no trail. We were going farther and farther away from the lake shoreline as the forest was thick and areas close to the lake so boggy. At one point we got to the shore line and I was fuming. I told my grandpa in no uncertain terms that I was NOT going to go back to the car through the forest. I told him I was going to wade through the lake. He told me I most certainly WAS going back through the forest and I said absolutely not. Keep in mind I am eleven. I am scrawny and have long red hair and am wearing long pink shorts that hit just below my knees. My grandpa is very tall and loud and powerful. So there we were yelling at each other and suddenly my grandma intervened. I don't think she did much of this in her life time with him until after she had a stroke then she stood up to him a lot more. Anyway she told him she was also not walking back to the car through the forest and that she was going to join me in wading through the lake. That settled it. My grandpa stomped away into the forest and my grandma and I gingerly waded through the lake along the shore line to the vehicle. From what I remember the ride home was very quiet. My grandpa and I got in a couple more fights like this throughout my life time and I always won. It wasn't that it felt good to win. Not at all ~ it felt awful, but sometimes I just had to stand up for myself or for something that mattered to much to me to be intimidated by some yelling and name calling.

In sharing this story I told my grandpa in his birthday letter that he had taught me to be a trail blazer. He had taught me there does not need to be a nice path. There does not need to be an easy route because you can just blaze your own. Throughout my life I have often felt like there is not an easy path I am supposed to take. I often feel like I am stomping and fighting through underbrush because for heaven's sake I can even though I feel I can't. There are points when I say enough is enough and I take my break but learning that part is important also. My grandpa spent years researching the Sasquatch and became well known because of the books he wrote, prints he found,research he did, and the expert he became on the topic. He blazed a trail that not many had dared to blaze. I remember that when I got married I had to change the wedding date because he was speaking at a conference in place of Jane Goodall!! Although he offered to charter a private jet to get to my wedding I felt that I could change the date to a different weekend without much drama!

There are reasons that each person becomes who they are and I often wondered why my grandpa had turned out the way he did. In listening to stories, reading old letters and talking to my grandma I feel like I  understood why he was so persistent, so intense, so opinionated and loyal, and in some ways wounded.

In the last year I did not see my grandpa much at all. It was so hard to see him for multiple reasons but when we did see him he was so happy to see us and my children loved him dearly. He was not able to take them on hikes or up into the mountains to feed whisky jacks like he did for me. They did not see him running the sand sculpture competition in Harrison Hot Springs or playing tennis. They did not see him coming in from Bingo wearing his Lions Club vest or at a Yacht Club BBQ. They didn't see him hiking with the hiking club and he didn't get a chance to teach them how to wash dishes PROPERLY. He taught me this skill for years until one day I impatiently exclaimed that he had been teaching me this for YEARS and I told him word for word how to do it. He quietly said something along the lines of...'well I guess you've got it' and from then on I was left to wash dishes in peace. My children were not at his house when he gave a radio interview over the phone. They did not drive into Vancouver with him and my grandma and sit in a waiting room while he gave a television interview. They got bits and pieces of him but I got it all. I was so blessed by so much that he and my grandma did to show me so many things in life I might never have experienced otherwise.

However my children DID get to play board games with him. When he got heated because they just did not GET IT I would remind him they were little and he would calm down. My three oldest loved to play battling tops with him and my oldest loved to play Monopoly with him. They loved to have him read them stories and he did this with them up until the last time they saw him. He played creepy mice with them and showed them the Coocoo in the Coocoo Clock. Something else he did for them was take our family out for dinner. He did this because he knew how tired I was and that taking us out for dinner gave me a break. He took us out for countless dinners and my children loved it. They were introduced to cheese cake and Chinese food buffet because of him :) They did get to go on the boat with him and they did get to go to Minter Gardens with him weekly which we all loved so much.  They got to go to Kilby's Museum with him. They did get to play pillow fights with him and see him blow out the candles on his cake which was always such a show. They got so see both him and my grandma at the Agassiz fall fair. They did get to go for fall walks with him. They also were given special birthday gifts at times and they felt very loved. So did I. I know my grandma loved me dearly and so did my grandpa. They had different ways of showing it but their presence in my life changed it, impacted it, molded it so much. My life was rich because of their time and love that they invested in me.

 I will miss my grandparents. I have already missed them so much these last few years. Now that they are both gone I feel like a chapter in my life is forever closed. I feel like there are certain things that I now feel more strongly then ever  that I want to pass down to my children from my grandparents.

So many meals around my grandparent's table started with this prayer said very quickly and a bit quietly by my grandpa ~

'For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful
Amen'

I am truly thankful for all I received.

How I wish some parts of life did not have to come to an end

xo