Driving Route 32 in the cold air this morning, I saw the dark cloud bank of the storm that is expected later today. The sun skimmed the steel gray cloud in front of me to the south. As the sun rose over the line of demarcation between the nearing front, the sky behind it turned pink, then orange, then brilliant gold.
Soon it was too bright to behold, and I turned my face away – shielding my eyes with that turning – just as we all have in times past. The human reality of sunlight was too great to look into, too piercing to linger upon.
I thought of my grandfather, who lived his life here in Jefferson, as I traveled the old road this morning. The house where he was born still stands down along Bunker Hill Road as does the Flagg homestead nearby where eight children were raised. I thought of the same January morning light, year after year, blessing the cold beginning of their days.
There were actually nine children at the Flagg home in Jefferson, and I always consider this — for the ninth child lost his life in a swimming accident when he was just eighteen, a young man about to embark on adulthood.
My grandfather rarely spoke of this, of course, of his brother Atwood Flagg, who died well before his time. It was the center of their lives, this tragedy, as well it would be. Any family who has faced such loss knows this.
Grandfather Flagg was a dear soul, perhaps the dearest of all in our family. He held fast to a faith, living well into his 99th year with a vibrant sense of God and family. He spent decades of living without his youngest brother yet was always clear-headed about the meaning and the beauty of life – or so it always seemed to me.
Perhaps it was the early hour, or the winter light, or the way the snow on the ground contrasted with the leafless trees — that stark reality of family loss and the silence of the day. Still and all, it was beautiful, I thought, as I turned into the drive of his home where my sister now lives.
Soon I was out of the car, breathing in the cold eight-degree air and hastening to the warm house. The time travel instilled by the road, the dip and dive of the hills and valleys of Jefferson, the snowy fields and re-imagining of the past that I’d only heard about through stories from my parents – all fading into fragments and then wisps, all disappearing as I crossed the threshold.
Yet as I came into the house where my sister lives, I was drawn to look toward the east, over the lake, to see the dawn breaking forth, to go on witnessing the day as it began.
What would my grandfather say to me this day? What whisper from the past was I listening for? It seemed as if his gentle spirit was near, as it often seems, this lovely human being who was for all of us the cornerstone of our lives for so many years. It is as if he is still there, holding up my days, holding up the house of my inner landscape.
I believe my grandfather, of all people, is certainly in heaven, and I still sense him here – over the years – a personage who looms large in my world whenever I need advice or reassurance. I can still hear him singing next to me at church, for example, the old hymns that provide shelter from this life when life becomes “too much for us.”
My grandfather sang with all his heart at church, and whenever I sat next to him it was a joy to hear his voice. I pray it will always be thus — this sense of him and his splendid approach of exuberance to worship, the free spirit of one who had faced great loss as a young man and who still turned joyfully to the Great Divinity among us.
I do not know how he found his way through those difficult times; I only know he set the standard for me, for all of us. And why this morning of all mornings would I be thinking so strongly of him? I dwell in that place, I suppose, as perhaps all of us do from time to time. When attempting to drive back the cold of winter, we hold tight to a memory that keeps us safe.
If you were fortunate enough to have a grandfather like mine, who let me know each time I was with him that he was there to love and guide, then you know, dear reader, that it isn’t a far stretch to reach toward God and believe God is here loving and guiding — a constant in the dead of winter or in the struggle of present.
If you did not know a grandparent such as mine, I offer him to you today, in these lines — a man who taught with his kindness that acceptance was the key to love and faith the key to a life of joy. Whether you are taking time to read this column today from an armchair that keeps you tethered due to infirmity, or on the fly as you manage a busy day, I give him to you, as he gave himself to us — with a faith and a trust that in that giving there is great honor and meaning.
