Eventually everyone has to deal with death. Sometimes sooner than expected, but it will come about. My first real encounter with death happened on Friday, the 8th of April, in 2011. I was at school, helping count the paper cranes to ship off to Amazon when my brother called me. Now, I’d known my grandpa was in the hospital, and I’d wanted to go see him but I’d been told to go to school. And then my brother called. I could tell from his tone, and the fact he was calling me at 3pm, that it had happened. He gets off work at seven, typically, so I knew the news was going to be bad. I told my teacher that I had to leave and rushed home to have my fears confirmed. My grandpa was dead.
I instantly began to cry when they said that, which sort of surprised me because I’m not the instant reaction type. I normally have a period of shock, and then get upset about it later but it hit me hard. I guess I’d had the shock part out of the way on the car ride home or something. But anyway I was devastated.
I wouldn’t say we were particularly close, not like he was a best friend sort of grandpa but he was still special. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know him when he was younger, about as young as my parents, as my brothers did. When I was born he was already retired and he owned a wood shop. I used to love to wander through that wood shop with my cousins. It was in a small town, so small it didn’t have a grocery store, but it had this shop. It was always a mess, everything coated in sawdust but we loved it. We loved to look at the stuff he made, the many toys he gave us, and the tools he used. We loved exploring the back of his shop, filled with all sorts of things, but mostly wood and cats. We liked to try and pet the cats, although they usually ran away. It was fun, and I used to love visiting them.
They had a nice old house not too far from Grandpa’s shop. They always had a dog, tons of toys, and a couple cats of their own so I liked visiting there more than visiting my other grandparents because there were all sorts of animals to play with and a small town to explore. I was always an outdoorsy kid.
I have a few favorites that he made when I was younger. The first and utmost is a wooden ferris wheel that turned by battery power. That thing was beautiful. It was extremely ornate, although I never saw it painted. The next is my cedar chest. It’s a hope chest, made of cedar wood, which has a very distinct, but nice, smell. It’s huge and I keep lots of things in it.
But eventually they couldn’t keep up with their old house and we had to move them to old folk friendly apartments on the other end of the small town. Grandpa still kept up his shop for a while there and we still liked to play with their little dog, Teddy (a Yorkshire terrier).
And then Teddy died and Grandpa had to sell his shop because he just couldn’t make things like he used to, which was very sad. He had to have more help from my dad which was also sad because he, like my dad, was a very independent sort of person who normally helped others rather than being helped. He was a great person, very generous, who’d made many things to help out his community. But they got a new dog and life went on for a while longer.
Then they had to move to a nursing home and they couldn’t keep the dog, but they at least got to stay together. I don’t like the nursing home too much and I don’t think Grandpa did either. He just seemed so sad; my last memory was of him nearly crying when the conversation turned to the disaster in Japan Japan
RIP Oswald (Chris) T. Christensen.
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