I miss my grandfather. One night, in 1994, he went to sleep and never woke up. Instead, I woke up the next morning, received a phone call and cried. I miss him for a variety of reasons and I am sad for many reasons as well. My wife never met him and I hate that. My children never met him and I hate that too. I think that my family may understand me more if my grandfather were still around. Why? Because in his own simple way, he made sense of the world in which we lived. And sometimes common sense is in short supply. And for me, he made sense out of chaos, not because of his simplicity, but because he understood chaos better than most.

Now, he came from a generation that isn’t known for conversation and emotional dialogue. Tom Brokaw called it the ‘Greatest Generation.’ He fought in Asia and was wounded in battle. He worked on the Chicago Northwestern Railroad for over 40 years (a photo of that engine hangs above my son’s bed) was married for fifty years and fathered four children. He had a Marine tattoo that simply looked cool. He was tough, but in a way that was unassuming. He once drove himself to the hospital because he had, what he called, a ‘stomach ache that wouldn’t go away.’ The doctor diagnosed it as a ‘coke can size’ hernia in his stomach. An urgent surgery was performed and a few hours later, he drove himself home.

I remember painting someone’s house one day and while I was hanging on the ladder, a large brown snake curled around the bottom of the ladder. Being petrified of snakes, I climbed all the way up the ladder, onto the roof of the house, and into the kitchen via the most round about of ways. I called my grandfather and explained to him that I had a problem. I waited by the street and about twenty minutes later he arrived. I pointed to the ladder and he saw the large brown snake still curled around the ladder. Going to the trunk of his car, he pulled out a small shovel that he used to keep the garden he planted in back of our house. Without saying a word, my grandfather walked directly to the ladder, kicked the snake loose from the rungs, and then beat it into a pulp. I stood there in awe. When he came back to where I was standing, my grandfather simply said, ‘I think you’re good to go.’

I am reminded, at times, that my experience with him was not the same as my mother. You see, before he became my grandfather, he was an alcoholic. He was not happy to be around. But, that’s not the man I knew. In fact, the man I know, not long after I was born, simply quit drinking one day—cold turkey. He decided enough was enough and never touched the stuff the rest of his life (or the entirety of my life). He used to bring me donuts every Friday morning (one white long john and one chocolate cake donut). Even when I went to college, when I would come home for breaks, for at least one day on break, we would go to breakfast.

When my parents divorced, I remember sitting in his living room and saying that it hurt and I didn’t like it. At first he said nothing. He simply sat in his recliner with his feet up and his crossword puzzle book on his lap (that recliner now sits in my own room and serves as my own reading chair). Wondering if he heard me, I reiterated how my parents’ divorce seemed to make so little sense to me. This time he said something that has stuck with me and is something I will never forget. He said, ‘that isn’t right’. A brief phrase, a simple phrase, but a well timed phrase.

I think of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and how we have the ability to cure malaria, but we won’t fund it. I think about how politics drive so much of our public health initiatives and how some Christian groups are known more for what they’re against instead of what they stand for. I think of how women are not given the same pay for the same job or how many still don’t have access to education in so many countries. And I simply say, ‘that isn’t right’. Today, I miss my grandfather because he is no longer here and like so many things we can link back to the Fall of Genesis 3 - that too isn’t right.