Rose Bushes Among the Tomatoes

This day, last week, our family lost a relic. My great-grandfather, "Grandpa Huff" passed away at the ripe age of 98, and though it is a loss...I'd actually rather tally this one as a "W" in his column...because these days it's HUGE to make it to that age! Even though I know it was best that he go instead of suffer, I'd selfishly rather that he would stick around for just a couple more months so he could meet his great-great-grandson, Baby Ryder. My great-grandmother was always so diligent about keeping and labeling pictures and other keepsakes, and in carrying on the tradition, I would have loved to have gotten that picture of all 5 generations, beginning with and including, Grandpa Huff, and ending with Ryder.

Our family has so many wonderful memories of going to the little micro-town of Apache, OK to spend long weekends in the summers...and/or Thanksgiving with our great-grandparents. They've been SO old since even our PARENTS could remember, so it was amazing that we were able to get in this many years with them! My cousins and I will always remember grandpa sending us out to get the mail, him taking us fishing...or him jokingly reminding us that he would "take us out behind the barn and whoop us!" He didn't have a barn. And he never contemplated laying a hand on us....it was just his little joke. Our grandma made the best fried okra, could recount in great detail any quasi-memorable experience from her life, used to slacker the girl cousins' hair with Vaseline for some ungodly reason -- and our moms let her do it (!!??), and she could identify each and every individual in the stacks and STACKS of photos she kept...dating as far back as the late 1800s. She'd seen every [and I do mean EVERY] episode of Days of Our Lives (that's the one with the hourglass, right?) since it premiered, and she'd sit and talk about the episodes and characters like they were real people. She couldn't understand why 'he'd' go back to 'her' after 'all she'd put him through,' or 'how [those people] could make such crazy decisions,' etc...etc... I always found that to be quite humorous...but realize that I do the same stankin' thing these days, only about The Hills characters instead! ;) It's different!

So my mom went up with her brother and sister for my grandpa's funeral...and before they left, they decided to go back to the house to tidy up a few things. My grandpa famously kept a garden with various vegetables up until the day he died, and that was what he was known for around his neighborhood. He'd recently planted a slew of tomato plants, and the neighbors had been coming over to get fresh tomatoes in recent days, yet these tomato plants were beginning to look a little unkempt. My mom went out there to 'clean them up' a little, and much to her surprise, she noticed that out of the mess of tangled tomato vines, was a small rose bush with two blooming red roses emerging from its stems. Call it a coincidence...but she said it was like grandma's way of telling us that she'd found grandpa in heaven, and that they were together and happy once again. They'd been married over 70 years when my grandma passed away a couple of years ago. My mom didn't have her camera with her, so I hope that rose bush is still there when we all go back in January, and maybe Ryder will get to have his chance to have his picture taken with great-great-Grandma and Grandpa Huff, after all.

Here's a picture of me and Grandpa Huff when I was little....it had to have been taken over 20 years ago. Wasn't he old, even THEN!? ;)

We'll miss you guys, especially this Thanksgiving...WE LOVE YOU GRANDMA AND GRANDPA HUFF! xoxo