I JUST WANT TO WAKE HIM

     The grandboys decided that they were the only ones who were going to prepare Gramps' piece of ground for him.  There being nothing in this world that any of us can do for him any more, aside from making sure he's as comfortable as humanly possible, they came up with this as a gift that he would surely understand and appreciate. 

     In addition to being Chief of Police and City Supervisor for all of his adult life, he hand dug many a grave out in the community's cemetery.  He was eighty years old when he finally gave it up.  Now the job is done with a backhoe but the men that 'his boys' have grown into were having none of that. 

     'He wouldn't want that,' they said.  'We'll do it ourselves.  Nobody can talk us out of it.  Nobody had better try to stop us.  We are going to do it.  For Gramps.  Because he deserves the best we can give him and we're going to do this for him.  He's done so much for us, we just want to do it.' 

     And they have gotten it done.  In the midst of the bone-breaking task, the young men's faces were sometimes grim, sometimes tear-streaked, sometimes alive with laughter as they used their together time to yarn stories about the man they have all loved. 

     They have done themselves proud, and they have done Gramps proud.  That little piece of ground is straight and true, cleanly and neatly finished, the dirt hauled and piled away from the site until later.  They used Gramps' own tools to do the job and, much as Gramps loved his community and the people in it, those tools have never been used with as much love, respect, and admiration.

I really do want to just go into that blasted hospital room and wake him up.

I want to tell him, ‘Come on!  We have places to go, things to do, people to see!  You have to see what those crazy grandboys of yours did!’

Of course I can’t do that.

But I still want to.