Robert L. Dickerson, 1927–2023
My grandfather died in November.
One day after his 96th birthday.
That was the day I’d welcome a not-insignificant portion of his family to my parents’ very-not-large! house, where I managed to feed them a tortellini salad that they still talk about. Also some olives and carrots and dip and stuff.
Everyone appreciated the olives because he always liked them.
Two days before Thanksgiving. My brother and sister and I were all supposed to be elsewhere. My sister’s kid was effusive about taco Thanksgiving and this will be his expectation going forward.
Three days before I’d put together, with my sister, a collection of voicemails that captured the person he was and damn was that some emotional labor that I will never regret.
Four days before we would gather at the no-frills funeral home he specifically chose, and see not-him all made up with liptstick and shit, and tell our stories to each other like there wasn’t a dead body beside us. A random pastor encouraged us toward the Lord.
My mom assures me he was a person of faith, but church was not least for the break provided by Sunday School for the kids, especially when his first and beloved wife, Phyllis, died young. I don’t remember the details but it seems like her condition would be entirely uninteresting today.
She was his high school teacher but they didn’t get married til he came back from serving, unremarkably, in the Navy. Make of that what you will. I mostly wonder how long they might have stayed together.
Phyllis was 40 or so when she died and my mom was 10. It was customary, at the time, to keep kids away from the living-but-dying part.
My mom was there when he died, even though the folks at the nursing home where she worked for something like 25 years told her not to rush. She had been there for him for years, even when he wasn’t a mile down the road. In the last week or two she just held his hand. It was a comfort, the thing she couldn’t do with her mom.
Two days before Thanksgiving and one day after his birthday and four days before he was buried, my grandpa took a breath and shed a tear and that was it. The color goes away fast after that. I wasn’t there to see it but my mom was there, of course she was, and I showed up five minutes later, no idea what I was walking into, so glad to be there.
He was too old to have any friends left, and that’s kind of heartbreaking to be honest. Some family members of his exes attended (you end up with a surprising number of exes when you live to be a 96-year-old man and are also as charming as my grandpa), and that was sweet, but I hope when it’s my time there are some people left to say nice things who don’t have a, like, post-romantic obligation.
One of my aunts and I, let’s say we have wildly opposing political views, and yet her skill at storytelling at the service, rural upstate New York accent and all, might have a shot at being on The Moth. I sat in awe of a person who almost didn’t finish high school, whose politics I abhor, but who had such a fundamental grasp of storytelling as an art that I was a bit dumbstruck.
Another aunt, who sometimes needs some physical support, brought her neighbor to the service, and made a point of introducing me to her afterward, which was so nice. That aunt still owes me since I got stuck in her chicken coop when I was 10, insofar as I didn’t realize there was a latch I could open to easily escape. She doesn’t have Trump flags and that’s nice.
A half-aunt, who I have always appreciated, didn’t come, and I sent her a message saying that I understood and it was OK but it was also good to hear her voice when my mom called her to tell her that her dad had died.
I loved my grandpa always, for the mazes he would mow in his side yard for us and the sweets he always had on hand, and the Christmases in the basement when I was small, and the micro-cassette tapes we would trade when I went to college.
And then, after my first couple of years at college, I didn’t feel a deep connection to him if we’re being quite honest. I visited him when I was nearby, and made a point of him meeting my son, but other grandchildren were certainly closer to him. So this isn’t a sentimental post exactly, but:
With his passing there’s no more need for my parents to live where I grew up (and perhaps arguably an urgent need for them not to), and that’s the bigger deal I wasn’t ready for, a world where “where I grew up” is a place I can visit but not a house I still have access to.
I felt this so deeply, on the drive to the graveside service from the funeral home. He was buried in a cemetery in Interlaken, N.Y., next to Phyllis, overlooking Seneca Lake. It’s ridiculously beautiful even in sub-freezing November. And so too was the drive from the service in Waterloo, through gently rolling hills on 50mph roads overlooking magical lakes a thousand feet below.
From Waterloo to Interlaken I basked in this magic, and was also late to the graveside service for reasonable but regrettable reasons, so it was time to leave almost as soon as I got there. I politely skipped the reception at my Trump-loving, brilliant-storytelling aunt’s house (I sent her a nice text, though) and started the long ride home.
