Eulogy for grandpa

Hi. I’m Beau, and Burl Mayhew was my Pop.

Pop worked on the railroad for forty years, out of Meridian, Mississippi, and for most of that time he was a conductor. He carried a pocket watch the whole time. He checked it about every ten minutes, even after he retired, even when he wasn’t going anywhere.

I asked him once why he still checked it. He said, “So I know where I am.” I didn’t get that. I think I kind of get it now.

Pop had a model railroad in his garage that took up the whole thing. My grandma parked in the driveway for twenty-two years because of it. It had a town, a river, a tunnel through a mountain made of chicken wire and newspaper, and a tiny Pop in a conductor’s hat standing on the platform.

When I was seven, he let me run the trains for the first time. I crashed two of them in the tunnel in about a minute. He didn’t get mad. He just reached in, set them back on the track and said, “Again, slower.” We did that every Saturday for seven years. I can run four trains at once now without crashing.

Pop said a train is never late. “It’s on its own time.” He said that about me, too, when I was late for stuff, which was a lot. He never yelled at me about being late. He’d look at his watch and say, “Well, you’re here now.”

Pop went to church every Sunday, and he sat on the aisle so he could get out fast and beat everybody to the coffee. He said God didn’t mind, because God knows conductors have to be first off the train.

What Pop taught me is to slow down, so you don’t crash everything in the tunnel. He also taught me that when somebody finally shows up, you don’t make them feel bad about how long it took.

Pop gave me his watch last Christmas. I have it right here. I’ve been checking it all week. Pop, I know where I am. I’ll keep the trains running.

Good morning. I’m Analyn, and Rodolfo Bautista was my lolo, which means grandpa in Tagalog. Everybody else called him Rodi. He called me anak, which means child, even after I turned thirty.

Lolo joined the Navy in 1962 and came to Vallejo as a steward on Mare Island. He cooked for officers for twenty years, and then he worked for the post office for twenty more. He sent money home to his mother in Pangasinan every month for forty years, and he never missed one, not even the month my mom was born.

What I want to tell you about, though, is the singing.

Lolo sang at every party, every baptism and every birthday, and I mean every one. He had one song. It was an old American ballad, and he sang it slow, with his eyes closed and one hand on his heart, and he was always a little bit flat. We have it on video at my first birthday, my high school graduation and my wedding. At my wedding, he sang it twice, because he said the first time the microphone wasn’t loud enough. The microphone was fine.

My husband, Jerome, thought it was a family joke at first. Then he saw Lolo sing it at a cousin’s wedding and watched the whole room go quiet. Jerome said, “He means every word, doesn’t he.” He did.

When my grandmother died eight years ago, Lolo didn’t sing for a year. None of us pushed him. Then, at my cousin’s baby’s baptism, somebody handed him the microphone, and he stood there for a while, and then he sang it, flat, with his eyes closed and his hand on his heart. Everybody cried, and he looked around at us and said, “What? I’m not that bad.”

On Sundays he went to the seven o’clock Mass, and afterward he worked in his backyard. He grew bitter melon on the fence and gave it to everyone on the block, whether they wanted it or not. Most of them did not want it. They took it anyway, because it was Lolo.

What he taught me is that you sing anyway. You sing when you’re flat, and you sing at the baptism after the year you couldn’t. People will forgive flat if you mean it.

Lolo, I asked the choir if I could sing your song at the end of this Mass. They said yes. I’m going to be flat. Salamat, Lolo. I love you, from your anak.

Good afternoon. I’m Luka, Ivo’s grandson. In Croatian, grandpa is djed, and that’s what we called him.

Djed was a stonemason in Kansas City for fifty-one years. If you’ve walked up the steps of a church in Strawberry Hill, or sat on a stone wall in Wyandotte County, there’s a decent chance he set some of those stones. He came here from a village on the coast near Split in 1968, and he used to say he brought two things with him, his tools and his opinions, and he only ever lent out the tools.

When I was twenty, I dropped out of college. I didn’t tell anyone for two months. When I finally told my parents, it went about how you’d think. The next morning, at six, Djed’s truck was in the driveway. He didn’t come in. He honked. When I came out, he handed me a pair of leather gloves and said, “Get in.”

That summer we built a dry stone wall along the back of a farm outside Lawrence. No mortar, just stone. For the first week he wouldn’t let me set a single one. I carried them and handed them to him, and I watched. He’d turn each stone over in his hands for a long time, and then he’d put it down exactly right.

One day I asked him how he knew where they went. He said, “Every stone has one good face. You turn it until you find it, and that’s the side that shows.” Then he handed me a stone and said, “Your turn.”

I turned that stone for about twenty minutes. It was ugly from every side. Djed sat on the tailgate and ate his lunch and didn’t help. Finally I found the face, and I set it, and it held. He nodded once, and that was the most praise I ever got from him. It was plenty.

I went back to school that fall. Djed never mentioned that summer again, not once, not even at my graduation. He just shook my hand and said, “Good face.”

I’m an engineer now, and I build bridges. Every one of them has a stone face somewhere, because I put it there.

What he taught me is that people are like his stones. Everybody has a good face. Sometimes you have to turn them over for a while, and sometimes they have to turn themselves.

Djed, that wall is still standing. I drove out to see it last week. Every stone is where you put it, and one of them is where I put it. Thank you for the gloves.

Hi, everyone. I’m Shay. Garland married my grandma when I was eight, and I’ve called him Grandpa since I was about nine. He never asked me to. I just started one day, and he pretended not to notice, and then he went out to his truck and sat there for a while. Grandma told me later that he was crying.

Grandpa ran the ice rink at the rec center in Cheyenne for thirty-three years. Sooner or later every kid in town fell down on his ice, so he knew every kid in town.

When a kid was having a hard time, Grandpa noticed, and a lot of you here today were those kids. He’d find a reason to need help after open skate. He’d ask you to hold the gate while he ran the ice machine, or help him sort the rental skates by size, and while you did it, he’d ask how things were at home. Several of you have told me this week that sorting those skates got you through seventh grade.

He taught me to whistle with two fingers in my mouth, loud enough to stop traffic. My mother has asked me many times to stop doing it. I’m not going to.

He taught me to check the oil in my car, change a tire and jump a battery, in that order, the summer before I got my license. He made me practice the tire in the dark with a flashlight in my mouth, because he said that’s when it’ll actually happen. He was right. It happened on I-80, at night, in February, and I did it in eleven minutes, and the first person I called was him. He said, “Eleven? You can do better.” Then he said, “I’m proud of you, kid.”

Grandpa wasn’t a church man. He said the outdoors was church enough, and he spent most Sunday mornings fishing at Curt Gowdy with a thermos of coffee and no intention of catching anything.

What he taught me is that family is a thing you can choose to join. He chose us. He chose my grandma, and her kids, and her grandkids, and every seventh grader who needed a reason to stay late at the rink.

Grandpa, I’m going to whistle for you now. Everybody, cover your ears.

Hi. I’m Milo. I’m eight. Clement Ridley was my Papa.

Papa had a sugarhouse in the woods behind his house, outside Burlington. Every March we put buckets on the maple trees. The sap looks like water, and it doesn’t taste like anything. Then you boil it for a really long time, and it turns into syrup. Papa let me stir. He said I stirred better than anybody he ever hired.

He always gave me the first taste, on a spoon, and he said, “Careful, it’s hot.” It was always hot.

Papa, I’ll put the buckets out in March. I’ll be careful. I’ll save you the first taste.