The grandfather I love but never knew

 

 

I never knew Pat Neely but he was my grandfather, my mom’s daddy who passed away from tuberculosis when she was just six years old. He died on Easter Sunday, a day when his wife and children were in church celebrating the Risen Savior. Family legend says that most of the flowers at his funeral were Easter Lilies, a flower I’ve always found lovely but that my mother loathed for that reason.

 

My grandmother, widowed at the age of 28, remarried and then divorced and remarried again. I called her second husband, a World War II Army veteran who served in the Philippines “Grandpa” but when their marriage ended, so did that relationship, not through my fault or his. I think both of us would have preferred a different outcome.

Her third husband was not a man I could call ‘Grandpa’ so I never did. The first time I met him, he came to pick up my grandmother for a date but she was babysitting me. He wasn’t pleased but he finally took us to a nearby ice cream shop where he wanted me to sit at a different table. The next thing I remember well about him is that my grandmother came to our house one day in tears, carrying armloads of photos and memorabilia which included her first husband’s funeral book. She had come home to discover the latest husband seconds from putting it all onto a large fire. She rescued the items and brought them to us. My mother put them away. Until I was sixteen I never saw a photograph of my maternal grandfather and when I did, I was intrigued.

Then I found a piece of paper folded into a square with a date with a lock of his hair tucked inside. One of my lifelong questions had always been “Who do I look like?” My Granny, on my dad’s side of the family tree, had always said that my dark blue eyes came from my Grandpa Otto. My hair, a wild Irish auburn shade, matched no one – not even my mom who had red hair.  It matched Pat Neely’s, so close that when I put the lock of hair on mine, I couldn’t tell where mine began and his ended.

In the years since I’ve seen many photographs. As a teenager, there was one wonderful Friday evening when my grandmother talked about Pat, her beloved husband and we looked through an old album of pictures taken when they made a trip to his family home in Virginia.

After my mother’s recent death, my brother and I sifted through photos and such to build a memory board to display at her service. To do so, we opened her cedar chest and I gained a treasure trove of items from my family. I now have that lock of hair and more. I have several handwritten notes from my grandfather to his wife and one to my mother. The personality of the man comes shining through the penciled lines. So does his love for his family. 

I spent years in search of this grandfather. As a small child, I met his mother, my great-grandmother, who recognized me as hers, as her sons baby. That is a priceless memory.

My son, Pat, is named for him and also for a brave young Irishman who gave his life in the long struggle on that green island. My grandmother chose that name for him and on the day he was born, I called her to tell her he had arrived and she said, “I’m so glad you named him Pat. There’s just no better name for a man than that.” After I married, she spent one wonderful and amazing afternoon telling my husband and I all about Pat Neely and their love. It never died and I believe when she passed, the spirit who met her was Pat who called her “my pretty girl” as he took her to dance with him forever.

As I mourn my mother, I now wish for the impossible. I wish life had dealt a different fate to this sweet, wonderful man with his auburn hair and blue eyes and freckles. I wish he hadn’t died far too young and that I could have known him as my grandfather.

As his sister, my beloved Great Aunt Mae used to write – we kept up a correspondence until her death when I was in college – used to write if we don’t meet again in this life, we will meet again on that bright and golden shore.