11/17/1959: Osaka, Japan…
My maternal grandfather passed in February of 2000, the day I returned from my honeymoon. To say it hit me hard, would be an understatement. He was the rock of my childhood. I was in my 30’s but in my still young mind, he was immortal. Though very much a 1950’s man when it came to engaging or showing emotion, he was the the most present male figure in my life. Also I could do no wrong it seemed in his eye’s which was a powerful but underappreciated motivating force in my developing life/world.
(CLICK IMAGES TO EXPAND) 
A few weeks before our wedding in February, he called to say he was going to Duke medical for a ‘procedure’. Doctors had found a ‘small’ spot on his lung and they were going to remove it. He would be in and out quickly and still in time to be at the wedding in Portland in a few weeks. It was a partly true statement.
The surgery went well and he was out into recovery fairly quickly. A couple days later though things started to twist horribly wrong. He had some sort of infection in his blood. The doctors prescribed medication, which seemed to initially work but then the infection kicked into overdrive, they prescribed more but it only rallied stronger. Eventually Papa went unconscious fighting the infection. He fought through the weeks leading up to the wedding, through the wedding, and one day beyond the honeymoon the infection took him. I don’t think it a coincidence that he persisted until we returned. He was immortal after all and used the last of his strength to not disturb our celebration.
We returned home from our time in Jackson Hole. I went out possibly for groceries and when I returned Michele told me she had received a call from my family saying that he had passed. I was stunned. It never occurred to me that this was a possibility even through the weeks of ups and downs and his lack of consciousness. I didn’t make plans to visit because he didn’t want me to and he would be up and going before long. Despite my 30yrs of living, I never questioned his direction. He made the impossible, possible.
Michele and I didn’t make it very far. By the following Thanksgiving, we were separated and divorced before the new year. I traveled to South Carolina to stay with my grandmother and lick my wounds. She was still smarting from Papa’s passing and the end of a 50+yrs of partnership. We watched old films of them when they were young, just out of college and a bit after. They were so young and everything was in front of them. I don’t think they had even had my mother or aunts yet. I couldn’t sleep much past 4:30am so I would take early morning walks on the beach with my dog Marley.
At some point, I was helping Nana go through Papa’s desk and things. In his desk, were these photos. I guess they were from a business trip to Osaka, Japan in 1959. He was in the textile industry and while I don’t know the reason for the trip, the post war Japanese industry was developing.
About 34yrs later in January of 1993, I made my first trip to Asia on my way to China to live and work. All totaled, I spent almost 10yrs living and working in Asia, with many more trips there. Looking at these pictures well after the fact, I can experience without having been there because I have many similar photos of myself in the same circumstances; the pagodas and temples, the photo outside factory locations, mtg room photos, dinner photos, photos of far away mountains (Mt Fuji?) outside the plane window.
Its painful to think of the many conversations not had, questions not asked and the lessons not passed on. Young and foolish, I thought the party would go on forever. Everyone should have someone in their life like Papa. Someone that thinks you hung the moon, even though in reality you were mostly howling at the moon the night before. We all know not to delay the conversations or the questions but do we really follow this? I didn’t.
Though a bit abstract, maybe these photos show we shared more than I know.
