(Willard) Joe

My grandpa finally let go this morning - a clear, cool, beautiful Wisconsin morning, my dad said. He struggled to stay around as long as his boys were all in the same place. I think he just wanted to be there with them. After they left for the night, he felt free to go.
My grandpa didn't like his name, Willard. He went by his middle name instead. Rather than naming my dad after himself, he went with William. Fittingly, my parents attempted to honor him by naming one of their sons Joseph. Only after the fact did they find out that his middle name was just Joe.
That was just like him. He was never one to talk much about himself. In fact, most of what I really know about him was told to me by someone else. Anyone who met him would think that "Joe" suited him just fine. Just a guy. Kind of quiet, unassuming and humble. But I always thought there was more to him. I always thought he was deeper and fiercer than that.
He was an Iowa farm boy. There are lots of stories that float around about him and his dog Shep. I'm sure that he told the stories in the first place, but by the time they got to me, they were legend.
When he was about to go off to the war, a buddy dared him to talk to the spicy short stuff across the room. That was all it took. He and Betty eloped just a few weeks later.
I was told he played trombone in a swing band. I know he loved the music of that time. His record collection captivated me from the time I was small, and when I was fourteen or so, he passed on a few of those albums to me. I listened to them throughout my high school years. Silently, and perhaps unknowingly, he taught me to swoon over Bing Crosby and to find Miller and Dorsey to be irresistible. He almost taught me to swing dance once. It lasted all of a minute or so. I was awkward and embarrassed, and he didn't know what to do with a giggly, teenage girl. After Grandma died, he sent me most of the records that were left. And he promised me the big old record player that sat in his office. We didn't talk much about it, but he knew what they meant to me, and he knew that I would treasure them more than jewelry or china.
He loved books and history. I suspect that he loved the way the nine-year-old me would curl up next to his bookshelves to pore over his books or hide between the bed and the bookshelf in the basement to leaf through the astonishing collection of National Geographic magazines stored there. But he wasn't the kind to say it out loud. I do know that he took interest in my husband's love of history, and never missed an opportunity to pass on a book about wars or presidents to him.
When I visited his house, he would pull out big boxes of black and white photographs. I would sit for hours shuffling through the faces of my family, hoping for stories about them, and sometimes getting one. Once, when I was about eighteen, we ran across a photo of his mother. I will never, ever forget that he told he I reminded him most of his mother. For a man of few words, he sure knew how to make the most of them.
When he spoke, though, his words had a way of just slipping out - casual and smooth. He had his own jargon that worked just so with his side-cocked driving cap. He was the only one who melted my first and middle names together - he called me ChristyEllen. Legend has it, his buddies at work called him Jake. Nobody really knows why. But his phrases and lingo became known as "Jake-isms." I love this about my grandpa. All the boys in our family have their own Jake-isms that they've selected to carry on. Jon can mutter "my goodness" under his breath. You have to draw out the "my" and completely ignore the "d" in "goodness" to get it right. Joe has mastered the descending triad of notes in his yawn. That's probably the most famous Jake-ism of them all. Even Chris, though he's an in-law, can whip out a "welllll" in a quiet, low tone, with a slight chuckle to break it up in the middle when needed. I have attempted a few of them myself, but I suspect I have allowed too much of the South into my mouth to get it right.
I'll remember him wearing slate-blue coveralls and carrying a silver lunchbox. I know that his lunch was always a bologna sandwich on white bread with butter and ketchup, and a twinkie for dessert. He had an insatiable sweet tooth. My dad had the misfortune one day of accidentally getting Grandpa's lunch. It was memorable.
And I'll always remember how his eyes would well up with tears at every goodbye. We were the only branch of his family that lived far away. Maybe he was saddened by the thought of missing us until we saw each other again, or maybe he was worried that we wouldn't, through some imagined misfortune, see each other again. Maybe a little bit of both.
In his later years, his goal became living longer than Grandma, so she would never have to know the sorrow of losing him. When she left, he sort of did too. His body was just biding its time until it was his turn.
My penchant for melodrama and emotion comes from my dad. My dad's comes from his dad. And my eyes well up with tears today, saddened at the thought of how much we will all miss them both until we get to see them again. But I, for one, am absolutely certain that we will.