What Memories Are Made Of

  This morning as I was in bed I started to think of my maternal grandfather, Hugh Fillingim. He passed away just before our 2nd son was born...that was over 12 years ago! I was unable to attend his funeral..but I did have the opportunity to visit with him in the hospital months before.
  My first memories of him make me smile!! When I was little we lived in apartments. My mom would take me with her over to his house to do our laundry. I remember he always had Tab or Mr.Pib for her. He also had Nutterbutters that he would share with me..for they were his favorite. Funny, I cannot stand peanut butter but to this day I love Nutterbutters!!!
  Papa was a smoker. And mom would tell me the evils of smoking and that I should share those with him for he might listen to me since I was little! One day while at his house, he was out, and my mother was busy in the laundry room. I walked into his den and saw his package of cigarettes on the coffee table. Since they were SO bad I began to take them out of the package one by one and break them in half...I think I might have been 3 or 4 at the time. When my mother came in and saw what I had done she just about had a fit!!! I find that quite funny now that I'm an adult. What did she expect me to do?!?! After all they were bad and could cause cancer...I was just helping him out!!!
 Papa planted a garden and grew sunflowers. I remember on one of these said laundry trips seeing a huge, black garbage bag in his kitchen full of sunflower seeds!
  He also had a neighbor by the name of Mrs.Duckwall. From what I can remember she wasn't the nicest neighbor, to a shy little girl was scary!!! Mrs.Duckwall had 2 little black and white dogs. I was not allowed to pet them when they were in her back yard. Well, you know how that goes! I stuck my little hand through the chain link fence and tried to pet one on the head....and while I did the other one lifted his leg and peed on my hand! Needless to say I never tried to pet them again!!
   My grandfather also liked to hunt. One day my cousin Jarrod and I were both there. It seems to me that maybe our mothers had gone out and we were spending the day with Papa. While he was busy my cousin went exploring in the house, something we didn't really do allot of. He cracked open the door to the laundry room and then told me he had found something I just HAD to come and see. So as I reluctantly followed him, my grandfather having been somewhere behind us, he threw open the door and to my utter horror there hung poor Bambi, upside down!!! My cousin was thrilled with my response as any boy is at that age! And then from out of no where I hear my Papa ask if we want to touch it!!! I just about passed out!!!
  Right outside the laundry room door hung a little rectangular 'box' on the wall. Sometimes it would make a little noise. Upon asking what it was my Papa told me that a little man lived inside of the box. I believed him!! When I  visited the house as a teenager I had to laugh at myself...it was an air freshener!!! But it just amazed that I never questioned him or asked to see the little man!!!
  When I started school my mom worked \for the public schools as a bus driver. She would drop me off at Papa's house early in the morning and he would take me to school. I remember watching the Captain America cartoon before school and thinking that I would marry him(Captain America) when I grew up!!! I suppose that is where my patriotism was born...lol.
  My grandparents were divorced before I was born. One day while at my house my mom was talking to my grandfather on the phone. She said he had a question that he wanted to ask me. I couldn't have been very old...probably 5 or 6. I remember him asking me if I wanted a new grandmother. To this day I can recollect the picture in my mind's eye. She was tall and slender with a black beehive hairdo and was very sweet and grandmotherly...so I instantly said that I would love to have a new grandmother. Boy was I shocked!! The woman he married was just about the opposite of what I had imagined...but that's another story!
  We moved away from Texas when I was 15. My mother asked me to write to him. She was concerned for his salvation and he would not talk to her about it saying that it was a personal matter. So over the year we would write back and forth. I was a summer missionary for CEF and while telling him all about what I was learning, he shared with me his testimony as a 12 year boy accepting Christ. he said that they didn't have baptismal pools in church so ever so often the ranchers would get together and they would baptize converts in a horse trough.
  My grandfather was a recovering alcoholic. I didn't know much about that part of his li\fe. I do know that my mother's oldest sister convinced him to go to AA and that my mom and her other siblings would go with him and support him. I also know that he touched many lives through AA and that he helped many other struggling men. He also would speak at public schools about his addiction and how he overcame it.
  Papa was also a WWII vet. He earned the Purple Heart. Reading through his memoirs you would never know that! He was a very humble man, never speaking highly of himself. He was a gunner on a transport ship and he does tell some stories of shooting down the Kamikazes which all I can assume is when he earned his Purple Heart. When his time of service was up he asked to re-enlist but was not able to because was flat footed. Just from reading his memoirs I think he was quite saddened and disappointed because he was good enough to draft to help fight the war but not good enough to keep afterwards....
  I am so thankful for the heritage that God has blessed me with! Life and people are not perfect....but we all touch someone....what memories are you leaving behind?!