The Long Trip Home

My children have been very fortunate to grow up living next door to my husband’s parents and grandparents.  They say it takes a village to raise a child, well that is what we have here.  At times it’s taken the whole village.  The lessons my children have learned and the memories they will have of their grandparents and great grandparents will be absolutely irreplaceable.

Every winter my husband’s grandparents have made their way to Arizona, where they enjoy the milder Arizona weather, and every spring they make their way back to the ranch in South Dakota where they spend the summers here with us.

Not many kids have the benefit of living this close to their grandparents, let alone their great grandparents.  What a blessing they have been in our family’s life.  I can’t even count the memories I have of spending time with Great Grandma and Grandpa, the stories Great Grandpa told of growing up here on the ranch.  I should have sat and wrote them all down, they were wonderful stories!  I won’t forget the afternoons spent fishing with Great Grandpa at JB dam next to the Slim Buttes.  Afternoons spent not catching a thing because 3 out of 4 girls were splashing half naked in the mud on the shore. 

Great Grandpa loved the ranch and the cows.  He loved to watch his family grow on the ranch that he and grandma had worked so hard to put together.  He loved the garden and to watch a crop grow.  I will have memories of looking out my kitchen window to find 4 little girls flocked around a golf cart parked next to the garden, each of them looking for the next ripe pea pod to pick and share with Great Grandpa.  Or girls picking and sharing ripe sweet corn with Great Grandpa, because that was one of his favorite garden treats.  Great Grandpa loved a big sweet juicy tomato out of the garden too! 

Great Grandpa always had a special treat for the girls, a fresh juicy Colorado peach, or maybe a Hershey kiss for delivering the mail after school.  They loved to pop in and say hello, even if it was just for a second or two.  My little TB spent the most time at Great Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  One time Great Grandpa told me that he just loved that little TB, she is just like a little newspaper.  She would share every bit on news from the ranch with Great Grandma and Grandpa.  She loved to spend time at their house!

So when Great Grandpa and Great Grandma readied to leave this fall, and we were all faced with the fact that for most of us it would be the last time we saw Great Grandpa, TB took it the hardest.  She couldn’t bring herself to even say goodbye she was heartbroken.  At nine, that is such a hard thing to understand.  Especially when they always leave in the Fall, and they ALWAYS come back in the Spring… both of them. 

So when we got the call that cold snowy morning in October that Great Grandpa had passed away in Arizona, we were all heartbroken.  We had lost a man who was truly the matriarch of the family.  It was decided to wait until Spring to hold a memorial service for Great Grandpa here in South Dakota.  So now that Spring is here, and we are all doing small things to prepare for his memorial service, we are all flooded with memories of time spent with him.

This week will be especially difficult; Great Grandma is preparing to make the first trip home from Arizona without Grandpa.  This is when the reality of the loss of a loved one will hit the hardest, because THEY ALWAYS came home, together, like clockwork, every year.  But this year won’t be the same.

That car has never pulled in the yard from Arizona without him in it.  It’s hard to imagine it now. For 4 little girls and some grown-ups too, the reality will sink in that Great Grandpa won’t be coming home this year. 

So now all we have are the memories… of 4 little blond girls holding on to the back of a golf cart, hair blowing in the wind laughing and smiling as Great Grandpa drives them around the ranch. One scared nervous little girl, afraid to tell Great Grandpa she had scuffed up his golf cart, by running into the neighbors pay loader when she went to go get the mail. Or the last fishing trip to the Dam next to Lermeny Butte, and listening to stories of going fishing as a kid with family in Minnesota.  Or the pride on the faces of little girls rushing over to share with Great Grandma and Grandpa the ribbons and trophies they won in 4-H for showing and riding their horses, or raising superb vegetables. The memory of coming home from the hospital with the 5^th baby girl to be greeted by great grandpa waiting to come over and meet her and hold her for the first time will be one I hold on to.   

Instead of watching us brand this year’s calf crop from the side of the branding pen, he will have the best view of the ranch. He will be watching over us and smiling as he knows that he instilled upon his family a great love of ranching as 3 generations come together for another day’s work on the ranch.

“Let the farmer forever more be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.  Thomas Jefferson