Kimberlee K.

My grandparents didn’t want a funeral.

When my grandma died unexpectedly, my grandpa was adamant about this request, and when he died a decade later, it was still ringing in our ears.

So we didn’t have a service. Didn’t gather what surely would have been hundreds of people who wanted to say goodbye, or to tell one of us—their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren—how special they were.

But they didn’t have to, because I knew.

Ever since I was little, I knew.

And I think it will be a long time before I stop running into people who remind me. Old friends or passing acquaintances whose day was made brighter or whose path was set right just by being around my grandma and grandpa.

There are people I’ve never met, and people I knew but no longer see that carry around memories of my grandma and grandpa, smiling as they think, every once in a while, they were so great.

So we had a funeral.

Not the big, bustling kind. Not the crowded, catered kind. And not the immediate, aftermath kind.

It has been almost three years since my grandpa died, and this past weekend my family got together up in the mountains to say thank you. To spread their ashes the way they wished, and to sit, just for a few minutes, in focused attention. To remember that they had been here and to acknowledge that they are gone. To note, as their great grandchildren wandered around the cabin that has been in our family for generations, that this family is still growing—their legacy is still growing. To remember the parts of them we miss and to repeat the things they used to say, if only so they keep being said.

Dumb Dodgers, we mused, something my grandpa would have said in response to our favorite baseball team’s performance in the playoffs this year. The two words encapsulating every error, ever strikeout, every zero.

I stood behind a semi-circle of fold up chairs pulled from the garage—each one having been pushed into the shores of the lake as we baited fishing poles, or in the sands of the beach as the group of grandkids begged for tickets to go on the waterslide—and listened as my dad read the letter my grandpa wrote to us. The beginning of what he called his memoir, that long lived hidden in a drawer, spoken of but bound to secrecy until he passed. And though I’d read it before, heard it read over the holidays a couple years back, I was once again enthralled by the way he wrote. The decades of time he covered in sentences, summarizing all the ups and downs as simply good. Because with my grandma, with his children, with his family, he could choose such a word. And as we stood there, all together, I realized we could too.

Admittedly, I did wonder if, somewhere beyond this life, my grandpa was shaking his head, saying, slowly, to emphasize his disapproval, “you’re doing what?” And I hoped he might see that it wasn’t such a bother or a burden. It wasn’t a mess or gauzy affair, but instead just an afternoon. A handful of hours spent on our favorite mountain, laughing and eating and collecting pinecones, talking and glowing and sharing our own stories, our own memories, while also collectively trading those we’d never heard before, those that might continue to blanket us in who they were and always will be. And that while they were open and honest about how proud they were of their family, our getting together was, more than anything, a way to show them how proud we are to be in that family. That the blessing is not lost on us, and we’ll make sure it never gets lost along the way.