CLINTON HOWARD MOORE
It is only at the end of a man’s life
That you see his full evolution.
My grandfather was a man of paradox.
A firecracker, quick to light and bright with passion:
Feisty fury when it came to injustice, and jokes hiding behind swift smiles.
And yet he kindled a slow, steady flame of commitment.
Over 60 years of pulling out chairs, opening doors and giving my Grandmother “a wing.”
He was raised rough and tumble, a boy scraping by in the depression.
That boy became a young soldier, bearing witness to things that most can only fathom as nightmares.
That soldier became a scout leader where he fostered his love for maps and being a human compass,
whose needle, eventually lead him to his beloved wife,
who would eventually bear his beloved sons.
Recently, that husband and father found his way to old age, his body weather-worn;
His belly-deep laugh, his prankster spirit and his lifetime of knowledge tried to seek shelter in a weakened heart and tired body.
He was our own genius with a GED. He could fix anything, and as it was always noted, had enough ingenuity and spare parts to things lying around that I honestly believed he could build anything from a clock radio to a spaceship.
He was a traveler whose craving curiosities led the way. He took his journeys seriously, reading every plaque and sign that crossed his path, no information was left uncovered.
But even in his own backyard, he unearthed every acquaintance possible. Perhaps it was partly his work in communications all those years in the telephone company, but more likely it was his giving spirit that helped him recruit friends among strangers. If you needed a water heater fixed, a car part tuned, or an event planned, it didn’t matter if he knew you, he was your man.
He was once a man of hard granite, a boulder of determination with strength to smite.
Yet time began to wear him into a softer something… like water smoothing rock over the ages, from his soapstone heart was carved a beautiful man. One who could see life’s vulnerabilities and see the sacredness in it all: a special valentine for his wife, a proud smile to a son, a “gator-bait” joke to a granddaughter, a quick laugh at a great-grandson’s gesture.
And his legacy will be carried in these generations: carried in his wife’s heart, his sons’ knowledge of the world, his granddaughters’ memories, and his great-grandchildren’s smiles.
I think I can say that my grandfather got it right in the end. Acknowledging that his number could have been up so many times before, he lived life with a veracious hunger to get every bite, as if he somehow remembered this borrowed time every day of his life.
I hope in my end I can have his courage; who in the face of pain dreamed of returning home until the very end, knowing that he had spent his life building a sense of home and self worth fighting for.
