Its a warm Sunday morning, the sun is shining and the sky is cloud free, it feels like a nice day, a day that should be filled with joy and happiness but, as I look around everyone is wearing black, pockets filled with tissues ready to catch the salty tears of the grieving. I look around at all the grief stricken people and I realize that I am not one of them, he’s not really gone--he can’t be.

At the viewing there was an open casket so that everyone could go up and say their final goodbyes, my mom kept asking if I wanted to go up and see him but I refused every time. The last time I saw him he still looked healthy and that is how I wanted to remember him. I could see him from the distance and I could tell that he didn’t look like himself, he looked sad and weak- that’s not who he was. He was a proud religious man who wouldn’t show an ounce of pain if he could, whenever anyone asked how he was feeling he would always reply with “good with Jesus.” When I was little I never really understood what that meant but now, I get it. He was saying that as long as he had Jesus in his heart he would be okay. My grandma brings me a picture of the two of us from when I was little. I take it in my hands and just stare at it for a long while. And without saying a word I walk to the stand to the sign-in book and pick up the pen and start writing a note to my grandpa on the back of the picture. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote but I know that I just wanted to say goodbye. I walk back to my grandma and ask her to put it into the casket with him.

I sit in the pew with my family as my aunt plays her violin to start out the funeral. One single tear streams down her face, then another and another- it’s like that first tear broke the barrier and all the tears she was trying to hold back just start pouring out. Everyone can’t help but to cry, the anguish she can’t hold back hits the whole room, you can feel her heartbreaking and there is nothing anyone can do about it. But then there’s me--sitting there cold as a stone--showing no emotion what’s so ever. Why am I not sad? What is wrong with me? Maybe I am still in shock, it all happened so fast, I never did get to say goodbye. He was my Great Grandpa and I didn’t see him as much as I would have liked to, but we had a special connection.

I flashback to the time I was at his cabin in the UP with my family, the cabin was on the shore of lake Michigan, that lake was home to me and I can’t seem to get myself to go back since Grandpa Gus passed. It wouldn't be the same walking along the the beach and seeing the springs where the grass met the sand and not having him there to bet us a quarter to stick our bare legs into the frigid water. Or playing chicken foot at the old wooden dinner table he made himself. Or picking wild blueberries on the edge of the road.

After the funeral is over we all load up into cars and drive over to the graveyard where he will be buried. When we arrive at the grave site people are standing around in groups talking while the workers get the casket all in order. When everything is set up we get into a line to say our last words before he is lowered into the grave site. My great grandma is the first to go. I still remember vividly what she said to Grandpa Gus as she lays her hands on his casket “see you up there big guy” it still gives me goose bumps thinking about it. After everyone had gone by my grandma comes up to me and hands me a rose from the flower arrangement on the casket which i still have to this very day. For some reason I did not believe he was actually gone, I kept thinking that i would be seeing him soon at our next family reunion. It didn’t set in until I got home, I found myself sitting on my bed with a blank stare and then it came to me; he’s gone, he’s actually gone. I may not have seen him all that much but I truly believe that my Grandpa Gus shaped who I am, he made me realize that it doesn’t matter what you look like or what others say about you, the only person that has to be happy at the end of the day is me. I try and make most of my decisions with him in mind, I want to make him proud. There is not one day that goes by that I do not think about my Grandpa Gus, it’s been almost three years since his passing.