Grandpa...Heaven just got closer

On Jan 17th, I posted about Grandpa, and how he had suddenly taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Over the past months, I've posted updates about him (here, here, here, here, and here). Since he was released from the nursing home on May 29th, he'd been living at our home. We have a downstairs bedroom that had been a schoolroom, but we stuck a bed and a chair and so forth in it and he lived there. Starting this past Monday evening, he started not doing very well. Tuesday (yep, Christmas Day), he slept for a very long time in the morning, which is not typical...usually he'd be up by 7:30 or 8. But he slept til almost noon, didn't feel like eating, and was generally out of it. He got worse that way until Friday afternoon, we finally got a nurse to come and she recommended he go to a hospital. An ambulance came (actually, 3...and one got stuck in the snow in our yard) and took him to Brooks Memorial. They found that he had pneumonia and a urinary tract infection and began treating him for that. However, Sunday afternoon around 1 pm, he left us for bigger and better things. No longer is he hampered by arthritis...I imagine he's quite happy about that. I also like to imagine that Grandma Snell (his wife who died some 25 or 30 years ago) met him with a chainsaw for him to play with.

My uncle Bill was with him when he passed away. (He called my dad, but by the time my dad got there, Grandpa had already died.) Uncle Bill said that Grandpa had been struggling to breathe, but then he relaxed, started breathing easier, and then stopped.

I have so many memories of him...
-Him reading to Jess and me as we sat on his lap...him reading to the younger ones as they sat on his lap (that Dr Seuss book about the guy who could put spots on anything...that other book about Mack and the truck and the girl who could hammer anything)...
-that awkward memory of him coming up to babysit Jess and me. I was just little and went to the bathroom but couldn't wipe myself, so I went out to the living room where he was sitting and asked him to wipe me...he said he would if I brought him tissue, so I did and he wiped my lil butt for me (man...now THAT'S awkward...I'm cringing just thinking about it! I must have been like 3 or 4).
-Doing chores with him...he bought calves one year, but he was too crippled up to do all the chores himself, so he would drive up in his red, very loud and un-muffled car and Jess and I took turns every morning going up and feeding calves with him. Sometimes in the winter his hands got so cold he'd go into the milkhouse and take off his gloves and cup them around the lightbulb. Running a chainsaw I guess destroys your circulation.
-In the fall he'd get apples from his old schoolteacher who had an apple orchard and he'd make the best apple crisp. Sometimes he made cookies, and I mean no disrespect, but his pies and crisps were a whole lot better. He always had ice cream...Snells always love ice cream...so if one found his cake or cookies or whatever to be dubious looking, there was ice cream to munch on instead :)
-Up until this past year, he'd hop on his tractor and go out back and cut wood or cut down brush. And he'd make hay every year. Up until a couple years ago, anyone who got stuck in snow in the wintertime near our house could count on him helping to pull them out. And even when Grandpa was hallucinating this past year, he'd see people stuck in the ditch and want us to go help them.
-Within the past couple years, when he'd be out back cutting brush and whatnot, I'd conveniently take walks out back and double around and check on him and chat a bit I don't really know what we talked about, but I'm glad we did. Once he had me move the tractor, and I awkwardly couldn't figure out how to turn it off or put it in park, so I was sitting there holding the clutch down frantically pushing and pulling buttons. I uh figured it out finally. Red button. Pull it. Yeah.
-Once I was helping him him hay in the field behind our house, and that was when the local bee guy had beehives back there, and the honey bees didn't like the tractor noise, so they came zooming over. A couple of them got stuck in my hair, and I was a little scared and went over to Grandpa on the tractor and asked him to get the bee. He just squished it with his thumb. It probably stung him, cause it didn't sting me.
-oh yeah...this last one's going to make me cry. It made a really big impression on me at the time...I forget if I blogged about it when it happened...I don't think so. Anyhow...Grandpa baled the Old Home field in round bales, and then wanted me to help him gather the bales up and transport them to behind our house so we could use them. I drove the red International with the hay wagon attached behind, and he drove the John Deere loader. He'd poke a round bale, stick it on my wagon, repeat a bunch of times, and then we'd drive over to where we were unloading them and he'd unload. Repeat many times. The International is an old tractor with a tendency to spew oil...actually, it gushed oil, and i mean that in the most literal sense. It was kinda scary to drive...I was scared the duct tape would fall off and it would fall apart :P To make it worse, he informed me that this tractor also had a tendency to stall when going up steep hills while pulling large loads. Cough. The field we were in does indeed have a very steep hill...and haybales make for a heavy load. Nervous? Me? Haha. We gathered up all the bales at the top of the hill, and then moved downwards. Typically, Grandpa would load my wagon and then drive off in front of me to the unloading place. However, when we got to the bales at the bottom-ish of the hill and we were ready to drive off to unload, I suddenly noticed like halfway up the hill that he wasn't in front of me, or beside. I glanced over my shoulder, and he was driving behind me. We had a couple more loads at the bottom of the hill, and every time I had to drive up the hill with a full load, he drove behind me. Now, I have no idea what he thought he could do if I started stalling and rolling backwards...but it made me think quite a bit...just seeing him on his little tractor behind my huge load, ready to protect me if there had been any problems.

Well anyhow. Visitation is at the Morse Funeral Home in Brocton from 4 to 7 this Thursday. There's a funeral service in the Family Life Center at 10 am Friday morning, followed by the actual burying thing in the cemetery, and then lunch at church.