Speech I gave at my grandfathers funeral service; tomorrow funeral. :( Where does one start? We have lost a man who we all know to be great. Many kind words have been said, and will be said, yesterday, today and for many days to come and that is good because Gregorio was a good man. But these words come from a man, a man who was once a boy who stole his grandpas tomatoes, a grandpa whose anger at these acts of thievery must have been false, for he always picked his tomatoes just before I got to his house and always put them were I could reach them and he always hid enough for himself and grandma. This showed me how a hard exterior can hide an emotional interior. Grandpa’s crazy contraptions taught me that you can build almost anything with anything. Grandpas 66 years of marriage to Grandma showed me determination and the power of love. His reaction in dealing with two rambunctious kids starting fires in his back yard and disassembling his lawn mower taught me patience. Watching him play with my daughter showed me that you are never too old to act like a child. The myriad of things he has taught me, and the rest of us throughout his life could fill an encyclopedia. And this gets to the root of my rambling, Grandpa shouldn’t just be remembered just as a; holy man, a good husband, a good father, a patient grandfather, or even as a crazy inventor, he was all of these of course, and very good at them, he should be remembered as a teacher. A man with no training in architecture or engineering built a house, a man who taught his children and grand children the importance of an education, a man who always seemed to have time for his grandkids and patience for the fact they were children. A man with only an early elementary school education, in one generation, took his family from a farming family that had to take their children out of school, to a family where all the children completed high school, and for the first time one of them, my mom, received a college degree, and by the second generation, a family where every grandchild went to college. This is an achievement to be celebrated, and an achievement I believe that is heavily owed to grandpa’s teaching, and yet another lesson, ‘One man’s determination can change generations.’ In closing I will not say he was taken too soon, but I will say that Gregorio will be misses greatly and his loss will be a loss to my children and my children’s children. I will leave you with an Aztec poem; One day we must go One day we must go, one night we will ascend into the region of mystery. Only here will we come to know ourselves; only in passing were we here on earth. In peace and pleasure let us spend our lives; come, let us enjoy ourselves. Let not the angry do so; for the earth is vast indeed! Would that one lived forever; Would that one were not to die!
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:24:25 +0000
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