Dear Grandpa,

You breathed your last on a crisp, clear Halloween night some three years ago. You spent the day like you had the fifty-five previous, with your wife whom you courted despite her engagement to another. This last memory- one of the last you shared with me, one I desperately wanted to probe and investigate. The two of you went for your usual fish fry down at the pub, the tiny one near the harbor, right on Lake Superior.

I imagine the families and fisherman and boaters and wanderers still park their motorcycles and trailers and boats there. No doubt the fires illumine the rows of tents and picnic tables, despite the cold and the record low water levels. Most likely the lake hasn't frozen over yet. I wonder if the stars are as bright as that night. Did you get to see them before you sat behind that wheel?

Down the road lay the end. Family blood already lay dry in the grass from my cousin's death two years prior, just a few miles down the road. They found his truck in the ditch. They found his body slumped near a tree.

But you knew all that as you and Grandma drove from the warm comfort of that shabby bar, stomachs full of Superior whitefish and beer batter and O'Douls.

You were tall and slender, especially in those last few years. Anxiety and health maladies had worn you down, especially after Dominic died. They said you barely ate and kept losing weight. I never knew you without a receeding, thin, gray hairline.

Every night of your life you got down on your hands and knees and prayed to a God for which you had absolute, Gibraltar-solid faith and belief. You woke early all your life, a habit from those decades spent raising Brown Swiss and Holsteins, baling hay, running the Combine out through the fields. You had the largest satellite dish I had ever seen in a non-commercial building. I used to love staring at the massive tractors in your garage; Big Blue always appeared regal and giant. You loved peanut butter and the Green Bay Packers, orange Tang drink, your wife, and your family.

You were one of the best men I have ever known. The shame, the damn shame of it all is that I learned this too late in life. I had to live a bit, experience life a bit, gain that perspective the poets tell us gives wisdom as we age. I learned to see you through a different lens. The stoic farmer became the most emotional person in the family, never straying from a hug in arrival and departure. The hard-working Christian of few words became the most genuine, warm, and funny man. The jokes were dry and many, and I still laugh at them now. Your humor is missed. Every time I pass a garage sale or yard sale I hear your joke in my head, that smile-inducing UP accent laughing with me.

"Now, who would want to sell a perfectly good yard?"

I wish we'd had another visit or two. I wanted to sit and interview you on camera. I wanted to ask you questions no one can answer now. What your childhood was like, how the area changed, how you met Grandma and won her, why you became a farmer. What did you do for fun? For how long did you attend school? Were you proud of what you'd accomplished? Did you regret never flying in a plane? What were your parents like? From where did they come? How did the family settle in the area? Do you know that you passed on your love of peanut butter to me and my brother?

We tick into the wee hours of November 1st now (in parts of the country). Someone pronounced you dead. Phone calls were made. I got the news from your son. I never thought how hard it must have been to tell others that his father had been killed. I had to go to a wedding the next day.

It didn't make sense. It seemed displaced, incongruent with the rest of the world's activities that day. Years go by and I sit and ponder the terrible accident that claimed two lives. Grandma wakes up in a big empty bed each day. Have I forgiven the drunk driver? I'm sure you have, because that was your way.

Sometimes it still doesn't make sense.