the life of a fisherman’s son. 1928-2009.

I consider myself to be a pretty thankful person. I try to mentally list all the haves in my life before I go to bed at night. It’s my own kind of prayer. My family is always right there at the top of the list, and I never forget to mention my grandparents. This was my first Thanksgiving away from home. Since I just moved to Atlanta, I made the choice to stay in the area for Thanksgiving and go to Virginia for Christmas. Until this year, I’d spent every Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house in Virginia Beach.

As Thanksgiving approached, I was pretty bummed thinking about my family and all the food I would miss out on. My grandpa always cooks the ham and turkey, and each family brings a side dish. All the usual stuff like candied yams, green bean casserole, stuffing, cornbread, split-top rolls (which we like to call coochie rolls…) and lots of mashed potatoes. We double up on mashed potatoes because one year we ran out before my aunt had any, a tragedy we still refer to as the year of the potato famine. To cheer myself up on the eve of Thanksgiving, I sat down to watch that new sit-com, Modern Family. I like the show. I enjoy a little dysfunction, especially when it’s funny. The theme usually involves some family drama that, in the end, is always beat out by putting family first. My family has a talent for making light of the negative, so I guess I can relate. But this Thanksgiving, our glass-half-full philosophy was tested more than ever before. About halfway through the show, I got a call from my mom. “Daddy died,” she said. By Daddy, she meant my grandpa Owens, the charismatic leader of every household in my family. I fell to the floor and sobbed into the palms of my hands.

Yes, it is common to lose a grandparent, especially as an adult, but my family is uncommonly close. We actually like each other and get along. My cousins are my best friends, and our moms are each other’s best friends. Before I moved to Georgia, I spent every family gathering, from Easter to a cousin’s graduation, at my grandparent’s house. It is there that we pack in our family of 50. Yes, that’s right, 50: two grandparents, seven daughters, six sons-in-law, 19 grandchildren, three grandsons-in-law, one granddaughter-in-law, and 12 great grandchildren. We have to have family gatherings at my grandparent’s house because we can’t really fit anywhere else, and we’d probably be too damn loud. The Owens family is sort of known for breaking out into song or dance, putting on an impromptu skit, making up games that usually involve physical activity, or telling some hilarious story we’ve heard a million times. I’ve seen my aunts stand up and dance in restaurants or bust a groove in their seats. We can’t help ourselves. So, it’s usually best to keep us behind the safe doors of my grandparent’s home.

Thanks to my grandmother, I was able to fly home on a last-minute ticket to mourn the loss of the man I admire most in the world. The grief I feel for this loss is multi-layered because I am so close to each member of our huge family, and I am sad for them as much as I am for myself. It’s not just the big family gatherings where he will be missed, like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. My grandpa went to countless graduations, weddings, births, birthdays, Sunday dinners, and sports events. And, he was the one to call if you needed something fixed in your house or if your car broke down. If you mentioned something wasn’t working so well, he would fix it that day or go out and buy you a new one.

My grandpa was the son of a fisherman from Gloucester, Virginia. His family moved to Norfolk, Virginia just before he was born. He claimed he was delivered by a horse doctor, and he always told the story neighing and kicking his hooves. His mother died fairly young, leaving his dad to raise eight children on his own. There wasn’t much work to be found during the depression, so as Grandpa told it, his family moved, “every time the rent came due.” They chose Norfolk so the boys in the family could join the Navy and the girls could marry sailors. And, that’s exactly what they did. My grandpa joined the Navy underage at 17. He was a bit of a hellion in those days and said the Navy kept him out of jail. But, that all changed once he met my grandma, the woman he called, “the prettiest girl in Norfolk.” Their dates were chaperoned for months by my great grandmother, but he stuck it out. She was worth the wait. They usually went to dances, and since my grandpa was a guitarist, he would sometimes sneak them into dance halls by pretending to be with the band. Not hard to see why Grandma would fall for him.

He talked fast and quiet with an old Tidewater accent. There’s a lot of variety in Southern accents. The brogue of Southeastern Virginia is not the same as the rest of Virginia, and the distinctive voice of my grandparent’s generation is dying out as the area becomes more populated with military families from all over the U.S. Only his generation pronounces his hometown of Norfolk as “Nahfick.” When I’m at Grandpa’s, my Tidewater accent comes out big time, as it does for all of my cousins and aunts. We may have degrees and Phd’s, but ain’t nobody gonna keep us from talkin’ like we do. Hear some bad news? “Hmm. That’s tur-able.” Somebody not making any sense? “She don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.” Still, the best words to come out of my grandpa’s mouth to me were his usual greeting of, “hey baby, how’s my James doin’?” He also liked to extend my name to Jaimie Dawn McGilla Kelley, poking fun of my Irish heritage.

The Owens family came from Welsh origins, but my grandma’s side is Irish. He lovingly called his wife of 59 years, Irish Trash… Somehow, he could get away with stuff like that. He would tell me he couldn’t understand how I got such beautiful children, “when their mama is so ugly.” One year when he got a pair of pajamas for Christmas, he renamed them lesbian pants. This little joke went on to include any item of men’s clothing that looked the least bit feminine. Recently, he washed a bunch of his white tee shirts and socks with something red, turning them into lesbian shirts. Grandpa wasn’t cut from the politically correct cloth of my generation. Two Koreans married into our family, but that didn’t stop him from telling Asian jokes to their faces. And, when my mom dated a Jewish guy, he told her that she could take him to the family church because, after all, Jesus was a Jew. Of course, he never went to church. That was something else he got away with. My grandma’s taught Sunday school at the same Methodist church for over 50 years, and my Grandpa never went, outside of his daughter’s weddings. Somehow, I don’t think he needed to. He may have told racy (and slightly racist) jokes, but he made up for it by being a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather. Trust me, if there’s a heaven, he’s up there wearing lesbian pants and sneaking into dance halls.

Grandpa was 5’6” but he was more man than most. He could fix anything around the house and did whatever handy work was needed at his daughters’ and grandkids’ houses. His man cave was the garage, and if you showed up at his house, he wasn’t afraid to put you to work. He’d hand you a broom and say, “why don’t you clean up while you’re restin’.” Or, he would call out, “hey boy” to whatever grandson or son-in-law was around and tell them what to do. “Hey boy” was easier than memorizing the names of the countless boyfriends going in and out of his house. Instead he told them, “if you stick around long enough and treat her right, I’ll learn your name.” That’s a better message than any shotgun. That was his style, though. A petit guy can’t make physical threats, so he used his wit and wisdom instead.

I wish my grandpa had written a parenting book, because I find myself looking to him for guidance all the time with my kids. My mother has six sisters, each of them a daddy’s girl. My grandpa managed to make each one feel as if she was the favorite, without spoiling them. He ran a tight ship, for sure, but cushioned it in lots of love and laughter. He limited his daughter’s choices in terms of food on the table, clothes, and cars, and he didn’t budge from his rules, but his children were well taken care of. If you asked him what kind of soup he was making for lunch, he’d say, “if you have to ask, you don’t want any.” If you begged him for a pair of shoes, he’d sing, “maybe next year, sometime…” If you didn’t have what you needed to finish a school project, he told you to “make do with what you got.”

He paid for college tuitions and bought each of his daughters a car if she completed her degree. Just this year, he made the final payment on his youngest daughter’s nursing school tuition, a career she abandoned after she realized she would be wiping asses more than checking temperatures. When he learned of her decision to change majors to teaching, he gave her no grief. He just told her to do her best at whatever she chose to do. And, yes, he paid for seven weddings and helped with down payments for houses here and there. All that generosity and he still left my grandmother in great financial shape for the rest of her life. My grandpa wasn’t a CEO of anything, but he managed his household like one of the best. After four years in the Navy, he worked in the Civil Service and served for 39 years in the Reserves. There were times when he worked three jobs at once to take care of his family.

On Novemer 20, just five days before he died, Grandpa drew one of his famous caricatures. In addition to being an intelligent, hardworking, guitar playing, lesbian pants wearing, family man, he was also a talented artist. He painted enormous murals for our dance recital backdrops, but his favorite medium was sketching cartoons. His caricatures usually had a nautical, but naughty theme, like sailors acting wild or pirates getting drunk. He also had a knack for drawing pin-up girls. When one of my cousins gave him a pin-up girl drawing, grandpa framed and hung it up just in time for a visit from the church ladies. Always the one with the last laugh, his final sketch was a self-portrait of a young version of him in his Navy uniform. He was standing proud with his chest puffed out. Not too be taken too seriously, he drew himself with a hugely exaggerated nose and a band-aid on his head. Under the picture, he wrote his name with the caption “as he sees himself.” Ain’t that the truth. I couldn’t see him any other way.