Tough

About ninety years ago this little fella was enjoying a fine summer day playing Indians. No doubt he imagined himself a heroic young brave. This little "Indian" grew up to become my grandfather.

My maternal grandfather George Becker Hesse was a tough guy. Not a bar-room brawling kind of tough guy, but a sun-ripened, wind-weathered, hard-working, farming-life kind of tough guy.

One of my favorite memories of him involves a fishing trip to a local farm pond. Grandpa had just caught a largemouth bass and was removing the red and white Midge Oreno plug from its mouth when the fish did some gymnastics and drove the point of one of the treble hooks straight down into the meat of one of grandpa's fingers. I wasn't too far away, and grandpa calmly asked me to come over and help him out. He held the still hooked fish with his unhooked hand, and asked me to pull the deeply inserted hook out of his finger. "Just pull it out," he said.

Easier said than done. I grabbed the treble hook, which was buried well past the barb, and began to wriggle and twist and yank until the thing came out. Not a peep out of grandpa. As a young boy, I was amazed. Grandpa's hero status definitely went up another couple notches that day.

It's easy to remember grandpa running a tractor or spading up a manure pile to find grubs for fishing. I recall his dark farmer's tan on his strong, sinewy arms and his huge appetite. He was generally fairly quiet, but he loved to laugh.

As grandpa's years drew to a close and Parkinson's disease gradually tightened its grip on him, he never once complained, nor was there any hint of him feeling sorry for himself. He passed peacefully in his sleep one January night.

I hope I can learn to face life the way grandpa did: with strength and resolution and peace. I hope I can learn to practice the patient endurance that God grants those who trust in Him. There's something heroic about calmly accepting what life brings and dealing with circumstances not as if they are threatening storm clouds overhead, but as water passing under the bridge.