Music

Over at Reddit, there’s a thread about the funny, wierd, awkward, and touching things you can find cleaning a deceased relatives house. This one really got me:

My Pop-Pop died a few years ago at the age of 86. He was a great man, and served his country as a navigator during WWII, which he never discussed, and later as a high school teacher and principal in the Midwest. He had two daughters, my mother and my aunt, both of whom he loved unconditionally. He never went a night away from my grandmother after coming back from the war – he said he’d done enough of that to last the rest of their lives, and shortly before his death, they celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary. After his death, I found a couple of cool things in his keepsake chest – a signed photo and personal letter from Jimmy Stewart, who had served in his battalion in the Air Force (didn’t know that prior to his death), and a GPS unit. The GPS unit had been a gift from my mother some years before, because he loved gadgets and was still a navigator at heart. The GPS unit had gotten him involved in some “treasure hunts” with other navigators who basically picked a spot in the middle of nowhere, buried a box with a trinket and then sent someone else to find it using only the coordinates provided. They would then exchange the trinket left by the previous person with a new treasure and record who had been there and what was left. Unbeknownst to us, my grandfather had left a box buried on our property in Vermont (he lived in Texas) during his last visit, some five years earlier, and left us directions to find it. When we tracked down the box using the GPS after his death, the box opened up with personalized compasses for each of his family members with the inscription, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

It just so happens that at the time, I was listening to The Avett Brothers “Murder In The City”.

Holy crap, I must be allergic to … uh … sad things? Whatever. GRRRR SPORTS!

{ 0 comments }