I lost my paternal grandfather yesterday morning. My dad texted me to let me know that he had passed sometime in the morning. No exact cause is known, my dad said his health probably just deteriorated to the point of passing. This is because while my grandfather’s body passed away yesterday morning, at the age of 37 he’s been around my whole life, but I never knew him.
My grandfather had a stroke when I was very young, I believe when I was 1, although I’m not 100% sure. My parents always said as a baby I was convinced the machines in his hospital room were there to be climbed for my amusement, so I was mobile but have no memory of it. So probably 1.
The stroke was very damaging to his body of course. He lost sensation immediately in the left side of his body and always kinda shuffled around with his left arm clung up to his side. At first it wasn’t too bad. He could still get around, do the dishes for my grandma, putter around in the basement. I’ll never forget when one of my SNES controllers broke, he somehow fixed it and then capped it off with a giant lag bolt. So here was 10 year old my playing a video game with 8 ounces of plastic garbage and 12 ounces of wrought iron hanging off the back. Absurdly, child me loved that damn controller. He could drive and such too, though my parents never let him drive me anywhere. That all faded with time.
If I had to guess he’s probably spent the last 15 to 20 years basically clinging to life on the couch in their living room watching Perry Mason and whatever old movies he can find on TV anymore. When I was a kid there was always either a western or a WW2 movie on. He could never pronounce my name, I was always just “Anthony” (It’s not my name). However, if he got running through his 60 word vocab, I was always in there.
As I mentioned. I have no memories of his personality or actions beyond basic stuff. Even considering the stories my dad or uncle told about him I don’t really know much. I’m assuming that’s a symptom of the point I’m getting to later, but I digress.
Now, my grandfather would have absolutely zero idea what a “trad person” is. I’m willing to bet he probably never even saw the internet. My grandma has a pathological fear of technology and computers that used to frustrate my family. At this point she’s going to pass away in her mid 80s after not having touched a computer since she retired in the mid 00s, so who was right? Didn’t affect her actual happiness at all. Yet outside the thorny thicket of ball sunning, chad memes and morons shouting “PROTEIN” there are a few core principles to what I see as “Trad Archetypes”, and my grandfather hit quite a few.
First off, my grandfather would have died in an office job. He had a seemingly never ending streak of jobs when he was younger. I know at one point he was a fire fighter for one of the Pittsburgh steel towns. I know my dad grew up fairly poor cause a lot of his youth grandpap wouldn’t hold a steady job, but they were all physical. Eventually he got a job at the Shenango Coke plant in Pittsburgh, and I’m not sure if that was his final job before the stroke, but it was his longest employ. Truly a trad dream job.
Even before the coke plant he was a union man through and through. If there was a picket line around a grocery store, he wouldn’t go in, no matter what it meant about feeding his family. I know my dad told me at one point that when the union guys were mad at the bosses, they’d take all the expensive tools they could get their hands on and throw them in the river. If there was scrap on the floor, no one would clean it up cause that wasn’t their job. That was the broom pushing guys job. Truly, the pinnacle of American labor was the union shop. That’s why there are so many still around.
My grandpap loved old cars. All those 50s, 60s and 70s muscle cars that those trad guys idolize, my grandpap was always getting one and spending hours working on it just to keep it running. He probably owned 40 or 50 in his life. It didn’t matter if' he’d just bought one a couple months ago and poured tons of money and time into it, he needed another one because that one didn’t work anymore. You have to have transportation to get to the bar and back, doesn’t matter what else that money could have been for.
Even as a kid in the mid 90s, there was always “the car” that would go places, and “the other car” that needed “something” in order for it to work right. If my family would go on a trip anywhere, my grandma’s first question was always “Did the car make it ok"?” I remember my dad answering once when I was a child “Of course it did mom, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t have the car.” I get my mechanical ideals from my father. I love my jeep, but the moment that thing can’t get me somewhere, it’s gone.
These trad guys admire the time when men smoked and lounged around drinking cocktails and such while the world just turns around them. Yeah, that’s the upper class version. The lower class version is where the steel workers smoke like chimneys all day and then go to the closest dive bar to get blackout on cheap whiskey and do it all again the next day.
I never saw my grandfather smoke, and I only ever saw him drinking canned Schlitz or whatever crap beer when I was a kid, which for an alcoholic counts as complete remission. He never even raised his voice at me, but I’m 100% sure my dad saw and heard some shit as a kid, but in my family you don’t talk about that. I’m pretty sure in his heyday my grandpap ruled with a rod of iron and feet of clay. I remember my dad mentioning multiple times they never knew when he was coming home. I also remember my dad has lots of funny as stories about him, so it wasn’t black and white.
Lastly, just as a shout out on that, it wasn’t the stroke that stopped the smoking and drinking. My dad did tell me my grandpap quit both cold turkey one day because he decided to. I’ll never know why. He just crushed up a pack of smokes one day and said he was done. Same with the booze. I always admired that even before my own struggles with porn and FAP. I’ve quit both, and I did it like my Patriarch. I just finished up one day and said “no more”. So hats off to you grandpap, if living for 36 years post massive stroke didn’t prove you had a soul of steel, that would.
So where does a life time of trad(ish) living get you? What does the years of physical labor, smoking, drinking, strict household ruling and quarter functioning Chevy Nova’s leave you at the end of your life?
It get’s you son, texting his son, about your death early in the morning for both of them. It’s get’s your son admitting to his son that he’s just going back for the funeral because of his mom and his brother. My dad wouldn’t even go back for him if it wasn’t for those other two. In his exact words, and I’m quoting here, “It was always a complicated relationship between me and grandpap. I have lots of emotions, or no emotions. I’m going back for grandma”. That’s what a life time of trad(ish) values get’s you. A son that wouldn’t even hop on a plane for your passing if it wasn’t for his mother.
This is one reason I’m convinced that Trad people are obsessed with “being remembered” and “making a legacy”. On some level they know that they are unloved, so instead they choose to be feared and admired. Yet a child deserves love along with admiration. Besides, that whole “legacy” thing is nothing but pagan spiritual practice. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed that you lived on as a shade in the underworld as long as your memory stayed alive on earth. They fed blood to their hero’s like Achilles in Hades to feed their shade. If your memory died on Earth, then it was oblivion for you. That’s not Christian.
Our Father loves us and died for us even if no one else remembers your name. That’s why he spent so much time with lepers and prostitutes. He died for them just as much as for Caeser. Be like our Father, and love your children.
Then where does this leave all of me? Honestly, I don’t know. This is the first death in my family since becoming Orthodox, but my wife and I are the only two converts, so it’s not like I can talk to anyone about it. I believe that Christ died for all of those that accept him without preconditions, He doesn’t want us in Hell, He died for us. On the other hand, don’t know if grandpap accepted Christ or not? We don’t talk about that stuff in my family.
I’ve been praying for him because I don’t know if anyone else is. If one person praying devoutly for his soul can lead him from perdition to the place of our ancestors waiting for the judgement how could I not? How could I not pray for anyone that’s passed? I’ll never know if I’m right until it’s too late for me. When I die, who will even care enough to pray for me? I’ll have to rely on the prayers of the sisters and the devout who pray for all the departed. No one will pray for my name in particular. No one but my wife would even remember me if I logged off of Twitter for a week (and they don’t even know my name).
If the relationship between my dad and his dad is complicated, where the hell does that leave me? My dad was a good dad. Was he perfect? Of course not, but he loved me. He was always home for dinner. He always put his family first. I know he worked hard to provide for all of us, and I was well cared for. He never abused me or beat me beyond a normal level of correction for a child.
Why does that leave a cold dark spot in my soul where the love of family should be? Am I broken? Am I cursed till the 7th generation because of the sins of one of my forefathers? Or am I just completely broken in my brain because of a lifetime of dopamine dump from porn and FAP? In which cause I’ve hurt everyone around me by my own actions and rendered myself incapable of returning affection.
Some questions have no answers. So what was this fall for?
All I wanted to do is hold up a mirror. Look into it now while you still can. My grandfather’s death was a slow motion 36 year train wreck, and I’m not sure in that time that he or anyone else asked any of the questions that matter. Am I right with God? Am I right with my loved ones? Am I living this life as God commanded?
Maybe he did ask those questions. None of us would know anyway.
If you read this today, please pray for my Grandfather’s departed soul. I’m not sure anyone is besides myself and my wife. God bless you all. Walk where the Lord points today.