Today, eight years ago, Richard Leo Ellis, my grandfather, went to be with God.
I still remember the day my grandfather died as if it were yesterday. I was face-to-face with death. I had never understood death
before, not really. I don’t understand it much now, though I have seen a good deal of it.
This time it was my grandfather.
I had seen him just a few days before, in the hospital. He
was there because he’d had a stroke. I was sixteen, so I and my cousin Anastasia were
allowed to go and see him. Children under sixteen weren’t allowed to come into
the hospital, at least not the part Grandpa was in. The hospital room was
small and white and bare except for the cards that all the grandchildren had
made, stuck up on the wall. Grandpa was sitting up in a narrow hospital bed. He
was wearing a light blue gown, and he looked tired. The room smelled funny.
Grandpa hugged us, and he smelled like the room. We talked a bit, I don’t
remember what about, and he squeezed my hand and smiled up at me, that smile
that I remember and love so well. I felt happy, because he looked so well. He
was going to get better.
We went back to my cousin’s house. That night we slept on
the floor in the living room, me and my two closest cousins, in a row on the
floor. In the middle of the night I was awoken by lights, and muted voices.
Mama came over to me and whispered, “We’re going to the hospital. Grandpa’s
doing worse.” She left, and I lay down and went back to sleep, but before I
slept I felt a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Things were all
wrong.
The next morning I got up and went the room where Mama was
sleeping with my baby brother. She asked me to lie with the baby for a few
minutes. I lay down next to him, and thought how sweet he looked as he slept.
Then mama came back and said, “Did Aunt Marilyn tell you about grandpa?”
I shook my head.
“He died last night,” she said.
For a moment the world stopped turning. I couldn’t believe
it. Then I started to cry, and I buried my face in the pillow. Mama stroked my
hair, and when I looked up she was crying too. It hurt so much, but yet I
couldn’t take it in. It was so unreal, yet so real.
There was a rosary for Grandpa three days later, and a
viewing. All of us were there – Grandpa’s seven children and their spouses and
forty-odd grandchildren. I could hardly keep from crying as we prayed each
decade of the rosary. After it was over, I went up to the coffin and looked in.
Grandpa lay there, and it my grandfather, but it was not. He looked so cold,
and stiff, and waxy. I timidly reached out a hand and touched one of the hands
folded on his chest. It was so cold and hard, and it felt so unreal. I started
to cry very hard, and I could not stop. I could not let go of that hand, the
hand that had once been my grandfather’s. I held it, and cried. Finally my aunt
came to tell me that we were leaving, and I bent over and kissed the cold hard
forehead, and said goodbye.
***
I was very fortunate to know my grandfather very well
until he passed away. When I was just two years old, my family moved
back to California from Connecticut, and we lived with my grandparents for
several years until we bought a house in Tehachapi, not more than forty minutes
away. After we moved to Tehachapi, we saw my grandparents quite often, and I
developed a very strong bond with them.
My grandfather was a strong influence in my life. In order to tell you how, I should give you a little background on my grandfather’s
life. These stories have been passed down to me by my grandmother and my own
mother. I cannot vouch that I have them all down exactly to fact, but the
meaning still remains despite that.
Grandpa came
from a broken and unstable home, and was raised with no religion. When he was
seventeen he ran away from home and joined the army during the second world
war. After the war he became a nurse, and while he was working in a hospital in
California he met William Maliglig, a young paraplegic. The two men became fast
friends, and it was by William’s influence that my grandfather became Catholic.
Grandpa has often said that their friendship was that of David and Jonathon.
Grandpa promised to always look after William, no matter what happened, and he
kept his promise until William died in the 1960’s.
Both my grandfather and his friend had a
great desire to enter the religious life. But no monastery would take William
with his condition, so my grandfather received permission to found a
Benedictine monastery for handicapped men in the Antelope Valley in California.
This experimental monastery did not last very long, however, and the bishop
disbanded it after only a few years, and all of its monks were layacised,
though Grandpa retained the status of an oblate for the rest of his life.
During that time, Grandpa met William’s sister, Paula, and fell in love with
her. He wanted to propose to her, but was unable to, as the process of being
layicised was not yet complete. My grandmother told me that William told her
that he had a friend who loved her and wanted to marry her, and in that way
they were engaged. They settled on the property that had been bought for the
monastery and raised seven children as well as their rather troubled nephew.
The Ellises started a print shop and Catholic bookstore called St. Raphael
Press. Whenever I think of Grandpa, I still see him standing over his presses.
He loved his work, and he often said that he wanted to die working. I used to
help my grandfather in the shop when I was little. Sometimes the help was
appreciated, and sometimes it was not. There was the time I set the envelope
machine on fire by stuffing too many envelopes in it, but we won’t go into
that.
My grandfather
had a great love for the liturgy, not just liturgy, but beautiful liturgy. My
grandfather was not what is often called a “rabid trad”; he had just as much
reverence for the New Rite as the Old Rite. He spoke his mind often, and he
often spoke his mind about the deterioration and unfittingness of modern liturgical
practices and music. His favorite of all the liturgies was the Liturgy of the
Hours. Following the customs of the Benedictines, he prayed all the hours, at
all hours of the day. One of my favorite memories of him is of him sitting in
his armchair, praying from his breviary. He had a special chair in his bedroom,
and he would always sit there to pray. It was comforting to see him
there every day, and it is one of the things I miss most about him.
My grandfather would be the first to
tell you he was not perfect, and perhaps that is true. Whenever the income tax
people came around, he turned off the swamp coolers in the house and the shop,
and since the Antelope Valley is dessert, they didn’t stay very long. But my
grandfather was one of the most humble, dedicated, honest, deeply religious men
I have ever known. He was always ready to help someone in need. He was
well-respected by his fellow business-owners and employees. He was a faithful
and good husband to his wife Paula, a good father to his seven children, and a
good grandfather to his 40-something grandchildren. Grandpa could be rather stubborn, but most often to a good cause. He
really believed what he believed, and made a point to practicing what he
believed. He was a great defender of human life, as is witnessed by his seven
children and numerous grandchildren. And he
was wise. He always had something useful and helpful to say about any
situation. My favorite of his many sayings will always be “If you can’t be
modest, at least be vain.”
***
And so I miss my grandfather. I wish he were here now to see what I have accomplished so far in my life. I wish he were there to see me graduate from college, the first of his grandchildren to do so. I wish he were here to say goodbye to me when I made the long trek across country to Virginia. I wish I could hear him say he is proud of me. Yet he is with me every day. He is part of my family, and so part of my heart. Our families, for better or for worse, make us who we are. I only wish I could feel his arms around me once again.
Someday.
