Friday, January 4, 2019
To describe my official relationship to Bud Cook is complicated. My mother was taken into Bud and Katie's home when she was ten or eleven (I have the official court papers somewhere). My mother, Wanda, is Katie's cousin. However, since the early 1950's she became their daughter and lived with them until she married my father in 1963. But their relationship continued. Becoming Wanda's father also meant Bud became my grandpa and he performed that role magnificently for the rest of his life.
There isn't just one memory I can share, but hundreds. Just like with any grandparent-grandchild relationship, his influential threads of wisdom, support, love, service and total devotion become the very fabric of my life. I tried to convey this idea to him when I wrote him a letter to be opened during his Honor Flight. I told him he was my hero because he changed the entire trajectory of my life when he opened his home to my mother, and he influenced the lives of my five children and ten grandchildren.
Grandpa loved to tell the story of when he and I went clothes shopping together. He wanted to buy me something special. I was just entering Junior High and was full of adolescent awkwardness. He let me pick out the clothes, a pair of saddle-backed pants and classic 70's striped shirt. He told me how cute I looked in them. It was the boost my poor adolescent self-esteem needed. He understood how important this experience was for me and it became a memory that stayed with him even when he was forgetting so many others in his life. He reminded me of it again when I visited him in September this year.
Grandpa was always selfless and giving. My stepfather died in 1979 two days before Christmas. Grandpa and Grandma knew that the next Christmas would be very difficult for us, so they paid our expenses to come from Utah to California to spend Christmas with them. They spoiled us.
When I was newly married and in college, I enjoyed receiving care packages from my Grandparents. They told me they knew how poor newlyweds were and thought that we might enjoy a little something.
One year, my husband (who is not nearly so skilled in woodworking or construction as Grandpa) decided to remodel our kitchen. I panicked. I knew I could not survive for months without a kitchen. I begged Grandpa to come to Washington to "help" Mark. He did. I have a mental picture of him straddling the wood supports for my new bay window. It turned out beautifully. He didn't have to come and "Work", but he did and I really appreciated it and we are still enjoying the fruits of his labor.
Grandpa and Grandma have always been my lighthouse, my anchor, and my safe harbor in the midst of the wild waves that were my life's experiences. Our relationship is difficult to describe at times, but it is actually really simple. He is and always will be My Grandpa.
