patriarch

one of my earliest memories is a trip to a hospital in terrell, tx. i was three or four years old and riding around on my fathers hip when we, as a family, gathered around the bed of J.P. Oden Sr and watched my grandfather say goodbye to his dad. i think that's what stuck with me, not the foreboding mortality, not my cousin kyle teasing me about brains kept in jars, not the fragile old man lying in bed tied to countless machines, but my grandfather calling that old man "dad."

that is all i remember about J.P. sr, but today as we gather around J.P. jr in an eerily similar fashion, i remember my grandfather in a very different way. it's hard to tell if my memories of the room in terrell are being sharpened by these similarities or if i'm trading details between today and yesterday, granddad looks so much like his father that it almost feels like the same experience.

Johnny Oden lived more in his first twenty years than i will in a lifetime, perhaps that can be said of his whole generation, but granddad had it in spades. born in montague county, tx in 1924, he is the quintessential depression baby: tough, frugal, and with a wisdom that comes from seeing the world change around him.

in 1937, granddad was a boy scout living in longview when he got his first taste of adulthood. that year, a gas leak at the school in new london, tx, caused an explosion that killed and buried the children of an entire town, and at thirteen his boy scout troop was called in along with national and state guards to pull bodies from the rubble. no one in the family would hear him talk about it until 2006.

in 1941, shortly after the attack on pearl harbor, johnny lied about his age and color-blindness to enlist in the navy. serving as a pharmacists mate on a warship he sailed around the world three times and put in at ports in asia, austrailia, the phillipines and pearl twice before the end of the war.

in 1945, after dating for six weeks and four days, he married my grandmother and they loved each other for over 64 years. they raised two sons, saw six grandchildren and, currently, eight great-grandchildren. he worked lots of jobs through his life, from milkman to truckdriver to traveling saleman, whatever it took to provide for his family; they never did without.

my grandfather was one of my heros, he never said anything that he didn't have to but he always told us he loved us. he was baptized in the thirties in a muddy creek off of a red dirt road in east texas. he seldom talked about God but he taught me how to pray, he prayed over every meal in his house until i was 16... when he started to ask me to do it, a responsibility i was hardly ready for. he taught me to fish, tie a knot, and be a man; to love your family and do whatever is required with dignity and honor.

today was so alike that day in terrell, but so different. the baby on his dad's hip belonged to my sister, kyle talked mostly about his daughter and not brains in jars, and no one was surprised by the love and admiration shown to the patriarch i've known all my life.

As we prayed over him today, his last with us, we said the Lord's prayer the way my father taught us and a prayer very much like the one i'd heard my grandfather say all my life: that God would guide us, protect us, and forgive us our many sins.

amen...