The Stories He Told

I remember sitting in the chair across from my Grandpa Jack as he sat on the couch and spoke. My husband and I along with my parents, brother, and grandma had just watched Band of Brothers with him. We sat there and hung on to his every word as he talked about having to hide out in the trenches, boot camp, and maneuver around to safety.

Then his eyes started to well up and he spoke about his friends who were killed the day he fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

What you need to know about my 91-year-old grandfather is he is not emotional; he makes corny jokes and doesn't do serious stuff that often. He speaks English and Spanish fluently, and enough French, Russian, and German to get by. He likes to talk about his past stories, but they are usually just the funny ones or the weird ones, but rarely the sad or serious ones. But on this day, after he watched the depiction of an event he lived through so many years ago, it was like I was looking at a different man.

He told us how he had to step over the bodies of people he ate with and went through boot camp with. He saw people die, he saw them get shot, he saw bombs drop. Things that I cannot even fathom trying to imagine or understand, he endured.

I watched my funny, jovial grandfather cry for the first time. But he smiled as he told us that he was grateful he was still alive and got to live a long life. He reminded us that there were many who didn't, many who died fighting for this country, freedom, liberty, and love.

My words seem so inadequate to describe how grateful I am today. I am grateful that my Grandpa Jack lived, but I am also so very grateful to those who died fighting so that I can live in freedom; freedom to love, freedom to worship, freedom to speak, freedom to work, freedom to learn, freedom to choose. My life is what it is today because they fought, and they died.