Grandparents That Never Were

My dad passed from cancer in 2011. Just shy of two years before his first grandson was born, and a year before I met my wife. At the time of his death we hadn’t had the best relationship, we talked and kept in touch, but we weren’t as close as we had once been. I never thought he would die at the young age of 51, and I’d known several people to survive cancer, so I guess it wasn’t a real thing to me. He only knew about his cancer for about 5 weeks when he passed, it was so severe they only offered him pain medication and wished him luck. I didn’t really start struggling with his death until Perrin was born. Then one night after I noticed my son had the exact same shade of blue as my father, I lost it. I cried for hours, I hadn’t even cried at his funeral. I went and got Perrin out of bed and held him tight as I sobbed, somehow it made me feel better holding him. I slept in his room that night, holding him until morning. His little blue eyes are great, it’s a part of the man he never met but he will carry on throughout his life. My sons are also the only ones in the family that will carry on our last name, as all of my cousins are girls and my only male cousin has only daughters, my brother only has daughters as well. This makes it that much harder on me to cope every year. I have come a long way since his death. I have my own little family now and one day my sons will have their own families. I wish he had gotten the chance to meet them, and it sucks that all they will ever know about him are the stories I tell them. I can’t wait to tell them about the man that taught me how to turn a wrench, the man that taught me to NEVER turn my back on my children, or the man that taught me how to cook so well. This entry won’t really be helpful to many, but if you are reading this and you’ve lost a parent before your children were born, then just know, you aren’t alone.