Faye McCray

Last week, my family and I said goodbye to my grandfather just a week shy of his 100th birthday. I didn’t know him well – he lived hundreds of miles away when I was growing up, and my dad is one of ten so I am one of many, many (many) grandkids. But every action he took had a ripple effect on my family – from his move to NY when he was just 12 years old to joining the Navy at 20 to marrying my grandmother the same year to his unshakeable work ethic. He was my last living grandparent and with no remaining siblings, his death marks then end of a whole generation of my family.

Which is wild.

At his funeral, I learned his favorite place to spend a day after retirement was Barnes and Noble. At home, he would settle into his favorite chair by the window and read – often slamming his book down in disbelief when he was challenged or learned something new. My family and I ate up this new information finding glimmers of ourselves in how he lived. Even in his passing and with time and distance between us who he was somehow breathed within us.

There is no way to mark when generations turn to ancestors. But this week we held space for the impact of his life and the fact that we exist by a collection of chances and circumstances that necessarily included his life.