MY GRANDPA AMANN was the first death in my life that I truly related to at all....he still lives in me...in roses and in music on a sunny summer day.....

MY GRANDPA AMANN

First Man I ever lost was my Grandpa Amann.
He played the zither and the concertina for us while we ran in and out of the sprinklers in Genesee Depot Wisconsin and smiled and may have been singing, though I can't recall.
When the bee stung me and I had a huge swelling allergic reaction he plastered me all over with baking soda and that took it down pretty well...
He'd coo at his and Uncle Henry's Messenger Pigeons and they'ed  coo right on back. They had little bands that held the messages. The dove cott was right against the wall of Uncle Henry's bedroom, and you could hear them through the walls but not smell them. There may have been fifty birds. maybe more.
Grandpa's gardens were mainly roses and some vegetables. The Roses all smelled very beautiful - every one of them. Grandpa told me he loved natural roses - not hybrids - for they have no smell worth smelling.
He had been a baker when he was a kid in Bavaria. He was a trolley car driver in Chicago. He built things and could repair anything.
The house he and Gramma retired to was very, very small but cozy. Gramma cooked German food he loved and we all loved it too. there was a clear chicken broth with liver dumplings that I always was fascinated by: I thought I should hate it, but never did...ate the dumplings out first though, in tiny pieces. Grandpa would laugh at that and he slurped his soup. His favorite was Gramma's strudel.., my Mom called them Ma and Pa, but they were Gramma and Grandpa for me and my sister Pat.
Grandpa had a heart attack. We came out from St.Charles where Pat and I were just ten and eight maybe. We couldn't go into the hospital to see him cuz it was against the rules. so Pat and I wandered around outside on the sidewalks by ourselves while everyone was inside saying goodbyes and all to Grandpa. We sang this song while we held hands and cried our eyes out:
"This boat will leave out on the sea
  All men must die, but why must he?
  a whoya whoya whoya ya! Swiftly tumbling waters!
  a whoya whoya whoya ya! Swiftly tumbling waters!"
We sang this over and over, getting a bit hysterical about it all. it was adapted from an old camp song. it made us feel part of the drama of Grandpa dying without us. of no more Grandpa.
I remember being so very sad. my mother's crying would set us off again, too.
We got it that we wouldn't see him again.
I don't recall the funeral at all. I vaguely remember seeing him in his black suit in the coffin. he did look like Grandpa. not scary.
Not ever seeing him again was very, very sad. I didn't like it and I didn't get it. still don't.
I always thought I'd like to have the concertina. my mom kept in for years, until we were grown up completely. it was always wrapped in saran wrap. when she moved out from the midwest to California, she sold it in a garage sale, because she thought none of us wanted it. she shrugged that off when I said how distressed I was. I didn't know, she said.
What I didn't know is that the smell of roses would always mean so much to me...that dancing under water would always be a delight. that the coo of doves would always please me. that I would buy a concertina and play it for awhiles. that I would learn alpine songs and sing them for a few years. that I would carry him as a deep loss of a part of who I am still.
Swiftly tumbling waters...you still live in me, my Grandpa.