I read this eulogy at my grandfather’s funeral on Saturday:

On Saturdays, when the rest of my family was out of the house, Grandpa Schlick would call me up, and we’d chat.  Being a historian and a genealogist, I loved the stories he would tell me.  Some of them he told over and over, and if you knew him I’m sure you’re familiar with at least some of them.  The day a dog walked into church and stole his thunder in the middle of a sermon.  The day he bridged a language barrier by saying “choo-choo” when he didn’t know the words for “train station”.  But some of the stories he told me were whatever recollections he had on his mind that day, and they weren’t always ones I had heard before.

He told me that when he was a young man he would hitch-hike to Chautauqua Institution to work as a golf caddy for the rich men there.  One day while he was working, a helicopter landed on the green and out stepped Thomas Edison.  I was amazed!  You don’t always think of your own family when you’re sitting in a history lesson, but here was proof that my grandfather had lived through more than I could imagine.  Edison was an old man by the time grandpa saw him, but the encounter made an impact on him all the same.  It struck me how much the world has changed in my grandfather’s lifetime, going from a time when the light bulb was a fairly new innovation to an age of cell phones, iPods, and the internet.

When I turned sixteen, grandpa told me stories about driving.  He and his father Clarence learned to drive together, presumably because cars were just that new.  Coming from a time when every adult already knows how to drive, this surprised me.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like having to learn something so complicated when there was no one around who was in the least bit familiar with it.  Grandpa also gave me a long dissertation on the difference between the mechanical brakes he learned to drive on and modern ones, but I still don’t think I fully understand.

My grandfather, as I’m sure you know, had a true passion for music.  He was an excellent musician, whether it was as a singer in the church choir or as a pianist at simple family gatherings.  For the last few years, we have gone to his house for Christmas and sang while he played the carols on his keyboard in rich, harmonious chords.  His love of music also extended to the dance floor, and I wish I had known him in his nimbler years because I know there is so much he could have taught me.  Recently, at the wedding of his wife’s grand-niece Amy, grandpa tried to teach me to polka dance.  Just as I was beginning to understand, the song changed to “Dancing Queen”, but we kept dancing anyway.  There are few things better in this world than doing the polka to Abba with your ninety-year-old grandfather.

A few weeks ago, he decided it was time for him to die.  As with everything else in his life, he changed his mind a few times, but once he was sure there was no stopping him.  He left this world as he lived in it- on his own terms.  I know that he has found peace wherever he is now, and I wish him well.  If we can learn something from his life, I think it will be to laugh more and to dance more.