Jerry McClellan Baker, who was my grandfather, died Wednesday,
Nov. 26, 2014. He was 89. When my cousin Jeff was a small child, he named him
Mi. The entire family started calling him that from then on.
My grandfather was a veteran. He left his formal
schooling to join the military and served in the Navy on a hospital ship in
World War II. He walked on the beaches
of Hiroshima three days after the bomb was dropped there. Many years later he
went back to school to get his high school diploma, the same year as my father.
My grandfather was a hard worker. He worked for Texas
Power and Light for 40 years. When storms blew down electrical wires, he helped
fix them. He installed insulators on electrical lines in Irving, some that are
still there today. He never had an accident while working and received many
commendations for his safety and hard work at a dangerous job.
My grandfather was a devoted husband. Though my
grandmother died eight years ago and despite the many ladies at the retirement
complex that fell in love with his shy sense of humor, since 1946 he was
oblivious to the existence of any other woman. When I asked him what he liked
best about her initially, he told me he liked that she was a girl.
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My grandfather was green before the term existed. When
I was a child, he and my grandmother saved every empty coke and beer can in a
bag to give to my mother for recycling. My mother collected the cans and
recycled them for money. We bought our family’s first microwave with recycling
money.
My grandfather was firm in his opinions. Every day he
listened to Rush Limbaugh at 11:00. It
didn’t matter if you were visiting or not, he put Rush on the radio and carried
that radio with him wherever he went. He never tired of sharing his political
opinions with me and giving me a hard time about mine.
My grandfather was funny. He usually had a joke to
tell. The best part of him telling the jokes was in the telling. He would laugh
so hard he couldn’t breathe and you couldn’t understand a word he said. Then
he’d look at you for your reaction to the punchline. I just always laughed no matter what. Later,
I would try to piece together what he said.
My grandfather was a gardener. He and my grandmother
grew vegetables in a huge garden and canned or froze them. They would send
extra okra home with me. When I visited them as an adult, they would make sure
to have picked enough okra to sit with me and teach me how to cover it with
flour, salt, and cornmeal before freezing it for later. One summer they weren’t
able to harvest very much okra, so my grandfather made a deal with a man at the
farmer’s market to buy a case, just to make sure there was enough for me.
The yard had huge pecan trees in it and every fall my
husband and I would help Mi pick up his pecans. He would call me and laugh and
tell me the pecans had fallen and it was time for us to come “nut grabbing.”
The kids started helping as well. Adam would get the leaf blower and blow away
the leaves. The kids and I would use some special sticks to pick up the pecans
and put them in a bucket. Mi would sit in his driveway with two buckets: one
for keeping and the other for tossing. He could tell the quality of a pecan
just by looking at the outside.
My grandfather was generous. He gave away anything
that he thought might be useful to someone else. A car, a dollar, a tool; he’d
part with anything if a loved one could use it. Even in his last years, when
his possessions fit into a small apartment, he would still save coupon
circulars for me or send home a package of crackers for my children.
Very few things made it to the trashcan. Visine
bottles were repurposed for eyeglasses cleaner. Windex went in empty nose spray
bottles as well. The eyeglasses he wore initially belonged to my grandmother,
but he said they worked fine for him. Mail order packages that contained his
prescriptions were reused as ice packs. Empty medicine bottles became spit cans
for his snuff. I had to secretly throw away old receipts or moldy food when I
came to visit. One day when he wasn’t feeling well, he said all I did when I
visited his apartment was fill his trashcan. I figured if that was all he could
think about to complain about me, then I was doing pretty well.
My grandfather was creative. He was always planning
some home improvement project. When he bought new recliners, he also bought
covers for them. The covers didn’t exactly fit right, so one summer I spent
every Friday sewing and re-sewing covers for his chairs. I was never able to
complete that project to perfection and ended up using safety pins to hold the
covers on. Most recently he told me he wanted his couch to be a foot higher. We
had just begun the brainstorming process on how to fix that problem.
I learned a wealth of knowledge from my grandfather. He
was so particular, but even that was a lesson to me. As he aged, his world
became smaller and little details that wouldn’t have meant anything when he was
younger now meant the world to him. Jeff and I were constantly buying and
rebuying supplies for his apartment. Jeff would go one day and buy groceries
and then I would return the next day only to go buy different brands of the
same products. It was a lesson for both of us. We both had the freedom and
flexibility of living out in the real world with jobs, kids, and cars. Any time
I want a box of crackers, I can hop in my car and buy one. Therefore crackers
aren’t that important to me. But if I wasn’t able to buy the crackers myself,
if I was at the mercy of whoever was kind enough to stop by and bring me
crackers, those crackers would have much more importance.
Jeff and I worked together during the last few years
of Mi’s life. We were able to tag team getting him to his doctor’s
appointments, filling his prescriptions and purchasing his never-ending supply
of Lipton iced tea and club crackers. I learned so much through this
experience. We both shared his medical power of attorney. That piece of paper
signed by a lawyer granted us the right to advocate for our grandfather and
fight for his wishes during his last days.
The last few years have been hard work, but I am so
grateful that Jeff and I were able to do it together. It was our honor and
privilege to help him in his last days.
Here's one of my grandfather’s favorite
jokes. He told this to me many times and each time he laughed like he had never
told it before.
There
was a feller going down a sidewalk dragging one foot and his hand on his
hip. Another came down dragging his
foot. The first feller said, “Shrapnel,
Vietnam, ’68. You?” The other feller
said, “Dog poop, 50 ft., 15 seconds ago.”
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