After my grandmother had been in a nursing home for four years, I met my mother and my aunt at Grandma's house to sort through the possessions of their lives. Grandpa had many years before endowed me with the task of seeing that his mother's clock went to my younger cousin, Michael after that little opportunist had answered that was what he wanted after my Grandpa was gone. I got the astonishingly garish albeit faded pink shell lamp with the flamingo that they acquired many years ago on a trip to Galveston.

It was quite an emotional day. Our much beloved father and grandfather had died fifteen years before and we would always miss him. As long as the house was there and intact we could somehow magically believe all was as it had been. But now the possessions would move to our homes where we would treasure them.

Grandpa seemed enormous to me and I always thought there wasn't anything he couldn't do. He was large, barrel-chested and his arm muscles were like rocks after working so many years on the railroad, although his feet were very small. Many times, many people have said of my grandfather, "They don't make men like that anymore." The most important thing that defined his personality is that he was a gentle soul. Always so gentle. He was such a source of comfort and peace for me in a not very peaceful childhood. I loved him deeply as I loved my grandmother.

In spite of his gentleness, Grandpa did have a wicked sense of humor. He loved to tell the story of his sister, Lola, a short, fat woman who fortunately was blessed with a very healthy sense of humor. She was wearing a rayon dress to an outside event in Oklahoma. After they left their car and walked for some way to the event, it began to rain. They hurriedly started back to the car but all along the way my great-aunt's dress was shrinking in the rain. By the time they got back to the car and stepped over a fence to get to the car, Lola's dress was way above her knees and the buttons in the front were widely gaping, and she was soaked. He always just roared as he told this story on his sister.

After a couple of days sorting through things, dividing them up and selling what was left, we were making one last pass to see that nothing had been left and to simply say good-bye, I suppose. My son, Tommy, who was eight at the time, spotted an old, beat up license plate nailed to a shelf in Grandpa's work shed. He asked if he could have it. I said he could. After we were in the car, Tommy mentioned that the date on the license plate was 1955, the year of my birth. The memory flooded back to me of being in my Grandpa's work shed with him. He called to my attention this license plate that was the date and state of my birth, New Mexico. Grandpa had said all those years ago, I must have been about eight years old, "I'm going to make a new hole here, see and nail it right in front of the door so when I'm gone maybe you'll come out here and see it and remember your old grandpa."

My license plate is now beside my bed. It is one of my most prized possessions. It says to me so many things but mostly it says that I was and am loved.

I remember, Grandpa, I remember.