2 o'clock

It’s been almost 9 years since it happened, it will be exactly 9 years in 11 days.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The presents had been opened, we were visiting with friends who had stopped by. Everything was normal, well what had become normal in our house. He had come to live with us after she passed away that Easter, or around then anyway. He was still as sharp as he had always been, still telling me stories about life on the prairies while I sat on the edge of the bed in what used to be my brother’s room.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I was on the phone when it happened. My mom cried out for help, I hung up and Markus and I ran down the hall, where he was falling. Nothing special had happened, he’d just gone to the bathroom. My mom was helping him back to his room and he collapsed. Markus and I picked him up, I think, and we carried him to the bed. It’s a bit fuzzy now because it always has been fuzzy, even when it happened.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. We set him down on the bed, and he was there, but his body wasn’t letting him tell us. His eyes showed he was scared, so was I. We talked to him, my mom talked to him, we told him he could go, and on Christmas Day at two o’clock in the afternoon my Grandpa, my friend, went home to be with Jesus.

It was the middle of the night before Christmas, my mom was awake, she had found it hard to sleep with the way Grandpa had been coughing lately. He was never all that vocal about what he believed, he rarely went to church, but that night instead of coughing my mother heard prayer:

Thank you for letting me see my Grandson,
Thank you for letting me see Christmas,
I’m ready when you are.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and Jesus came to answer his prayer. He was hurting, he was tired and he needed rest.

I had a dream about him last night, and I miss him so much, even after nine years. His hat hangs in my den, and I look at it when I need to remember a funny story, or to remember his quiet words of wisdom. Harold Cannon was an amazing man, and every Christmas I can’t help but think about how amazing it is that God took him home on the day we celebrate the birth of the one who made it all possible.

Merry Christmas Grandpa, and thanks,
Andrew