Graham Barnes Mills, October 10, 1916 - February 4, 2007

My earliest and most enduring memory of Granddaddy comes from my childhood family vacations to the beach. The whole family would wade out into the surf and do what we called “jumping waves.” Everyone had their own style for this activity. When I was very small and the waves seemed mountainous, my strategy was having my mighty Granddad toss me up over the top. I would sail through the air, always amazed at his seeming superhuman strength, always clearing the crest of the wave. When I would land on the other side, buoyed by my lifejacket, for a moment I would look around and be all alone. Then Granddad would pop up from under the passing wave, accompanied by everyone else, and we’d do it all over again.

Granddad would wake you each morning with a slice of freshly cooked bacon. He would make gallon after gallon of his homemade ice tea: equal parts tea and sugar. He would laugh time and again at his doppelganger, Matlock. He would tickle your feet whenever your guard was down. He would turn off his whistling ears and settle in for his beloved afternoon siesta. He would greet you with one of his world famous belly bumps.

He would tell you how much he loved you.

Granddaddy was patient. He was honest. He was generous. He was a man of unshakable faith. Other than my own father, there has been no one who has more defined for me how to be a man, how to love your family, how to love the Lord.

So it is with as much joy as grief that I face his passing. Granddad was ninety years old, and although it often seemed he would live forever, his time on this earth had come. My only disappointment comes from this disproving of Granddad’s oft professed belief that he was going with the uppertaker, not the undertaker. I’m not entirely convinced that Christ didn’t return sometime early this afternoon and I missed it.

Then again, the undertaker isn’t really taking him.

Godspeed, Granddad. I’ll see you on the other side.