I Wish Grandpa's Never Died

How Death Makes Everything Beautiful

My car didn’t have working air-conditioning. I was driving my grandad’s old Volvo from 1989 north from LA in the middle of dry croplands just past the Grapevine, heading home after visiting my grandad. This was August of 2021. The sky was a very light blue and the earth everywhere appeared to be consumed by a soft yet unwelcoming gray like that of the moon. My hands were sweating and the wind hitting my face from the window was only slightly relieving. 

It’s usually at this point in the drive that I start to realize how much longer this straight road is going to last, how many more of the same billboards calling for dams I’ll see, and how I’ll be driving along the same fence that for periods seems to go on across the state endlessly. I know there will be a point where the grays and browns of the dirt will turn a beautiful saline white, but I know that until then and after I’ll need to find something to entertain myself. I turned off my music and switched to the radio.

After a while of flipping through I stayed put on the country station, seeing as it was the only channel that was playing consistent bangers. There were a few good ones. The songs are usually about cheating or falling in love, or the classic strained hyperbolic love of one’s nation. And then another song came on with soft acoustic strings that slowly lulled me in. The lyrics were simple, the anaphora I wish was the crutch of the song. The lyrics, listening back now, aren’t good really. In fact, there’s a good two or three parts that, even on that first listen, I wish weren’t a part of the song (I don’t want every state to have a Birmingham, and I’d rather him stay away from talking about cotton). But deft writing is not necessarily the point of any good country song. Instead, it’s about putting simply what it feels like to be—in pain, love, grief, gratitude, anger, sadness. The point is to share the feeling, not the thoughts. As the song slogged forward into its nostalgic chorus, it ends, “I wish honky-tonks didn’t have no closing time / I wish grandpas never died.” The song, I later found out, was called “I wish grandpas never died” by Riley Green.

And then, in the heat of dry California, just having passed the epicenter of country music in California, Bakersfield, I started to ball. It was one of those truly serendipitous moments that makes someone like myself, determined to believe in chaos and sight and experiences and not crystals, might question if everything really is random. 

My granddad was still alive at that moment then, but I was driving back from visiting him, from what I knew was saying goodbye. He was tired when I saw him. But he sat up when I came in the room, tried to read the article I had written and shared with him. As I was leaving for the afternoon he held my hand and insisted I keep writing, to never stop. That what I write is beautiful and to not get discouraged. Something about his insistence I’ll never let go. 

So I cried while listening to Riley Green, thinking of him in bed waiting for his end.

This isn’t the first sort of sign, reminder, I carry from a passing or passed loved one. There’s a species of butterfly I see floating around that I can’t help but view a friend in. The sight of any sort of strawberry candy, for one specific memory, will always remind me of my grandmother. A mention of Rilke is now tied with my other grandmother, Nana, Beverly Munselle. These little signs we find, especially when we are most hurt or at a loss, or witnessing loss, are little pieces of magic. They are little tricks, little points of the world that ground our pain into an understanding that, without that pain, the beauty of some sentimental and corny country song cannot be seen for its beauty. Without that pain of loss, and the certainty of our own death, can we live a life fully understanding what is at stake. That beauty is beautiful because of the pain death brings. 

I’ve witnessed enough deaths to understand the steps to my grief.

It can be shocking at first, freezes me in place, plants me in a pot of dissociation and confusion. But, once that initial moment of horror passes, so many things that surround me become a remembrance to that person. Everything becomes beautiful in the light of their memory. Recollections become a way to admire that person, their complexities, and the way they shared love and care with me.

It had, at that point in the drive, only been two or three hours since I had seen my granddad, laying down in his bed, his eyes closed, resolved in his choice at 92 to say goodbye, and waiting for it all to end. My mom, on the phone with me, told me he kept asking when it would all be over. He wanted it done. This, to my mother and uncle who had been working so hard the past few months to keep him alive, were hurt by this. They didn’t want their father, a truly good person, to leave them. At least, not just yet. But he had just survived pneumonia and the recovery was too much for him. He was done. He wanted out with the world. And what a lucky way to go. His death, beyond most I’ve witnessed, was admirable and beautiful. Peter Munselle, my grandad, was one of the most fortunate people I’ve heard about. He was raised very broke in downtown LA, joined the marines for World War II which he luckily ended up not having to fight in, received free tuition to USC, became a successful architect, and married the woman of his dreams. Of course, there are a myriad of complexities and hardships that he underwent, but he was always someone to count his lucky stars. And he had many. The luckiest of which might’ve been to call lights out on his own world, with peace, not pain, in his choice.

I wish we could all do this, choose our time when we’ve been through everything we wanted to, lived out our lives to the point where there is just not that much life to live left. But we can’t. Grandad was truly lucky. Death, that final and most significant part of life, he got to stare at head on, waiting for it all to come to a close with the certainty that his life was good. I wish grandpas all chose when to die.

Today, I’m headed down to LA, this time flying, to finally meet with our family and friends, share stories, and say goodbye to him together. I’m sure some of us will be crying, but all with gratitude for who he was, and the reminder that we might as well enjoy long boring straight roads in hot cars while we last.

My grandad’s car I drove there