Grief, Unresolved.

I normally put a subtitle and a picture at the top of the story. Part of the writing ritual for me is finding an image and a phrase to sort of anchor my mind as I begin writing. I put on music, I set the tone, I set the lighting and I begin working. Writing, to me, is a full-body experience. It starts in the heart. A feeling I get of words coming to the surface but not formed yet. That feeling bubbles up again and again and again until one or two words appear. Those words will knock around in my head for days, weeks, or months until I can pull the thread enough to find a sentence. Then two, then three, then I’m writing. Sometimes it pours forth and I’m unable to stop it until I look at the page and I’ve written paragraphs. Sometimes, like in the last year since I wrote anything on this page, I start and I can’t finish. And so I close the page, walk away, and I never return to the thought.

This thought is different.

Any writer will tell you that inspiration is fickle. It takes discipline to write regularly, it takes knowledge to build a narrative, and it takes passion to find the words, but the thing that they don’t tell you is that pain can be worse than any other writer’s block. Pain moves in the darkness, it stabs where you don’t expect it to, and it makes you think you have it when you’re floundering just as much as the moment you started. Pain shakes your confidence, it rattles your soul, and it makes you think (even if it’s not true) that your words are not worth writing down.

So tonight, I’m sitting in the dark. I’m sitting in silence, save for the clicking of my keyboard, and I’m facing the pain. I’m going to write about it, and I’m going to get it out so that the other things I want to write about can begin to work again. This isn’t easy, it isn’t fun, and it hurts a lot.

On September 15th, 2022, my son Ciarán was born. He’s a beautiful boy, with a smile that lights up every room he’s in, and he is so curious and goodness is he strong for his age. He hasn’t found words other than “mama” or “daddy” yet, but they’re coming. We know they’re coming. He was right on time. No complications, no problems, and no scares from him in the time following his birth. I remember holding him for the first time, in the hospital room outside of the operating room where they’d cut my wife open and pulled him into the world, and thinking about just how much I’d be willing to do to make sure he knew that he was loved as I knew that I was loved when I was young. My dad broke the curse of angry fathers in his family. Sure, he got upset at times and our relationship has had rocky periods as I’ve gotten older, but dad was always loving. He gave us hugs and kisses and played with us and he taught us so much about life. I love my dad. I wouldn’t trade him for anyone in the world.

But the other male figure that looms large over the story of my life is the man in the picture. He was 6'2", and was as strong as an ox my entire childhood. He was in the Navy, serving on the USS Yorktown as a signalman from 1967 to 1969. This was a huge point of pride for him. He worked at a water bottling plant when he came home, hated it, and he spent the majority of his career working as the head of security for Honeywell in Golden Valley, Minnesota. He raised two amazing people, my mom, and my uncle, and he loved everyone he met. What’s crazier is that everyone who met him loved him too. His name was Chuck Hofstede. He was my grandfather. Where my dad taught me how to run, taught me the Greek alphabet, and instilled in me a love of learning and seeking answers, my grandpa gave me my first steak. He taught me how to throw and catch a football. He taught me how to love the Minnesota Vikings or the Twins, even when all they do is hurt.

He battled cancer three times in the last six years of his life. By the end of it, he just didn’t have the strength to continue. He’d lived as much as he could.

There are two things I lament about his death in particular, outside of the obvious of losing my beloved grandfather. The first is that I never got a picture of him and my son together. They met, even as my grandpa was sick and having trouble breathing, and I know he loved my son. He held him and I remember the smile on his face. I just wish I could have had a moment of clarity to take the picture. I’d give my left arm to have that picture. The second lament that I have is that he was sick during a global pandemic and we couldn’t see him out of fear of losing him sooner than his time.

My dad called me and woke me up on November 8th, and told me that he was gone. When he hung up, I told my wife and I was numb. The whole room went quiet and I just felt nothing. It was a gaping void where my heart used to sit. Then, all at once, I felt the rush of emotions. It was the same bubbling I feel in my chest when I need to write, but no words came, only cries. I went where I always went when I get so sad I don’t know what to do: I went to my son’s room, I sat in the rocking chair, and I sobbed harder than I’ve ever sobbed in my life. I sobbed so hard that I got sick for a week. My wife gave me time and let me cry alone, but she couldn’t let me just sit in there alone by myself. She gave me a long hug, and she tried so hard to make me feel better, but the truth was that I had never lost anyone in my life, and I had no idea how to process that grief or that loss.

My family gathered two days earlier, before he’d passed. He had a good day that day. He watched the Vikings come back and beat the Washington Commanders after playing just a terrible first half. His first words to me were “top left drawer of my dresser,” directing me to my Christmas present from two years before, his silver Navy ring beset with a blue zircon for his birth month which he promised me upon his death. I still wear it for every football game I coach, every speech tournament, every wedding, and every funeral. If I’m not just running errands, I’m wearing the ring. His last words to me were “I love you, Ryan. I love you.” He patted my hand and my wife and I left to go pick up Ciarán from my dad who was watching him.

Over the last year, I’ve learned that grief is a funny thing. It is a grinding, sharp feeling that hits you where you haven’t yet been worn down and changed by it. It’s a wheel that turns in you over and over and over again, and as you move and grow, new parts of you will rub against the wheel and it will grind and hurt. But eventually, the pain will recede and you will go on living until another part of you reminds you of that grief. The pain gets softer, more of a reminder than actual pain, and the tears will slow down but never really cease. You’ll seek things to be close to that person, like looking at old pictures or calling their phone to hear the voicemail and their voice again. You’ll wear their ring and you’ll fiddle with it when you’re nervous or scared. You’ll see them in the margins, in little things that remind you they left a mark on everything in your life. You’ll see them in the face of your son, and you’ll feel their joy in him when he giggles. And when the night gets dark and everyone’s asleep, you’ll think about all of it and feel that pain again.

I haven’t written in a year. There have been plenty of things to write about. Politics, football, parenthood, marriage, faith… I could have written volumes about faith. I have no fewer than seven pieces started but not finished about faith. It was one of the things I dove into to feel closer to grandpa. He was a man of deep faith, and I never have been. I wanted to find him in the faith, but for all of my diving, I never did. I tried writing through it, but I never could finish it.

That pain is still fresh. It’s too fresh. Grandpa’s interment was last month. We buried him at Fort Snelling. He got a 21-gun salute from a color guard. The flag that was draped over him as he was removed from the hospital was folded neatly and handed to my grandmother. My mother delivered the eulogy as his daughter and as a pastor, and all anyone could talk about was his faith. They talked about how he was a man of God, and how he loved as Christ loved, and I thought I knew him but I didn’t know how it felt to be that. I didn’t know how it felt to have that kind of faith.

But he shared faith with me in other ways. Grandpa showed me faith in ways I didn’t understand until he was gone. He loved me unconditionally, the way he loved all of his grandkids unconditionally. He shared things he loved with us, with each of us, and each of us has parts of him with us that go beyond the things he gave us. In my brothers, I see his tireless work ethic and his undying love for family. In my sister, I see his constant chase of service. In my cousins, I see the unrelenting confidence of self and love for the world around them. I see him in my mom every time I see her, so much of him. I see his faith in all of them. In that way, I know there must be part of him in me, too. I can have faith that he’s there beyond the stuff. I can hold true that he is where he wanted to go, simply because he was a man of unbelievable will, and if he wanted to be somewhere when he passed, there isn’t a force in heaven or earth that would stop him and that if there is truly a God that loves him as much as he believed he was loved, then I have to believe that door was opened to him. I have to believe because he believed, and I just don’t think he could be wrong about something like that.

If the Twins win the World Series this year, (knocks furiously on wood), like they broke their playoff curse this year and they finally won a series, I have little doubt it’s because of the faith placed in them by people like my grandpa. Faith, passed from them onto us. A relentless optimism, a joy despite despair, and a belief that one day the sun will shine on us. I think that is maybe what I got from him, but I wouldn’t dare assign it to myself. His optimism, and his relentless belief in the people around him to be good and joyful people who can work together, even when he is upset or discouraged. I loved that about him. I’d like to think that’s the real gift he gave to me, through my mother and through all of the many, many conversations that he and I had together.

I called him “Pop.” I never said goodbye, and neither did he. We only ever said the thing that two optimists say when they know that they’ll inevitably see each other again, whenever or wherever that might be.

We said “we see you.”

I love you, pop, and I miss you so much.