So we dropped lines and we told the kids to watch the poles and they ran all over the place and we didn’t catch many fish. We certainly didn’t catch anything we could keep. “That’s why they call it fishing,” my dad said. “Instead of catching.”

Sierra was determined, though, despite her distraction.

She’d grab minnows out of the bucket and show them to Isaac, giggling as they flopped, accidentally squashing them as they tried to get away. (Isaac just screamed.)

And then she tried to cast the pole, and with our help she did it. And then she ate some scones and her brother ate some scones and we realized how posh we had made this little fishing excursion. She ran up and down the dock. She checked her bobber once. Twice. Then, distracted, she went back to the minnows.

And then she baited her own hook.

She grabbed a minnow, pushed it onto the hook with full concentration – no squirming or squealing or shuddering. Just a four-year-old girl and a hook and a minnow acting as if they had gone through this dance a million times before.

The sun was hot out there. My grandfather would have been proud. Maybe the heat came from his smile, recognizing that this girl – this granddaughter he’d never had a chance to meet – was already beginning to follow in his footsteps.

In other words, just another Sunday in the church of the outdoors.

We talked about the kids’ birthday parties, and about Sierra’s shopping spree. We talked about buying ridiculously expensive land in Wyoming, about how the local celebrities weren’t paying their taxes in Jackson, about how if Grandpa were still around he’d be buying defaulted land like it was going out of style.

We talked about the back roads in Jackson, about my job, Kerrie’s job, the kids and how fast they’re growing. We talked about my father’s health issues. We talked about how my brother is going to be a senior in high school.

We talked about how funny it was that my mom kept trying to call her cell phone instead of her home phone, and how my grandmother doesn’t really use her cell phone anymore.

We talked for a long time.

What we didn’t talk about was her health.

We didn’t talk about how she was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. About how scared that made her, and how she eventually came to terms with it and realized that there’s nowhere to go but forward, that living life being scared of cancer was no life to live at all.

We didn’t talk about how she had her third treatment, and how it was the worst she’s experienced, and how she’s often too tired to do much but sit in her room and watch Court TV, but damn it that hasn’t stopped her from entertaining and inviting people into her home and continuing a long tradition of being the most welcoming person in Teton Valley.

We didn’t talk about that.

Because my grandmother has lived through seven decades of Wyoming winters, through the slow and inevitable passing of her brothers and sisters, through the loss of her own soul mate – my grandfather – to cancer (fucking cancer) and the loss of lucidness that came with it.

She raised two children on her own for years while my grandfather was in the army, and she helped run a small engine shop and a gas station and whatever else my grandfather felt driven to do.

My grandmother is strong. She’s going to be okay.

So we didn’t talk about it. And I think I’m okay with that.

Thirteen days ago, my mother told me that my grandmother wasn’t doing very well. She was very sick. She sounded awful.

Twelve days ago, I concluded that I was no longer going on vacation. I was travelling to say goodbye to my grandmother.

I was wrong. Thankfully, blessedly wrong.

1.

In January 2006, my family – mother, brother, Kerrie and me – flew to Idaho to spend a surprise post-Christmas week with my grandfather. We knew why we were really going, though: my grandfather had lung cancer, which had spread into his brain. We were travelling to spend time with him before he was gone.

This came just five months after Kerrie and I had made the same trip – a vacation this time. At that time, the cancer was still in its infancy, and my grandfather was actively going through treatment, his nurses confident in his recovery, my family positive that we’d make it through the ordeal.

The shift from summer to winter saw my grandfather grow worse. Where he was once full of life – sick, pained, but still in good spirits – he was now tired and weak. We celebrated the holiday. We hung tight as he became sicker, his lucidness beginning to wane from day to day, and we hoped for a miracle.

A week later, he was gone.

2.

I have never been one to dwell on death. I know that my time will come when my time comes, that there is little I can do to stop the inevitability of death, and all I can do is hope that it comes much later than sooner. That doesn’t change one simple fact, though: I’m scared of it.

So when my grandmother went in for testing, I wasn’t ready to admit it. When that lump appeared, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. When that diagnosis came back – that it had been removed, and we’re all just waiting to make sure it worked, and that she should be alright but we really don’t know – I wasn’t comfortable.

The uncertainty was awful.

And then, she got sick. Wouldn’t leave her chair. Ran out of energy after just a few hours.

Suddenly, everything became so urgent. Suddenly, I found myself dwelling on death.

3.

Turns out, my grandmother is going to be okay. As far as we know, right now.

Over this last week, we saw my grandmother’s color return. She didn’t leave the house except to get tests and results, but those results were positive. She still sat in her bedroom, but so did we. And at times, we didn’t. At times, we convened around the dining room table. Like we always have. Like we always will.

She was still tired, but she was there. THERE. That’s all she needed, too: to be there, with us, cracking the same jokes, living the same life, bringing us together as a family as she’s always done, even when the family didn’t want to be brought together at all.

I pulled out of the driveway without tears. Not because I fought them back, but because I knew everything was going to be okay.

As far as we know. Right now.

4.

My grandfather never really left us, it seems. His ashes, encased in a beautiful wooden urn with a burned-in image of the Tetons, still sit on my grandmother’s china cabinet next to the ashes of his dog, Darby. She’s been unable to bury either box. They simply mean too much.

He never really left us in the spiritual sense, as well. His stories still live on and his presence still surrounds the valley. The small engine shop he owned in Jackson – now known simply as the last location of a failed art gallery – still features the same antique gas pump as a decade ago. The two houses he built for himself and my grandmother – one on each side of the Teton pass – still stand as reminders of his skill.

And his memory lives on, expanding as we drive through the valley, suffocating my fear of death, helping me understand that, as hippie-dippy as it sounds, we all live on in those we’ve influenced, and that there’s no point in focusing on death.

Death is simply the point where life ends. And up until that point, life is life. Life is only life.

After that point, life is the only thing we remember.

5.

We don’t go to those who are dying to say goodbye, because goodbye doesn’t need to be said face-to-face. Instead, we go to celebrate life. We go to spend time with those we love, regardless of the outcome.

This past week, it turns out, I didn’t say goodbye to my grandmother. Quite the opposite, actually. I spent a week wondering how I had jumped the gun, how I had assumed the end was near when the end most certainly isn’t near and I was a damned fool to believe that the end even mattered.

My grandmother may have twenty more years in her. Or not. We don’t know.

No one knows.

We do know that she’s getting better. That she has a very curable form of cancer, and that she could be healthy in no time.

That, as long as she’s living in the valley that raised her – a valley that she, in turn, has helped shape – she’s alive, and we can’t focus on anything but being alive, because there simply isn’t anything else.

Fear of death be damned.

Chances are, most of the content strategy stuff that used to be here will now be over there, but don’t worry – I’m vain enough to link to it from the ol’ personal blog. Over. And. Over. Again.

Anyway, I’m over there with this nugget. From “On Post-Launch Content Schedules: or, Who’s Taking Care of the House?”:

In the Web industry, we build Web sites. But we might as well be building houses. Except, instead of populating homes with people, we’re filling them with information, application and entertainment. Words and pictures need a home on the Internet, and Web sites are the three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home they’re looking for.

Web companies exhibit pride of ownership, too. As long as we hold the deed to our site, we’re keeping up with routine upkeep. It’s easy for us – after all, the construction was all handled in-house, for the most part, so we understand the corners and rafters and concrete better than anyone else.

Then, we hand the site off.

We’ve prepared it for sale. The site is at its peak – top notch, totally updated, ready to move in. The paperwork is signed, the Realtor has been paid – we’ve reached the finish line, you’d think.

Nope. The launch of a Web site isn’t the finish line. New content will move in. Updating will happen. Upkeep will be needed.

Are you ready to handle it?

CLICK THROUGH FOR MORE! (Do it. Now.)

Something Thai, I’m sure. Something expensive and trendy.

Go ahead. I know I’ve never formally lived in the Jackson Hole area. I’ve never called it home, and that nowadays I only visit every four years and barely have any family connection in the town. Even my grandma had to ditch the place. Probably the fault of people like you. I’ll pin that you y’all, if you don’t mind.

Here’s the thing. I might not be from Jackson, but I’m fiercely protective of it. That Thai restaurant wasn’t here when I wandered its streets every summer for years. Teton Village was just a tiny little ski resort. Jackson was still overrun by cowboys, not Subarus; ranchers, not transplants.

Maybe you’ve got your own personal Jackson – some place you’ve never lived but still stick to, allowed to become a part of your soul, of which you shun visitors and push away the people who just don’t get it. That’s it, right?

They just don’t get it, do they?

Jackson isn’t my home. It never has been. Still, I consider myself a local – thanks to generations of family and history and a bunch of my own experiences – and I’ll be damned if I’m going to feel guilty about it.

Sorry, man. I know you just moved here.

But unless you’re new place has some way to replicate three decades of tradition and sheer force of connection, you’ll never be a local.

At least not in my eyes. Not in my experience.

Not to THIS local-who-never-was.

I don’t know how long he had it. I know that my grandmother sent it home with my father after my grandfather had passed away, and my father gave it to me yesterday now that I have room to store it along with his and my mother’s collection of albums from the 70s and 80s, along also with my grandfather’s collection of 50s and 60s country albums, along also with my great grandmother’s collection of 40s 78 rpm albums, most of them big band and classical.

Three generations of record collections. Four distinct different styles. All together, all ready to be rediscovered.

The first album sounded awful – the record player must be broken, I thought. The next sounded better. Not crystal clear, but good enough to bring a wave of nostalgia.

The third – the aforementioned Harvest – sounded crackled and muted and flat, its grooves popping sound into a decades old needle, the album itself waving up and down like a nearly-calm lake, the entire contraption just one bump away from a horrendous record scratch, like the ones you hear in cheesy radio ads.

Which is to say it sounded perfect.

But it was Johnny Cash that tuned my ears to history. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the record player sat beneath a picture of my grandfather. Looking on. Wondering, probably, what the racket was all about.

In the picture my grandfather stands, holding a fish, shirtless and stern and young and optimistic. And hopefully he understands that, though he’s been gone for years, though he never would have approved of the music I was playing, though we had nothing in common music-wise outside of a slight appreciation for Cash and Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, I was at least walking in his footsteps, even with this one little act.

Lift the arm. Set the speed to 33 1/3. Line up the grooves. And relive history.

A blueberry is pale, with a subdued taste. It’s common. It’s boring.

A member of the same family, the huckleberry is tart and wonderful, every bite similar to what caviar must feel like.

Blueberries are typical. Huckleberries are rare. In fact, blueberries are often used in less particular creations that claim to be made with huckleberries. One huckleberry to every three blueberries – enough to keep everything legally “huckleberry-ish.” They cost a fortune when offered pure, and they’re almost as good when offered muddled.

They’re like gold. Except worth more, it seems.

Huckleberries can’t be grown in captivity.

They are a mystic fruit, dripping with old west legend. Their name is rustic in a way no other can claim. Nestled in the family tree next to the cranberry and the blueberry, they serve as a backwoods cousin.

Like homemade whiskey, they pucker your lips. You shudder, waiting for the next rude smack of insolvent country manner. Instead, you’re treated to a taste that blueberries still fight to attain.

Though I’ve grown up around both, only one carries the legacy of hand-picking, the plunk of a tin bucket as we wind our way through a wooded hill, speaking loud to keep the bears away and wondering if all of the work is worth it – if these few handfuls of berries will be able to ease our sore knees and purplish hands.

But a few handfuls are all you need. And yes, once paired with cream, or siphoned into jelly, it’s more worth it than any food you’ve had the trouble of fighting for.

You’d get in trouble for stealing a few, but Grandpa Boyer scolded in jest. After all, his lips had the same purple tint as yours.

They’re irresistible. And no amount of blueberries will ever suffice.

Most of us probably never got the chance. Nature doesn’t make it easy, and despite advances in technology and medicine, it’s still difficult to make it to 80 years old, a time when you’re most likely to have great grandchildren. For men, it’s even harder.

I never knew any of my great grandfathers, but Sierra’s known two: Great Grandpa Joe and Great Grandpa Burt, both on Kerrie’s side.

Yesterday, Great Grandpa Burt passed away. Suddenly, without warning, in his sleep. Peacefully and with dignity.

I’ll admit, I’m without easy words. Though I’ve gone through this before with my own grandfather, it seems so foreign – to see a man who has been so large a part of so many lives just leave the world without warning, leaving his wife of 63 years – Kerrie’s grandma Mardell – and the rest of us behind, lamenting, celebrating and remembering.

A World War II veteran. A wildly successful businessman. One of the kindest people I’ve ever had the privilege to know – a man who instilled caring and pride and common sense into every member of his family, from his children to his grandchildren.

His range of influence reaches farther than anyone I’ve known. Every name leads to another, each handshake holding the memory of a thousand more. Burt saw things I’ll never see, lived lives I’ll never imagine. Took everything as it came, with knife between teeth, crawling through life when needed and relaxing when the time was right. He fought wars I’ll never fight, flew next to French authors and catered ice cream to South Dakota’s future leaders.

He held every memory close, held each smile as if it would escape him. Manifesting in more of a frown, struggling to stay hidden despite the grasping urge to be set free, each smile came wryly, as if a present wrapped tightly. And once it broke through, it was absolutely beaming, each tooth seeming to smile itself, both eyes blinding in their joy.

Smiles that most often came from the screech of a little girl or boy. One of his great grandchildren – kids that naturally gravitated toward him despite their shyness, despite their need to stay latched to mommy.

That’s what always amazed me. Sierra was a different child around Burt. During her most shy days, she would gather up the courage to muster toward Burt, melting immediately into his arms, grasping as his glasses and gazing into those smiling eyes. The bond was evident. Though both probably never thought about, they were part of something special. Something legendary; a relationship spanning four generations.

I can’t attest to much more than what I know – that Burt was a brilliant, soft hearted man who had lived a long and illustrious life. Sprightly. Animated. Filled with vigor even as the years caught up with him. Always ready with a sly smile, always ready with a grandfatherly concern.

But I can attest to something special I witnessed in the past year and a half: a relationship so unique and rare that most don’t get to experience it. The relationship between a great grandfather and great granddaughter.

Sierra and Great Grandpa Burt

Every person hopes to live long enough to see just one of his or her great grandchildren. Burt was lucky enough to have six.

And Sierra was lucky enough to be one of them.

“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you, it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!”

And he laughed again.

“And when you’re consoled (everyone is eventually consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your windows sometimes just for the fun of it… And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky. Then you’ll tell them, ‘Yes, it’s the stars. They always make me laugh!”

- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sure, it’s not as original as I had thought – it was in the to 100 for baby names in the mid 2000′s, though it’s been dropping in recent years – and there’s always that damned GMC behemoth, but all in all I still think it’s perfect. I can’t imagine her being called anything else but Sierra.

Nothing else would fit.

Thankfully, we had a girl.

I say thankfully because, well, we never really managed to nail down a suitable boy name. They were all just “okay.” We had several chosen, ready to anoint upon birth, not knowing what the final answer would be until seeing Baby Boy Vilhauer for the first time. And, again, thankfully, we didn’t need to make that decision.

Which brings us to today.

For us, it seems as though girl names are infinitely easier to choose. We’ve already got a girl name picked out – a beautiful name that harmonizes with Sierra and sounds nearly classical with Vilhauer. First and middle name. Chosen. Done and done.

But for a boy? Nothing.

I think of this because we have an appointment today for an ultrasound. The ultrasound where we can discover the gender of the baby. The ultrasound where we could, if so moved, determine what our future will hold – a couple of beaming girls or a pair better suited for mixed doubles.

We’re not quite sure if we want to find out. Why spoil the surprise, right?

One reason is the name. What if it’s a boy? What if this perfect girl name is trashed in the name of an extra Y chromosome? And, what then?

Boy names are by nature more difficult. Clever names seem too cutesy, and the typical seem so generic. I wasn’t a typical boy growing up – as in, I wasn’t tied to cars and sports and the other things boys are expected to discover and latch onto – so I’m not sure what a name is supposed to represent. I was named after my father’s dog, after all. True story.

It’s been mentioned hundreds of times before, of course – a name is more than a word. It’s an identity that sticks with a child for his or her entire life, from birth until adulthood, along for the ride, written and mispronounced and branded onto every item that he or she encounters throughout every single stage of growing up.

And I think that makes the decision so important. I wonder what goes though the minds of those that use child names as some kind of personal fantasy, as some kind of joke or reaffirmation of ideals. I wonder why a Miami Dolphins fan would name their kid “Phin,” or why someone who was enamored with marijuana would name their little girl “Sweet Leaf.”

We hope that Sierra finds the beauty in her name as she grows up. We hope she understands every aspect of the word – the naturalness and creativity, and the historical aspect of her middle name: Dawn, a female version of my grandfather’s name, Don.

And we hope that, no matter what happens, Baby #2 finds joy in his or her name. Because it’s important. We realize that.

That’s what makes the decision so difficult.

That nearly moved me to tears as I looked at it, here, at my work desk.

Days With My Father, by Phillip Toledano – a portrait of the photographer’s father as he descends into a form of Alzheimer’s-like short term memory loss. It’s amazing. Touching.

I’m going to go back to missing my grandfather now, thanks.

Found via an older post by Bill at MTLB.