He’s been gone 9 years now.

I know everyone has a grandparent that they’ll love and miss for the rest of their lives and believe to be some great, outstanding person, so it seems trite to try to assert that my grandfather actually was one of those unbelievable characters that you only really encounter a few times in your life. It was one of those things I sort of always knew but only became really aware of as I grew older. In my youth I just sort of assumed everyone’s grandfather was as successful and publicly lauded as mine was, like it was just something that came with age. It was only when I squeezed my way to the front pew and looked back to see mourners spilling down mezzanine staircases and out the church’s back door at his funeral that I began to think otherwise.

The thing that stood out the very most about my grandfather, however, was his incredible humility. He always believed that “more gets done when nobody worries about taking the credit”, and this was the sort of mentality he lived within daily. He founded banks, he worked on the School Board to fund and build schools, he founded hospitals, he was literally the guy who organized and orchestrated the Japanese surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri when WWII ended (it’s true; we have pictures. And actually, he was awarded one of the pens used to sign the treaty, but my Gran threw it out in her penchant for keeping nothing unless it is immediately important during a move), he built YMCA centers, he funded scholarships and arts programs, he funded programs for the local Boy Scout chapters, he was on the board of directors at UNC, he started the most successful independent insurance agency (they’re brokers; not actual insurance companies) in the Southeast, and even in the midst of success and wealth and small-town notoriety, he never treated any two people differently, never wasted his money on frivolous things for himself, never needed any recognition or praise for doing what he thought he was supposed to do as a contributing member of society. He drove the same style of Jeep Grand Wagoneer around his horse farm for close to three decades, purchasing another of the exact same make and model when each one inevitably gave out. He wore the same LL Bean bucket hat in his leisure time and, when he died, I discovered that he had a closet shelf full of them, all identical. He let me use one of the trophies one of his racehorses won to use as a teapot when I wanted to put on impromptu tea parties as a child. According to my father, the only heated argument he ever had with my Gran was over whether or not to keep alcohol in the house. (He didn’t want to; she insisted that if they were expected to entertain, they should keep a little on hand.) He was one of the few gentlemen who still wore a suit when he boarded an airplane. And, even two months before he passed, he extended his elbow to escort me across a footpath in his backyard. That’s just the kind of man he was and I never once saw him break character… and neither did anyone else, apparently. Even before I was old enough to realize his societal station among the old-money elite of North Carolina’s Piedmont (which he’d worked his way into from being a poor country boy from the backwoods mountain town of Elkin), I knew he was a different sort of man. He was kind, fair, humble, generous, he didn’t waste time on such human pitfalls as greed or jealousy or malice, he was quiet but resolute in his spiritual faith and he always always took the time to show everyone he met genuine respect and appreciation. This is what everyone in the mile-long funeral procession remembered as we wormed our way through what my cousin stated was “the town that [our grandfather] built.”

Even now, I still miss him. I miss the way he smelled when he pulled my body to his in a warm embrace and I miss how he loved to spend hours with us in the wood workshop he started in his garage just a few years before he passed. (”The first rule of working in the shop, Lizzie,” He explained. “Is that there has to be jazz playing. Big band is okay, too.” He would smile at me with a subtle wink as he pushed Play on his ancient tape deck.) I miss the slow, deep, elegance of his gentile Southern dialect and I miss how he would sit, calmly, in his green chair just smiling and watching while his huge, boisterous family sang and laughed and flung tissue paper every Christmas. I miss how the whole household would pause for a moment when he laughed and I miss how, in all her insane, self-promoting grandeur my beauty-queen grandmother always gazed at him as though he was still a 20-something soldier, in uniform to take her out for a night of dancing.

About a year and a half ago he came to me vividly in a dream. I say “he came to me” instead of “I dreamed about him” because it was far more real than any dream I’d ever had (or ever have had since). I felt the bones in his frail body when I hugged him, I smelled him again, I felt my heart surge when he casually addressed me, “Hey, Lizzie…” I sat up, sweaty and pregnant at the time, and cried with gratitude at the visit, the comfort, and the feeling of having received his blessings for my life.

This is why, when my Gran met Greg two summers ago in Hilton Head, everyone stopped for a surprised moment when she casually mentioned, “He reminds me a lot of [your grandfather]. He’s kind, Lizzie. He’s a good man.” while looking out from the front porch over the ocean and up toward the stars. After she went to bed, we all sat for a moment before my much-older cousin broke the ice. “I don’t think she’s ever said that about anyone before.” My extended family solemnly shook their heads in agreement.

We never received a more perfect prenuptial blessing.