Published: October 20, 2009 11:41 pm      

LINDSEY MIESKO | Say ‘I love you’ before ‘goodbye’

We’re all guilty of it sometimes. We work more than we visit. We let chores take precedence. We take family for granted.

The last time I saw my grandfather, Joseph “Midjo” Miesko, was at Christmas in 2008. On Saturday, I said goodbye to him at his funeral.

I should have come home more. I should have called more. I should have said “I love you” more.

Sometimes we forget.

It’s easy to feel guilty. But I know that if my grandpa could talk to me now, he’d tell me to knock it off and get on with life.

He was more of a doer than a thinker, the type of man who jumped out of planes in World War II, the type of man who started working in the coal mines at age 12 to help his widowed mother keep her farm.

My tears would not be coddled. We have to do what we have to do.

My grandfather spent his life on a farm in Lilly.

When I was a little girl, he taught me how to feed corn to his horses. He gave me bouquets of tail feathers that his peacocks had shed. And after a particularly nasty rooster chased me mercilessly, my grandpa helped me have him for supper.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that when I moved to Africa in 2005, my grandfather, who loved to be surrounded by animals, only asked me to bring him a monkey. (Alas, customs rules are tough.) He didn’t ask if I was sure I wanted to go. He didn’t suggest that I couldn’t do it. He told me to be careful and let me go.

“Can’t” was never a part of this man’s vocabulary. For better or worse, I inherited that gene.

When I came back to the States two years later, his health had declined, but his spirit had not. After a stroke in 2004, he steadily began to lose the use of his hands.

The hands that had baled hay and swung a pickax and lifted me over the fence to follow him as he fed his pigs slowly began to leave him. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to watch your body betray you.

Soon after my return, I moved to Washington, D.C., and began to come home less and less. The drive was too long. I was too busy. My life was here now, I told myself. The girl who collected $20 from her grandpa for a good report card had grown up. But did that mean I didn’t need him?

Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way.

It’s easy to get caught up in where we are and forget about where we come from. I live in a place now where men like my grandpa are few and far between.

There are more Lexuses than Fords on the beltway. Most people I know are in therapy because “life is hard.” I’ve yet to meet a man here who fixes things himself instead of calling a repair service.

This is what I’m surrounded by, but it’s not who I am. It’s a small consolation in losing my grandfather, but I’m so thankful to be able to recognize the value of my community.

I’m grateful for where I come from. I’m grateful for the work ethic and strength of character that is so ingrained in the western Pennsylvania culture. I’m grateful for my grandpa.

I never said it enough, but I feel it now: I love you.



Lindsay Miesko is a journalism graduate student at Georgetown University and a former Tribune-Democrat intern.