My grandfather Neil Cook passed away Saturday after suffering a stroke last week. It took not one or two, but three brushes with death to finally fell this man. He had already notched a serious heart attack and another stroke within the last decade, neither of which any mere mortal had a right to survive.

He was a hero of sorts to me (all of my grandparents are), one of a number of inspiring figures I’m lucky enough to share bloodlines with, and I’m grateful for the 24 years and the individual moments I had along the way with him.

I was asked to speak at some point in his services tomorrow, so I sat down tonight, thought long and hard and tried to put some of my feelings to paper. This is an excerpt from what I plan to say. I know it’s not the usual fare for the blog, but it’s what’s on my mind.

“One of the last times I saw my Grandpa, he gave me a gift. Even if it weren’t for the timing of it, I would carry the moment with me for the rest of my life as an example of the essential Neil Cook.

It was a couple of months ago now, the weekend of Mike and Missy’s [my cousin and his wife] wedding, and of course everything was happening at once. While preparations were being set out at the church, a small contingent of us were sent to Neil and Phyllis’s apartment at the Renaissance [an assisted living home] to spend some quality time, help them get ready if needed, and then get them to the event itself.

We spent some time catching up, telling stories and the like, and then it was time to get ready and head out. It was then, with a deadline bearing down on us, that Grandpa told me he had something for me and asked me to follow him into the bedroom. He shuffled over to his sock drawer, and after rummaging around for a second, pulled out an old revolver… holstered, unloaded.

Well I recognized the thing in a split second. The gun’s a relic. It pre-dates World War Two. The first time I laid eyes on it was when I was probably 12 or 13, and after I watched Grandpa take a pot shot at a pesky squirrel that was “getting’ into the bird feeder” with it, I asked him to take me out shooting. So we went out with a couple of old tin cans, and I learned how to shoot a pistol with Grandpa.

This all flashed through my mind in a second as he offered it to me there in his bedroom at the Renaissance, and I thanked him, and then I said, “Grandpa, are you… allowed to keep guns here in assisted living?”

“No… I suppose they’d try to kick me out if they knew,” he said. And then he flashed that same, wry smirk I’d seen a hundred times before, but hadn’t seen for months.

And that’s how I’ll remember Neil Cook, and I hope you all will too – by that sideways stinker’s smirk, the one that let you know he was up to trouble. You’d see it right after he’d say something just to get a rise out of you, or beat your pants off at cards, or wander off to tinker with that old tractor without telling anyone where he was going. Neil Cook did it his way, and he liked it that way.

If you’d have asked him, he’d readily admit to being stubborn. He took a pride in it. His strong-headedness was the stuff of legends, but so was his strength as a person.

We’re talking about a man who laid the brick and stone that supports buildings… mighty structures that will stand for generations after he’s gone. Neil Cook was a man of single-minded purpose and depthless character, who I once watched scoff at the notion of leaving a job half-finished as a dangerous thunderstorm blew up around him because… “his mortar would set.” Unphased by the elements, he took an untamed, 100-acre parcel of wild land and bent it to his will, shaping it and nurturing it to his exact desires.

He was a steward of that land, and the land gave back whatever he asked of it.

With Phy as his wife, the two of them together built a family. And that may just be the greatest project he’s ever had a hand in. If you look at the dozens of pictures hanging here, you won’t find a one where he’s grinning wider than when he’s surrounded by his family. Unlike the buildings Neil erected, the love he and Phyllis cultivated continues to grow in the rich lives of their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. And unlike the forest he raised from seedlings, no storm will ever tear apart the roots of family he planted on that same land.

Because that same strength that ran through Neil’s veins runs in all of us: his family, his friends and anyone whose life he touched. It’s that strength we’ll turn to now, that love, to get by in his absence.”

I’ll be out of the loop again for a couple days this week to attend services up north, and then rumor has it life will settle back into normalcy.