The Suitcase

The Suitcase

"Your Grandpa is dead," my father whispered quietly, as he entered the house. He wrapped his masculine arm around the shoulders of my fourteen year old body, as though looking for support. My mind refused to comprehend the news.
In his hand was the only possession my father's father owned, a suitcase. This suitcase was small, more like an overnight bag, and worn around the edges. The leather covering showed signs of age. In a gesture of concern, I reached and gently removed the suitcase from his numb fingers and quietly left my father to grieve, alone.
The suitcase was stored in the back of a closet and left to collect dust. A few days after the funeral, as I sat reading, my father entered the room carrying the suitcase. I quickly followed him to the kitchen table. It was a difficult moment for my father, as he sat staring with red-moistened eyes at the suitcase, reluctant to open the lid. The mood that swept through that room was one of extreme reverence. The result of a man’s entire lifetime of hard work and toil was represented by its simple, musty, contents.

I watched in fascination as my father began to take the items out of the suitcase, one by one. He would pause at each piece of paper, perhaps trying to recall the memories attached to each one. The lump of his Adam's apple would work its way up and down, as swallowing was difficult. As each document told of my grandfather's life, I could picture him in my mind. As I saw his Birth Certificate, I tried to imagine what his surroundings were like on that cold winter day as his mother cuddled him from the cold wind in the dark log cabin. Looking at his military discharge papers, I could see him standing at ridged attention, proud to be an American soldier.

My father continued to grasp each document, as though to absorb the feelings and the memories each portrayed. He would gently lay the papers down on the smooth, shiny kitchen table, as though afraid of damaging them. Then there were the pictures. Grandpa has treasured away many pictures of his loved ones. Pictures of his three boys and a daughter stared back at my father in shades of black and white. The faded photographs spoke volumes of happier, younger times. As he would view each picture, I noticed that he lined them up in neat rows across the table. Grandpa had been blessed with twelve grand children, and he had made sure that his suitcase contained a picture of each one.

As the pictures of my cousins began to march across the table top, like witnesses before a jury, my dad's hand hesitated as he picked up another picture. It was a picture of me. He looked at that picture a long time, as though trying to find his own childhood hidden in the shades of gray and white. What happened next astonished me.

He reached into the suitcase and brought out yet another picture of me on a bicycle. Instantly, I knew something had changed. Of all his grand children, I was the only one that had more than one picture in his collections of treasures. My father continued to reach into the depths of that mystical box, and when he finished, there were twelve pictures bearing my image laid out across the table. As I looked up at my father's face, I realized the significance of what came out of that suitcase. I had been his favorite grandchild. "He always said he wanted to see you grow up to be a man," my father told me with pride shining in his eyes.

I walked away from there with my chest swelled bigger and my head held higher. My grandpa LOVED me. The memory of that day has stayed with me through the years.
* * *
The phone rang at work the other day; It was my mother calling, although I could hardly recognize her voice. "Son," she whispered, barely audible. “Yes, Mother, what is it?" "Your father is dead.”

As I made my way slowly toward the cabin where my father had lived, just a few short hours ago, I felt his presence. It was almost as thick as smoke. Sent to retrieve his meager possessions, I hesitated at the door before entering, tears streaming down my face. I staggered into the small room, trying to regain my thoughts and stop the ringing in my ears. Through the blur of my hot, stinging tears, I looked around the room and that is when I saw it. The suitcase.

My hand grasped the well-worn handle of the suitcase and I gripped it with all my might, holding on to the memories and bond between my father and I, just as he had done with his father so many years ago. This suitcase was sacred.

Several days after the funeral, I took out that rugged old suitcase out and set it on the table. My daughter looked on with innocent curiosity. As I began to reenact the same scene my father played out, I searched his papers, finally coming to the full realization of what that suitcase had meant to my father after his father had died. I began to line the pictures across the table, one of each of his grand children.

Then, as I slowly looked into the bottom of that treasure chest, I saw more pictures of my daughters. There were six in all. As I quietly closed the lid and wrestled with my emotions, I realized that although my father and grandfather had never had much in their lifetime, they had left something precious behind, a silent message that said "You were special to me; you were all I lived for ...

Anthony G. Stowe © 2002