The last month or so has been an emotional roller-coaster for my mother, and by extension, me.  Last Friday, September 9th, our hearts were both eased when her significant other of more than 25 years was able to peacefully pass into his final rest.  Dewey was 87 years old, and died from complications after surgery on an abdominal aneurysm.

He called her Pamela.  The only names I’d ever known my mother by were Mom, Pam, and Meemaw/Grandma.  I had never heard anyone call her by her “big name.”  He would be trying to explain something to her, or calm her down when she was in a tizzy.  “Now, Pamela,” he’d say, with the patience of a stone.  When I hear him talk in my mind, I hear him say that to her.  And it makes me smile.

Dewey was a good man.  He and my mother were never married, but they were companions for so long that they might as well have been. They owned property together over the years, traveled all over the United States, retired together to Florida, where they still traveled and enjoyed each other’s company.  He was my mother’s “port in a storm,” and the person she talked to the most.

He loved fiercely.  He loved his kids and grandkids, even his pseudo grandkids (my children).  He loved their little dog, Willy.  He loved my mother.  He could make my kids belly laugh with a silly face or a “boogety-boogety” shaking of his lips.  He was a tinker, and my son would follow him around learning how to fix things or build things.  He was generous to a fault, a trite phrase, I know, but it is so true.  He would buy things for us, make sure my mom was always comfortable, took my kids out to eat.

He served in the Korean War, and read voraciously.  I would often send a box of books – always nonfiction biographies or history – and he would call me to thank me.  The Perfect Child had subscriptions to Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and we’d pass those on to him when we were done with them.  I have a small stack of them, and a couple books, right now in my storage room, that I was gathering to send him.  Throughout his life he had been many things – a butcher, worked in construction, did maintenance work at a university.

But he was always a good man.  A kind man.  A man more men should be like.  I and my kids will miss him in our lives.  I cannot help but to remember him with a smile, although the tears flow today, they will not flow forever.

They say your legacy will be how they remember you.  I will remember him as kind, good, honest, and caring.

RIP Dewey.  Thank you for all you did for us.

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