I've been trying to keep myself from thinking too much about Easter this year. Simply because it's the holiday I most associate with my grandfather, and I miss him terribly. Growing up we would spend long Easter Sunday afternoons at my Gran Gran and Wilbur's house - eating a big lunch, hiding and finding eggs, playing Barbies, taking pictures and making home movies. This year is especially daunting now that my mom is gone. I can't imagine that I will feel very Easter-y. I had a come apart in CVS last week when I saw a little notepad like the one she had put in my Easter basket just two years ago. Oh how she loved to make an Easter basket.
And oh how my grandfather loved to make a movie. We have literally hours of home movies that Wilbur took of each of us walking down their front sidewalk toward the camera in our Easter best. Year after year after year. We now have these home movies on DVD, but I haven't been able to watch them since my mom died. The movies start when she was just a baby and it's so obvious that he was completely smitten with her...and with all of us, really. I just can't go there yet.
Wilbur used to love to tell the story of the first time he had me hide the Easter eggs for him to find. I couldn't have been more than four or five years old, and I wanted to be in charge of the game, of course. I "hid" every single egg in a pile in the top of a boxwood just beside the front porch. He had the home movie proof of this, and he enjoyed telling the same story to the same group of people every Easter Sunday. Quite possibly the most endearing quality of my grandfather's was his complete adoration of his grandchildren. And I was the first. I like to think he was most in love with me. Because I can't imagine anyone ever loving anyone like that again.
