Alfonzo Carlos Jones 1934-2007

So my fathers, father passed away on Last Thursday. He had been sick for a while –

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although no one expected him to actually pass away. I can’t say that i had much of a relationship with him. The last time I saw him was when my fathers youngest sister was married roughly two years ago. (see picture below and to the left – that is my father most of his full siblings and his father and step-mother) And before that He came to the hospital to see Cammy the day she was born – which was honestly the most shocking moment in my adult life when he walked through those doors, I saw him again a few weeks later at my fathers home where he fed Cammy and spent the afternoon talking and playing with her. Picture to the right.

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Other than these memories – the memories of my grandfather are few and far between. When I was a kid he used to drive Santa for a Christmas float and would bring Santa buy for a visit before the parade. He also gave us Monopoly and gloves every year for Christmas for most of my pre teen years.

Other than these, most of my knowledge of my grandfather is based on my fathers love of my grandfather. i tried once – when I decided I was my own adult, to try to bridge the gap between my grandfather and I but didn’t get terribly far before I was like this is too much like fighting to save a single sided relationship, and gave up – somedays I regret that.

My father is my grandfathers clone. See above photo, my grandfather second from left, my father fourth from left.

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And I have always known that my father loves his father the way that I love him. And so while I morn the grandfather I never knew, I morn for my father and my aunt Pattys loss more. I cannot imagine how I would feel if I lost my father. And I know Patty had the same kind of father / daughter relationship with her daddy that I have with mine. Although Patty’s mother Mary – my grandfathers widow who he was married to for 47 years, was the person I gravitated to. She and I have never been close, I have actually felt like she’d rather – not – where we were concerned, I look a little too much like my grandmother for comfort, so I can understand honestly. But I watched her sit there – on the Friday following his death and wonder what she was gonna do, and thought to my self – no matter what has ever happened to, between, around, behind, beside, us – that right now she is a wife, suffering the kind of loss I could not fathom. She was the strongest i could ever imagine in this situation. She allowed my batty grandmother (totally smiling when I say that) – her husbands first wife whose name mocked her from her husbands tattooed fore arm for forty seven years, to visit with him on his death bed and attend the funeral with her children. She was a pillar when her grown children – trying to be strong for her – crumbled into sobbing toddlers in her arms. She was everything I hope i could be should the Lord bless me to have to endure that kind of loss. God willing, I’d like to see sixty years of marriage but forty seven is pretty darn respectable.

I loved him, even if I didn’t know him, complicated pasts don’t mean much when there is no future.

Thank you all for your thoughts and condolences.