grapefruit

If there is something you should know about me, it’s that I love grapefruits. I love them. I love their shape and the smell of their orangey flesh. I love their bittersweetness. I love cupping my hands around them and bringing them to my face.

I love smelling them.

LaMar Albert Dixon was my grandfather. He was my father’s father and one frigid day in January, he died. I was ten years old.

The cancer in his liver turned his face so yellow it looked like someone had drawn on his face with a crayon. He was so very, very sick.

He wanted to be home. And that is where he died.

At 3:00am, I woke to my mother crying, with the phone in her hand. My sister and I always found ourselves sleeping on my parents’ bedroom floor and that is where we were, huddled in mounds of blankets. My father was gone. My father was there. I sat up and looked once at my mother. I knew.

I knew very little about my grandpa when he died, though we spent every Sunday evening with him, eating salted popcorn and watching Lawrence Welk. He was so solemn and less emotional than anyone I have ever met. His body was the hardest thing I’ve ever squeezed. I used to wince when he pulled me to him. Not to say, at all, that he was harsh, or unkind. He was the quiet type that loved from the sidelines, I suppose.

The last time I saw him, I bent to hug him in bed. He was frail. I said to him, once, that I loved him.

He loved me too.

He loved to eat grapefruits for breakfast at 11:00am (I learned to love them from him). He loved 2928 Park Circle Drive. And he loved my grandma. Very much.
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Every night, and ten times throughout sunlight, I tell Jared that I love him. I tell him over and over again. I kiss him and love on him.

I really, really l o v e him.

I tell Morgan, too, of my love for him and how that loves grows every waking moment of every day. I whisper it in his ear each time I tuck him in. I lean to him and touch my lips to his hair. I love him. Really.

I have love in my heart for my family. And for a loving Heavenly Father that created this love in our hearts, makes our hearts swell. He loves us so deeply that He made it possible, in his great, wide plan, to allow us to have the opportunity of eternity, forever and ever, together. How could we have it any other way? I would be so very lost in this world without knowing that. I would be lonely and hopeless and my heart would be broken.

But instead, I am blessed beyond measure, with more blessings than I could ever count. And some blessings that I count every day. Blessings like family. Jared. Morgan. Blessings like temples. And eternity -with my own eternal family. Blessings like baby toes. And laughter.

And yes, blessings like grapefruits.