My grandfather was 89 when he died, and if you had asked any one of us the week before the funeral what kind of man he had been, we all would have said some version of the same thing.
Solid. That was the word people used for him. He was steady and dependable.
His name was Dean, but nobody called him that unless he was in trouble with my grandmother, and she had been gone for seven years by then.
To the rest of us, he was Grandpa.
I was 28 when we buried him. My cousin Rachel kept dabbing at her face with tissues that were falling apart from overuse.
My aunt Linda stood near the front row, greeting people in that brittle, exhausted way one does when they have cried so much their face almost goes numb.
My uncle Rob kept clearing his throat like he could hold himself together if he made enough noise.