More Grandpa Dinkels

Let me tell you about my Grandpa.

Louis Frederick Dinkel.

No this is not a blog on genealogy, though I know that genealogy is important.  This is quite literally about my grandpa and love, his love, God’s love, perfect love.

When I was a little girl we would go visit my grandpa, and my little bit crazy grandma.  Grandma was fun, she would buy us things, expensive things.  As a little kid, flashy things were exciting, but Grandpa was better.  I knew he loved me, loved me more than anyone or anything.  I remember him holding me tall to watch the coo coo clock.  I remember him taking me for walks and stopping to pick a rose from a neighbor’s flowers (OOPS) for my crazy grandma, and I remember how he looked at her, with love in his eyes.

I remember walking through the door every summer for the first time and him kissing me and saying, “This one looks just like me,” as he continued down the line of all of my brothers and sisters, even my adopted brother who is black.  I remember him taking us for rides to get ice cream in his old station wagon, and I remember him complaining to my grandmother every time that she bought him a new pair of fancy shoes that his old ones were just fine.  And I remember him shrugging and putting them on for her as he smiled at her with love.

I remember walking into his business and watching as he greeted each and every employee knowing everything about them and showing them proudly his spectacular grandchildren, and I remember thinking that I was someone special to all of those that worked for my grandpa, because I was his.

I remember walking into a restaurant or diner and feeling the room change and the crowd soften because the light that flowed from my grandpa lightened all that was around him, and for a moment peace spread through any place he went.  I remember his house covered in pictures of the Savior and crucifixes and holy bibles.  And I remember knowing his love for God was greater than anything that I had ever known.

And when I got older, I began to realize that crazy grandma was really very sick/bipolar/schizophrenic hurtful grandma.  Grandma wasn’t nice grandma, grandma wasn’t loving wife or mother grandma.  She was hurtful and cruel and sad grandma, and my grandfather loved her perfectly even with so much hurt.  He brought her shakes and flowers and slippers and she would say thank you one moment and be cruel the next, but my grandpa loved my grandma till the very, very end of his life.  Why, you ask, because he loved the Savior and he was as much like the Savior as perhaps possible in this life. 

When I got married and started raising my babies I always thought of my grandfather who only met my oldest once when he was only a few months old.  It’s been so many years since he has died, so many, but I still think of him every single day.

It took me so many years to learn to find joy, joy in everything.  It took me so so many years to be the glass is half full kind of gal, but now that I have lived so many years that way I can’t help but understand the kind of peace and joy that comes from finding something so great.  Sometimes my heart physically hurts from the joy that I feel.  And when it does I think of my grandfather.  How do I become like him?  How do I take that joy and peace and love and let it radiate out of me so that the room, wherever that room might be, softens from me walking into it, lightens just a little from me being there?  How do I share that love, that peace and joy so perfectly like my grandpa did?

He shared it so perfectly that this granddaughter of his, so many years later still smiles and softens for thinking on him.  He loved my Savior, his Savior, and he loved people even in their most hurtful states and he changed his little granddaughter for forever because of his perfect love.

Now if only there were enough Grandpa Dinkels around, maybe the whole world would change, because their God’s light, would be so great.  Maybe, just maybe, that is what this world needs, more of my grandpa Dinkels.  Maybe then eternity would be right now.

http://www.nedcoelectronics.com/pages/tribute.asp a tribute a little about him from his death.