The grandkids tribute

Here's the tribute that I was asked to write for my grandpas funeral. It was a long weekend, and I never would have got it done without Tiffany's feedback, and Anthony's help there at t he end. Thanks everyone.


I heard a man say once, when someone had passed away, “The world has lost a great man, but I have lost a friend.” For some reason that quote stuck with me, reminding me of the multiple ways which a single life impacts the world. We are here today because someone has died, but we are not all here for the same person. Some are here because Bro. Albert Barr the evangelist is gone. Others are here for their friend. There are siblings, children and other close family. But this is a reflection from a small group of people who have lost their grandfather. To us, he was not a preacher, though we listened to him preach, and he was not a father, though he had children, to us he was first and foremost, our grandfather. It is to difficult to find appropriate words to say goodbye, or to express how we miss the man who was our papa, so instead this is a reflection, of what we – his grandchildren – remember. What we think of, when we think of him.
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First, the word Papa, he was never Grandpa, or Bro Barr, he was Papa. Fitting that we should never have called him by a formal name, just as we are selves were never called by our given names. If we were to think back, and think hard, among all his grandchildren we could perhaps come up with a dozen times that he called us directly by our names. We were sugar-lump, or baby, and some of our earliest memories are crawling into his lap to be bounced on a knee while we protested that we were not skunk-a-monks, whatever those might have been.
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Many other people thinking of their grandparents will think of the things they did, or of the things they gave them, but we do not. We remember him instead, for the things he said. Not many grandparents are capable of engaging and maintaining the attention of a small child, but this was Papa’s specialty. We cannot sing Jesus loves me, without picturing him strumming away on the guitar singing it happily to a completely different tune, nor can we hear certain nursery rhymes without hearing his version, for instance,

Hickory Dickory Dock
Two mice ran up the clock
The clock struck one
And the other escaped with minor injuries.

He told stories and generally entertained so much that gathering around to listen to him was one of the few activities that could bring us in from play.

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Once at Nanny and Papa’s house, we never wanted to leave. Inevitably we would beg to spend the night, and since we never came prepared we would always borrow a night shirt from Papa and throw pillows and blankets on the floor, fighting over who got to sleep under the table. He never missed a chance to join us in the living room, roughing it with us (from the couch). Such occasions presented opportunities to perfect his modified fairy tales.
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Other times we would gather around him as he worked on the computer. He would walk us through step by step from the simplest actions like opening a program to complicated things like designing a program. Most of us still remember watching him work on the Sammy-O project which sadly he never finished. We were allowed to test the games, and sometimes our voices even became a part of the animated world.
Holidays such as Christmas, would find us gathered around him again – this time in mock frustration – as he would slowly read the names off each package, often slipping in a name unrecognized by anyone in the family. He was a person who found, and created humor in everything, a trait that has continued to be passed on. His ready laugh and cheerful face will remain in our minds forever, and his playfulness will be the ideal we hope to be when we are grandparents.
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He did not sit us down to teach us, but we learned many things from him. We began to learn to love books, and poetry, riddles, and songs. His were the first sermons that we actually listened to, first to see if he would mention us, then to listen to the illustrations, but somewhere along the way the actual message became clear, and stuck with us. From those sermons we learned of sticking with your standards, of having faith in God’s promises and provisions, and what happens when you stick gum in a frog during a dissection.
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As we grow older, we have begun to forget certain things and times. Each one of us has specific memories that we cling to, comparing and reminding the others when we come together to remember. But we will never forget the feeling of his hugs, or the sound of his voice. We will never forget him praying with everyone before we would leave the house. We can never forget the man we knew, but only regret that the youngest of us will not know him – the man who was our Papa.