Ryan Stenzel
Shiela Allard
Written Communications
3 November 2010
My Grandfather
My grandfather, Joe Sheehan, had many great qualities. He was always known for giving you advice if you were going through a bad time. Grandpa always looked at the world from a good perspective. My grandfather influenced many people throughout his life. He touched the hearts of his family and even people outside of our family. Everyone knew Joe Sheehan by name and reputation. He would help anyone in need without asking for anything in return. In my opinion this and his amazing work ethic made him one of the best men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Some of the reasons why I think my grandfather was such a great man are his generosity, his work ethic, and his warm heartedness.
While I was growing up, my mom would sometimes leave me in my grandfather’s care while she went to work. My grandpa owned his own lawn care service, which he often let me help with as soon as I got old enough. Anytime we were mowing a lawn, my grandfather was generous enough to pay me for the extra hours I waited while he visited with each client. I remember this one time while we were mowing an elderly lady’s lawn, Grandpa and I didn’t even get a chance to finish mowing the lawn before she invited us in for lemonade. I was only around ten at the time, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. My grandfather and this woman could have talked for hours about the history that they shared and the stories that they knew. After we left that day, he told me that getting to know a customer like that was one of the most rewarding parts of having your own business. My grandfather loved these connections he made with other people. Anytime he did work for someone, he would charge very little, if anything at all. Even when my cousins and I were with him, he would make sure that we all learned something before we parted ways. Like I said before, he taught me everything he knew about business and family and how they do not need to walk hand-in-hand. He taught one of my cousins all about farming and how to run his own farm.
He also taught me everything that he knew about owning a small business. Grandpa gave me some of the best advice I have ever heard to this day; “You need to find a career that you like and enjoy going to work every day.” Besides telling me little bits of wise advice, he taught me how to do simple bookwork and accounting, how to fix small engines, and how to do a lot of farm chores. He had the best work ethic out of anyone I had ever seen.
Grandpa always preached to me about family and friends being the most important things in life. He said that I would understand what that meant when I got a little older. He was right, as usual. When I was not being babysat or working with him, he would be at our house visiting and having a good time. He treated everyone that grew up with my aunts and uncles like they were family, even when they turned into adults. He also would get to know anyone, no matter the circumstances.
As I got older, my relationship with my grandfather only got stronger. This all changed when he was diagnosed with esophagus cancer. He was a smoker for a good portion of his life, but the doctors didn’t think that is what had caused it. They really didn’t know. They put him on chemotherapy which just seemed to make him get worse. He just kept getting thinner and weaker as time went on. When my family and I would go out to visit him, he was either asleep or incoherent. He was so heavily medicated that he did not recognize me or anyone in my family for that matter, a lot of the time. This went on for a while until one day he just didn’t wake up. This was July 29, 2004. I got a call at my house from my mom, who had already left to go see him. I was all alone at the time so naturally I broke into tears. I didn’t understand why my grandpa had to be taken away from me. I felt like somebody took a part of my heart and crushed it. My mom sent our church’s nun to pick me up. When I arrived at my grandfather’s house, I was not in the greatest situation. I could barely walk in the door let alone look at him. Every time I even tried to look in his direction I would break down. When he died I did not think that I would ever be able to get over it. It seemed like he was taken away from me for no reason. It really hit me when we went to the cemetery and put his casket in the ground. I don’t think I have had a dramatic experience like that since that day. I was not an easy person to be around for the first few months of his death because I was depressed and sad a lot of the time. That attitude seemed to change as the rest of the year past and my brother Jake was born. My youngest brother was born on July 29, 2005 at around the same time in the morning that my grandfather had died the previous year. This gave me a whole new perspective on the situation. To this day I believe that my grandpa just wanted us to know that he was there for us. He was there when my brother Jack and I were born. He was also a huge part of our lives as we were growing up, so I looked at this event as a type of closure. I realized that he would always be with my family and I in spirit.
The long and the short of this story is that my grandfather brought joy to many peoples’ lives. His death taught me that you only have so much time with your family and friends and you should cherish every moment like it was to be your last. He was one of the wisest and most generous men I had ever met and one of the greatest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing throughout my life.
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