Re-Post "Going Out in Style"

Today marks the one year anniversary of my grandfather's passing. My mother has driven to Troup to be with my grandmother where they will hold an informal memorial service.

As I was visiting with one of my friends about this, she suggested that I re-post my final "Granddaddy" story as a tribute because it didn't matter the situation, there was always a tremendous amount of laughter in their lives.

So...here it is...

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Going Out in Style

I have to own up to something. On Sunday morning Lisa K. told me that I was not allowed to write another sad post because the last one that she read had made her cry. Since my post from last night did not adhere to her request, I thought I would throw in a funny one this morning just to swing us all back towards laughter.

Here goes...

By Sunday morning, my grandfather had been nonresponsive for a little over 24 hours. Since my grandfather always worked to look presentable, my mother and her sisters decided to freshen him up a little. They washed his face, gave him a good shave (with an electric razor), and put lotion on his face, hands, and feet.

While all of that was part of his normal "get ready for the day" routine, they did decide to add a couple of steps that I feel fairly safe in saying he would have NEVER EVER EVER done himself. The first was mousse. Yes, my mother decided that the little bit of hair he had on his head needed some product. So, she pulled out her can of mousse and styled him up good.

If that wasn't enough to test his masculinity, my mother's baby sister pulled out her tweezers. Do you see where I am going with this? Yes, she proceeded to pluck his eyebrows (apparently, a nonresponsive patient can remain nonresponsive even through the pain of a good plucking). She said that she mainly worked on his uni-brow and a handful of stray hairs, but I would like to state for the record that he looked a little more metrosexual than I have ever seen an elderly gentleman look.

Later in the day, as we were sitting around him and visiting, someone remarked that he was beginning to look a little jaundiced. His kidneys and liver had started shutting down, and so we chalked up the color change to that. However, as we kept talking about it, my mother mentioned that she thought the lotion had something in it. On closer inspection, we discovered that the lotion did indeed have something in it. It was a Self-Tanning Lotion. Yes, apparently we self-tanned my granddaddy. He looked better than George Hamilton. After laughing quite a bit about the bronze-like effect of his face, hands, and feet, we told him that first we were sorry and second that he at least looked good.

From his hair to his eyebrows to his self-tan, he was most definitely going out in style.