My Ordinary Hero
Having lived through the Great Depression, fought battles in a world war, and cheated death on numerous occasions, could a simple game of whiffle ball with his five-year-old grandson make that much of a difference? He couldn’t have known the lasting impact he was making on me on those warm summer afternoons in the backyard.
Known affectionately by the family as Granddaddy, Mitchell never liked drawing attention to himself. As the son of a farmer and school teacher growing up in the Deep South of Mississippi, I’ve never been sure if his strong yet humble demeanor was a result of how he was made, how he was raised, or what he endured on the battlefield. But now at ninety-seven years old, when the beloved patriarch starts telling stories, everyone listens.
Mitch’s traumatic stories of life and death weren’t bound to the battlefield. He had been hit by a car, witnessed a neighbor’s murder, was electrocuted and left hanging by a wire on a telephone pole, and fallen onto a concrete floor from a rooftop. Mitch has cheated death time and again, but by the grace of God, the man has lived a full and fearless life.
But for all the stories Mitch has lived through, lives he’s saved, and losses he’s endured, nothing he did was as heroic to me as the time he spent loving me in the seemingly insignificant moments of my life. As I would later learn, these ordinary moments wrestling on the living room floor, playing ball in the backyard, or holding a cane pole on the Mississippi River, were anything but ordinary—to me they would become childhood landmarks that I would later need to rebuild my life as an adult.
Only months after turning 40, I found myself completely lost and coming apart. Some call it a midlife crisis, Saint John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul. Both seem appropriate in their own way. Whatever you want to call it, my issue was one of identity, acceptance, worth, and belonging. At 40 years old, I realized, I didn’t know who I was.
I made a list of every moment I could remember from childhood when I felt safe, loved, happy, and when I felt cared for. It didn’t take long for me to see the common denominator in nearly every single one of these memories—my granddaddy.
It wasn’t the trip to Disney World or the beach, the gifts I had received or the games I had won on the ball field. No, the memories that would help me string together a coherent narrative of my childhood where God’s presence and the love a grandfather had made visible in my life, even amidst the chaos. Those moments may have seemed ordinary but they were far from it . In the hallway with a game of nickels, in wrestling matches on the living room floor, on the banks of the Mississippi River catching catfish, and in the back yard with a plastic whiffle ball and bat. Those were the ones that mattered most.
My granddaddy has changed a lot of people’s lives, many of whom I’ll never know. But the simple reality I’m remembering today is that he profoundly changed my life, and he did it one ordinary moment at a time.
Thank you, Granddaddy, for showing me the love of God. Thank you for spending time with me, for teaching me, and for never leaving my side. I love you. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t thank God for you.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a whiffle ball game of my own to get to.
Read more of My Ordinary Hero by Chris Bryant in Kinsmen Journal Volume 1 — Purchase here.
