A Portrait of a Beloved Grandpa
First published on August 24, 2022, on my former website.
One year ago to this day, my grandpa, Richard Bord, passed into eternity. It was my half birthday, and I sometimes wonder if he let go of earth on purpose that day so I wouldn't ever forget about him. As if I ever could.
He was afraid people would forget him after he passed – a fear he mournfully confided to my grandma many a time. "Nonsense!" she would lovingly bark at him. "How could you ever think that we'd forget about you?"
No, I never could forget about him. He was one of the most important people in my life, second only to my mom. The immensity of the role he played in my life – and continues to play, truthfully – I could never fully put into words. I need to try, though. Maybe this is just for me, maybe this is for someone else. I don't know. All I know is that as I write this, the one year anniversary of his death is coming upon me and I cannot hold back the vivid flashbacks darting into my mind like arrows at unbidden times. I have to do something to cope. I have to write.
So here, I will share with you the story of a man well-loved.
My grandpa was all things good, beautiful, and true to me when I was growing up. My very first memory is of he and I walking slowly down his basement stairs – slowly for my pace, as I was only fifteen months old at the time. We were going down to get some toys, quietly! – as he reminded me with a "Shhhh! We have to be quiet, Uncle Stephen is sleeping." My Uncle Stephen was living at home at the time while studying at Penn State. Years later I told my mom about this memory and she was surprised I could remember it at all. But I do remember it: the dim lighting of the staircase, peeking through the doorway to my uncle's room, my hand safely tucked into my grandpa's.
I spent so much time with him as a small child. He would take me on walks down the side of the creek that ran behind my house, pointing out the ducks and showing me how to throw rocks in the water. Once I got to be about five, he and my grandma would take me to Stone Valley, a lake about twenty or so minutes from their house, and we would go hiking. I learned a lot about fish on those afternoons out at the lake, for Grandpa dearly loved to fish. I also learned to be careful and watch where I stepped. On one occasion, I wandered down some rocks into a creek off the lake, and I was just about to step onto another rock when I heard Grandpa behind me. "Cecilia, I want you to come back, very slowly, okay?" So I did, completely unaware that he'd just saved me from stepping on a highly poisonous copperhead snake until he pointed it out to me from a place of safety.
As I grew older, he taught – or rather, tried to teach – me how to paint. Grandpa was a truly skilled artist, and I wanted to be just like him. Unfortunately, the talent was not passed down to me, but I tried my darnedest, and I treasure the time spent with him patiently showing me how to paint very basic flowers.
He was also my science teacher. I was homeschooled, and he retired when I was in kindergarten, so eventually my mom proposed that he teach me science. I didn't know until I was older that he'd started out college as a biology major, but a sociology professor convinced him to switch majors to sociology, and that was how he ended up getting his PhD and working as a sociology professor at Penn State. He told me later on that he regretting switching to sociology, because biology was far more up his alley. In any case, he taught me science starting when I was in second grade? Third grade? I can hardly remember anymore. But it was a delightfully fun class with him in charge.
I learned far more than just science with Grandpa, though. He taught me how to take tests so well that I flounced my way through all of my college finals with shockingly minimal studying, relying on his tips and tricks that had become second nature to me. I never got less than an B+ on any final in college, and it truly was all thanks to Grandpa.
He also told me stories: stories of his childhood growing up in Wisconsin Rapids, stories of his time in the Navy, stories of his time in college and grad school, stories of how he met and fell in love with my grandma. Grandpa started becoming a whole person to me, with a rich past full of color and characters, not just the beloved, mildly cantankerous man I currently knew as "Grandpa" who was always willing to let me have far too many cookies. I learned that he'd been a runner who'd run the Boston Marathon, and ran 12 miles on his lunch break every day for years when he worked at Penn State. I learned about the paper mill he worked at after he got out of the Navy, how he told his Aunt Colleen that he didn't want to work there the rest of his life, and how she told him he was free to change his mind and do something else. I learned about how he met my grandma at a bar, and how he thought to himself that with her, he had to either "get on this ship or get out quick", for my grandma has always been a force to be reckoned with in every way.
I learned things about him from Mom and Grandma, too. His parents divorced when he was fourteen – alcohol issues were at play. The whole town treated him and his mom like outcasts after that. Perhaps that's why he joined the navy at eighteen. I've never asked; I only speculate on that. The stories he told me about his fishing and hunting adventures along the Black River? They were so that he wouldn't have to hear his parents fight all the time prior to their divorce. After his parents divorced, his Uncle Jim and Aunt Colleen did a fair bit of looking after him, and he lived with them after he came back from the Navy. They became like second parents to him, and their children like siblings to Grandpa, who'd never had siblings of his own. Their lively household with many children instilled a deep sense that family was top priority in life, and this belief permeated the rest of his life.
But Grandpa didn't talk about his own family life much to me. As I said, I heard most of it from Mom and Grandma. But he did tell me little bits here and there. "We had a piano for a little while, and my mom had me take lessons with a teacher in town," he said to me one day. "The teacher thought I should go to Juilliard. But my parents missed too many payments on the piano, and one day they came to take it away. So that was the end of that." Years later, when I was in grad school, he sat down at the piano and began playing the final portion of the third movement of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. My jaw dropped – this piece is terribly difficult for accomplished pianists, and yet here was my frail grandpa playing it perfectly. "I learned that for a recital when I was about thirteen," he said when he was done. "I haven't played that in years." Here my grandpa was a child piano prodigy, and I had no idea. So much clicked in my head right there – how my uncle was such a talented organist though he studied computer science in college, how my mom could have so easily had a career in opera if she hadn't wanted a family more, how my aunt and other uncle, too, had a lot of musical talent with little formal training. How I, and so many of my siblings and cousins, were musically inclined. The talent all came from Grandpa, with considerable help from my Grandma, who'd so dearly wanted to play an instrument growing up and vowed to have each of her children take music lessons.
Grandpa was legendary, fascinating, overcoming odds that I grew to understand more and more as I grew older. As my mom puts it – "We [she and her siblings] should have been statistics. He grew up in poverty, and he was a child of divorce, with addiction running in his family. But we weren't statistics."
Yes, my grandpa was invincible, I was convinced of it. He was a steady constant, always pointing me towards all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is good.
And then everything changed in an instant.
I will never forget where I was when I heard the news. I was thirteen years old and in eighth grade. At this point my family had moved into the house two doors down from my grandparents, only about four years prior, and I was in the kitchen making muffins while my mom made dinner. The phone rang; it was my grandparents' house phone. This was a usual occurrence, especially at inconvenient times, like during homeschooling hours, or dinner, or when my mom had her hands full. "Hello?" she answered the phone, tucking it under one ear. "Oh, what were the results?" And then her voice changed. "What does that mean? Cancer?"
A lump suddenly appeared in my throat. Cancer? Who had cancer? Grandma or Grandpa?
My mom got off the phone, and I asked what was going on. She told me my beloved, invincible grandpa had been diagnosed with multiple myloma – bone marrow cancer. And it was terminal. There was very little that could be done. We might have a couple years left with him, if we were lucky. A wall went up in my heart in that very moment, a wall that I wasn't aware of for a long time after that.
That was in October 2011. Shortly after, my mom called me into her bathroom one morning, excitement filling her voice. "Cecilia, I'm pregnant!" I was the first one to know; my dad had just left for work. We were so giddy, but I knew each of us were hoping Grandpa would have time with this new grandchild.
And then so soon after that, Grandpa wound up in the hospital for back surgery. I don't remember why – just that five screws had to be put into his spine, and that he was in there for an awful long time.
And during all of that, Mom had to be put on partial bedrest with this pregnancy. The little time she was allowed to be up and about she spent up at the hospital with my grandparents. Everything was chaotic. Everything was falling apart. Life as I knew it would never be the same. I had to grow up very fast during this time. Life – which had seemed so sweet, and delightful, and beautiful to me in so many ways – was revealing to me deep tragedies and heartache.
Mom's bedrest only lasted about a month, and she was back on her feet by the start of her second trimester. Grandpa came home from the hospital. We had Christmas all together. Sunday dinners at Grandma and Grandpa's resumed. Much of life went back to normal, marked different only by a plethora of appointments Grandpa now had to be at.
And the two years we thought we'd have with Grandpa turned into three, then four, then six, then eight. New immunotherapies came out that he was able to try, and they brought him into remission. He would never be cured, but he'd last longer if he stayed in remission. But to me, his impending death always seemed to be hanging over our heads like a dark cloud. And that wall I unwittingly put up around my heart upon hearing of his diagnosis grew with time. I spent less and less time with him. He'd be around tomorrow, after all. And I was busy with high school. Then I went to college to study flute performance, and the life of a music major kept me very busy. "I'll call next weekend," I would tell myself. "I'll visit more when I'm home for my next break." And yet somehow in the midst of classes, concerts, and competitions, I would find time slip through my fingers when I was at school and the phone calls neglected; my phone was somehow more important than Grandpa's presence when I was with him. He and I semi-regularly exchanged emails, of which I only responded to about two-thirds of. But those emails I do have, I treasure with all my heart. I shouldn't regret things because I can't do anything now about it, but I do. I bitterly, bitterly regret that I didn't care for our relationship the way I ought to have cared for it. He meant the world to me. He was like a second father to me. And yet I could not bring myself to make the most of the time we had together, because I was already grieving his death which had not occurred.
I knew in my bones I would find out about it at school. So when my mom called me in late January of my junior year to tell me Grandpa was in the hospital again, this time with a triple combination of flu, pneumonia, and congestive heart failure, I was convinced this was it. I would hear of his passing at some point soon. I would need to go home for his funeral.
And yet somehow, when spring break rolled around, I visited him in rehab, not the hospital. And my one of my dear college friends even got to meet him. I was so happy that my grandpa could meet such a dear friend of mine.
He rallied, but he wasn't the same after that. He'd been weak from his cancer treatments prior to his five-week stint in the hospital, but now he was frail. Time was slipping through our hands, and I knew it.
And he knew it, too. The summer between my junior and senior years of college, he pulled me aside one day as I was leaving from a practice session. That summer I was getting back into playing flute after a terrible stint with carpal tunnel and an emerging bout of tendonitis that all but destroyed my career plans. I practiced over at my grandparents' house because he loved hearing me play, and I needed the motivation. "Cecilia, I want you to play the flute at my funeral," he said.
"Of course I will," I said, a familiar lump rising in my throat. I'd do anything for him, even though I doubted I would be able to make it through playing at his funeral. "What do you want me to play?"
"Hmm," he said thoughtfully, his hands resting on the wooden cane that had become his constant companion. "I want you to play something very beautiful, very lyrical." Then a familiar twinkle flashed across his eyes. "And birdlike, too."
Okay. Lyrical, but birdlike. I dutifully hunted for something that would fit the bill, and I found something: Jules Mouquet's second movement of his work for flute, La Flute de Pan. I sent my grandpa a link to it, and he approved heartily. So I programmed the movement for my senior recital, because I wanted to have a happy memory playing it before I had to play it for such a sad occasion.
I went back to school in mid-July to move into my apartment and work the rest of the summer at the campus library, and when fall rolled around I was busy as ever. His emails came less frequently – I think as a result of his declining energy. But I tried to be better about calling a couple times a month, and I faithfully kept him updated on my grad school application and audition process. Penn State ended up on my list in a surprise twist. I hadn't wanted to come back home for grad school, but a teaching assistant position for the flute professor was opening up, and if I got it, I wouldn't have to pay a penny for grad school. I loved the flute professor and knew she’d be a good teacher for me at that point in my studies, and the more I looked into the program, it seemed that it would be a great fit for my own goals for grad school. It became a no-brainer to apply. So I applied there, and to three schools in the Midwest. My auditions took place within ten days in late January/early February of 2020, and by mid February I got a text from the Penn State flute professor offering me the assistantship. I knew it was the best deal I would get, and I'd spoken with my grandparents when I was home for that audition about possibly living with them for grad school, a proposition they eagerly welcomed. So there I was, content as could be knowing that my post-grad plans were settled, all before spring break.
And then Covid hit. I went home. I played my senior recital via Facebook live, not in a recital hall. Yet blessings abounded even there, for my grandparents came over to my house to watch. I got to play the Mouquet for Grandpa while he was still alive, a memory I will always treasure. He was so proud of me. "Beautiful job as always," he told me. I still remember his eyes shining as he beamed at me. For so long I had tied up my self worth in how well I could play the flute. Carpal tunnel had actually destroyed my self-worth. But my grandpa helped build it back up. He helped me realize that making music wasn't about proving my worth to others. It's about giving a gift to other people - a gift that God gave me first. It's about stewarding that gift wisely. I didn't need to win a principal flute position in an orchestra, or be the winner of a huge music competition by the time I was 25. The look of pride and joy in Grandpa's eyes was enough for me.
I moved into my grandparents' home the Saturday after I graduated from my living room. It was a blissful summer, in spite of Covid and all those restrictions. I spent so much time hiking with my brothers, and the rest of my time baking treats for Grandpa. His appetite was on the decline, but he would never, ever say no to a sweet treat. I baked pies, cakes, and cookies, much to the mild chagrin of Grandma, who was trying to get Grandpa to eat healthy.
And yet even then, and especially after I began my masters, I still didn't spend much time with him. Not the way I ought to have. I'd been given this beautiful opportunity to spend more time with him, and I threw a great deal of it away. For seeing my beloved Grandpa day in and day out so sick from the effects of cancer and the many treatments he'd been on was heartwrenching to see. And in an effort to protect my heart, I pushed him away.
But he was still always there for me. The most notable memory I have of that was from when my Instagram account began to grow rapidly. I had a reel about how Catholics don't worship Mary be favored by the algorithm, and wound up having a breakdown over the vile comments thrown my way by Protestants who'd come across it. I don't throw that term "breakdown" around lightly – I genuinely had a breakdown. And in spite of the fact that Grandpa didn't understand what on earth was going on with me, as I think he only had a vague idea about what Instagram even was, he was the only one who could get through to me. He sat with me, and loved me, and comforted me, and hugged me while I cried about something very relatively minor in comparison to the pain I know he was enduring at the time.
Another notable memory occurred when I began writing music during my first year of my masters, the first real pieces I ever tried to write. One of these was a trio for two flutes and piano, based on the Ave Maria chant and my attempt at depicting Mary as the Star of the Sea. I began writing it in February 2020, and I'll never forget the look on Grandpa's face when I played a midi file of the opening section for him. "She wrote that!" he said to Grandma. "She wrote that!" No person will ever give me a greater compliment than that.
You see – I realize now that such an integral part of the reason why God has drawn me to Himself primarily through beauty is because of the grandpa He gave me. Grandpa was lovably cantankerous and delightfully introverted with a wit and sense of humor that didn't fade with age; he'd endured a lot in life and fought many a good fight. But he was also a sensitive soul who deeply appreciated beauty. I'll never forget watching the 2019 Little Women with him: I looked over at him at the end to ask him what he thought, and he had tears streaming down his face. "That was so beautiful," was all he said. He loved Josh Groban's music and listened to it every morning as he got ready for the day. If Josh Groban wasn't playing on Grandpa's stereo at some point on any given day, that meant he was feeling absolutely horrible. He wrote poetry for every grandchild on every Valentine's Day, except the last: I knew the end was coming when he didn't write any of us a Valentine's Day poem.
Summer 2021 brought many weeks of travel my way, and in one way it was an answered prayer. All during Covid I desperately just wanted to travel, and so when things began opening back up, I took full advantage! I went to Florida with my mom to visit my uncle, I visited a friend from grad school in Wisconsin and roadtripped back to Pennsylvania with her, I went to Texas twice, and I spent a week in Cape May, NJ, with my entire mom's side of the family, including Grandpa. But if I could go back and redo anything, I would have cut a significant portion of that traveling out so that I could spend more time with Grandpa. Precious time I knew was slipping out of my hands, but I wasn't sure how fast.
On August 3rd, I went on a walk with my mom after dinner with my grandparents. We got back, I said goodbye to my mom at her driveway, and lazily waltzed back over to my grandparents only to find a scene I never wanted to find. Grandpa had fallen in the garage and likely broke something. I knew as I saw him lying on the floor of the garage that he'd never come back to this house – this house that he'd spent over half his life in, raising a family, loving on grandkids, writing and painting and growing in faith and love and wisdom. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to comfort him. And yet i said nothing.
The hospital in town decided to send him to a much more advanced hospital two hours away, where he'd receive better care. Grandma never left his side. My mom, my aunt, and my two uncles alternated being there, too, as he was fortunately allowed two visitors at a time. And for a time, it seemed like he'd be able to come home and recover. And then things grew bleaker – it wasn't just a broken hip, it was fractured vertabrae in his spine, it was congestive heart failure, it was excess fluid in his lungs. And I hoped against hope that he could come home and spend his last days there. But it was not to be.
I had my last conversation with him via FaceTime on August 21st. It was short, but I updated him on the goings-on at home, and I told him I loved him. He told me he loved me. And I silently wept as I handed my sister the phone so she could talk to him.
On August 22nd, he got to have a long conversation with his Aunt Colleen – yes, the Aunt Colleen from earlier, who was at the time still alive and kicking. The Aunt Colleen who loved him so well as he healed from the aftermath of his parents' divorce and encouraged him to not settle for his job at the paper mill and try something else instead.
And on August 23rd, I woke up to texts and calls from my mom, my dad, and my aunt. I called my mom, only to find out that Grandpa was unresponsive and that this was it. I held it together long enough to finish our phone call, and then I sank down onto the floor of my grandparents' kitchen and wept bitterly. The loss I knew had been coming for almost ten years had arrived in all its darkness. Grandpa was dying.
Then miracle of miracles – my mom called me again shortly after to tell me that the nurse said anyone who was close by could come and say their goodbyes. In the middle of Covid restrictions especially, this was a miracle that I know painfully well so many people did not get. I don't know why God granted this gift to us, but I'm so grateful that He did. I gathered my siblings and cousins up into my parents' minivan and drove the two hours to the hospital, where we all got to see our beloved Grandpa one last time.
And oh, that last time was a bitter shock. The man I knew as strong in my childhood and who'd grown so frail over time from fighting cancer was weak, wheezing, and unable to speak. But his will of iron and love for family overcame even this. He could not speak, but he fluttered his eyes open and peered out at each one of his grandkids as we came in. My sister Mary might've just been the most blessed of us all. He fully opened his eyes to see her. Mom told us later that earlier that morning, his oxygen had plummeted to 60%, but after the nurse said his grandkids could come say goodbye, it rose back up. And after he had one final look of recognition at each of his grandchildren, he didn't display any more signs of conscious movement.
I thought he'd pass that day – maybe at the hour of Divine Mercy, for he'd suffered so much. But that night came and went, and the following morning he was still holding on. It was the second day of the semester, and my half birthday. I went to campus for a meeting around 4pm, and decided to walk home from campus afterwards. I hadn't heard from my mom in a bit, so I called her to see what was happening.
The moment she answered the phone, I knew. I'd always known I'd find out at school, hadn't I? But this was so different than anything I'd imagined in my head. "He's gone," she cried. "He's gone."
Mom, Grandma, and my aunt had been saying the rosary. My mom had been praying for him to be able to hold on until my uncle from New Hampshire, who was an hour's drive away still, could get there; when suddenly she heard a woman's voice speak to her. "Are you sure that's what's best for him?" My mom had an instinct that it was the Blessed Mother, and she said, "I want whatever's best for him."
At that moment, Grandpa breathed his last.
Mama Mary had a hand in bringing Grandpa to Christ in this life, I'm sure of it. You see, one thing I haven't mentioned here is my Grandpa's faith. He grew up Catholic, and actually had decided to go to minor seminary instead of high school, when he saw all the girls walking to the first day of high school and decided the seminary wasn't for him. But his parents' divorce shook his faith to its core. I don't know the exact extent his faith lapsed, but I don't think he was practicing the faith while he served in the Navy; and my mom told me that he went to Sunday Mass with Grandma and the family when my mom was young, but he never received the Eucharist.
It wasn't until he had to do research during his professorship that things changed. He wound up doing research on the Catholic charismatic movement that came out of the 1960's – and while I am not a charismatic myself, I am truly grateful to this movement for existing because it played a hand in bringing Grandpa back into full communion with the Catholic Church. Grandpa's research led him to Steubenville, Ohio, where he had the opportunity to interview the former president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Fr. Michael Scanlon, TOR. I have no idea what Fr. Scanlon said to Grandpa. But I do know that Grandpa went to confession for the first time in years when he came back, and he remained a faithful Catholic the rest of his life.
He still had his doubts. He was a melancholic to the core, prone to doubts, to depression, to despair. But Grandpa was a truth seeker. If nothing else indicated that, his bookshelf certainly did. I can't tell you how many philosophical and religious titles are upon that bookshelf. Some of them come from my very devout Grandma, but I know she surely wasn't the one reading Peter Kreeft. She liked history books and the stories of saints, and that was that.
The two of them said the rosary together every day. When I was in 9th grade, I went to Italy with the church choir, and while I was there, I bought a rosary for each of them and got them blessed by then Pope Benedict XVI. I didn't realize until I lived with them that they used them every day. How many nights I watched them sit in their respective chairs in the living room with a statue of our Lady on the stand in between, almost like a Catholic version of the montage from Pixar's Up, and pray the rosary.
The other thing I noticed when I lived with them was my Grandma's faithfulness in bringing the Eucharist to Grandpa every day. They were daily Mass attendees prior to his illness, and once he was too immunocompromised to do that, she brought him the Eucharist. Every morning Grandpa received our Lord in the Flesh because of Grandma's faithfulness.
I wonder if he saw our Lady when he passed into eternity to meet God Face-to-face.
I think he did.
The night of the 24th, I learned that my family coped with grief by planning things. In this case, it was Grandpa's funeral. Mom, Grandma, my uncle from New Hampshire and I all sat in my room that night and planned out Grandpa's funeral mass, complete with resplendent music. My grandma was insistent that not an ounce of music would be sorrowful in any way! We had to talk her out of choosing a particularly triumphant organ postlude, for, as my uncle said, "This is a funeral mass, not a mass of resurrection!"
His funeral took place three days after his death, on what would've been my grandparents' 55th wedding anniversary. There was no wake at a funeral home, but rather a viewing at the church before the funeral. I wore heels that cut into my feet and I bitterly regretted it.
After what was perhaps the longest rosary and longest Divine Mercy chaplet ever prayed, I played the Mouquet as a prelude – and then walked out of the sanctuary and cried. As I did, I saw one of my cousins say her final goodbye to Grandpa, whose casket hadn't been closed yet. In a moment of grace, I knew I needed to say my own last goodbye before they closed the casket and the funeral began, and I ran over to it. I kissed his forehead and cried and told him I loved him – all the things I wish I'd done when I'd seen him lying on the floor of the garage, just three and a half weeks prior. And in a moment of grace, I was the last one to look upon his face in this life.
Five priests concelebrated the mass. The music was beautiful and hopeful. I will never be able to listen to Three Days again without associating it with Grandpa's funeral. The entire funeral was beautiful, from start to finish, and people felt it. At the funeral luncheon, one of the priests came up to me and said, absolutely beaming, that Grandpa's funeral was the best funeral he'd ever been to, and that all funerals ought to be like his. It was an odd statement to hear, but I knew what he'd seen. Grandpa's funeral had been marked with beauty, just as his life had been, and just as he'd passed onto countless people – not least of all his family.
And when we all went outside after the luncheon, we beheld the most vibrant rainbow any of us had ever seen in our lives. A rainbow – a Biblical promise of hope.
There's so much more I wish I could tell you about Grandpa. At his children's behest, he wrote a memoir full of his stories: his childhood, his adolescence, his years in the Navy, how he met Grandma. But even if you read a copy, there's so much left out: his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, some absolutely wild stories from the Navy, adventures and stupidly hilarious mishaps of all sorts. Even here I've left out so much of my own stories.
Grandpa's morality, his commitment to seeking the truth, his love for beauty are the hallmarks of his life, but perhaps all of them are trumped by his love for family. Every person in his family knew he loved them. His love, though certainly imperfectly so, was a resplendent image of the love that God the Father has for each one of us. And God as Father has not revealed Himself as tenderly to me through anyone's love so much as He did through Grandpa.
I am who I am because of how he loved me.
And I can only hope that I can share with those around me the love, wisdom, and beauty that he gave so freely to me.
