A "cue" to a Legacy...

This story is a perfect example of what it means to Live a Legacy that inspires generations after you are gone as Proverbs 13:22 eludes to, "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children..." This comes from a friend who is passing on the legacy he has been left. Well worth the read. Thanks Derek.

 "I met my grandpa on my mother's side when I was seven years old. He passed away three short years later. He wore a cowboy hat and didn't waste time with words. He was buried with a can of chewing tobacco in one breast pocket and a lottery ticket in the other. I remember being caught between ages and emotions at the funeral; shaking strangers' hands at the funeral home; passing around a luminator football with my best friend in the front lawn; remembering how cold his hand felt in the casket; crashing into a tear-stained sleep after the coffee & bars and the guests disappeared. I remember going through his apartment in Barnes City and being told that he would have wanted me to have his pool stick.

When I was first told that grandpa left me his pool stick, I kept wondering how I didn't know grandpa had toys for the swimming pool and why had he never given them to me before that. When mom handed me the wooden stick used to play the game of pool, admittedly, I was a little deflated.

I've come to know that my grandpa was much more complicated than my 10 year old mind could once comprehend. To me, he was the guy that I wondered why I didn't know until I was 7 who brought me things he found in roadside ditches and graciously ate sandwiches with the wrappers still on the cheese because he didn't want my mom to feel bad.

But he was so much more. He was the youngest of the Joneses, a poor Central-Texan family. His mother died when he was born and he was communally raised by different families in Travis County, one of which was my grandma's, with whom he later fell in love with, married, helped raise her two girls, as well as the two they had together.

My grandpa was never a drinker, but he frequented many bars. Not for the elixir, as you might have guessed, but because he had a burden. After working as a typesetter and a rancher, he came to realize that everyone has a story, if you're willing to listen. So, with his pool stick in hand, he would walk in to many a bar, strike up a game, as well as a conversation between strangers. This is where my grandpa became the wise man of faith that I came to know in his last years. It was over a game of pool with men he had never met that he learned how to listen; how to cipher through whatever troubles the drifter may have toasted his sorrows to and see the soul of a man, and how it was worth loving.

My grandpa didn't ever preach from a pulpit; many a times I can remember him saying, "God doesn't want 'Religious Nut's, he wants 'Faithful Fruits.'" But he definitely loved the lowly and never missed an opportunity to let someone know that they were loved by their creator. He just had a funny way of doing it.

As much as I sometimes want it to, his pool stick doesn't have any magic powers, and it definitely doesn't replace the life of a wonderful man who was taken from me all too soon. But it symbolizes how well he responded to God; how he saw an opportunity to help a woman he loved and be a father to her two beautiful children; how he initially learned how to share God's love for all people and ultimately was finally able to receive that same grace and forgiveness for himself for all of the times he had fallen short the mark; how he knew his days were nearing their end and responded by driving from California to Iowa in a rickety old car to reunite with his daughter and meet his two grandchildren in their driveway one day after school; how for the three years he had with them before the cancer finally got the best of him, he imparted his wisdom and his faith that will carry on for generations to come, God willing.

My grandpa wasn't a man of many earthly possessions, but he definitely left me one that I will treasure forever. And so don't be surprised if you see me walking across the street to The Tap, with his pool stick in hand, to go listen to a stranger. After all, it's my cue, isn't it?"